<p>I’ve searched the grad school board and cannot find anything that addresses this topic, hopefully someone here can help. Grad school applications ask a variation of the question “if no funding/scholarship is offered, how do you plan to pay?”.</p>
<p>Does the way one answers the question have an impact on if the applicant is accepted, and funded? In other words, if parental help is guaranteed does that harm the applicant’s chances of getting funded? And if parental help is unconfirmed, does that harm the applicant’s chances of getting accepted? </p>
<p>My goal isn’t to get into a thread discussion of who should pay what or under what circumstances, my goal is to understand how to tell D to answer the questions on the various forms without compromising admissions chances, or funding.</p>
<p>Itstoomuch of a straight forward question. Wordsmithing may not be helpful.
Son took the approach either he gets a scholarship-TA-RA position or he goes into the workforce. A ME degree, a grad school that was looking for a ME’r for CS, good grades, a hot job market, and of course GREAT recs, made either choice viable.</p>
<p>It depends on the program. Some universities seem to have made a decision regarding absolutely size of entering cohorts for different departments. These students get a guaranteed financial aid package from the university of outright grants and teaching positions that should pay for their tuition, room and board. Under this scheme, even students who receive outside funding will not get admitted if they do not make it into the desired student cohort. Other universities do take outside funding into account when making admissions decisions and are more flexible about the cohort size. So it is worth looking into the different programs and asking questions.</p>
<p>Late
strictly financial aid speaking…Grad students are considered independent(federal criteria…as soon as you have a bachelors degree,you are “independent”).Parental resources would not be considered in figuring out their resources for aid.So I wouldnt recommend to a potential applicant that they list parent help to answer that question.If they must answer it,put in loans,work or own resources.</p>
<p>Thank you, I appreciate it; I gather then what I should advise her is (1) ask questions about the number of admits relative to funding, and (2) if the school appears to be one of the more flexible ones (Marite’s second to last sentence), she can get away with saying something like “own resources”, and she is not going to be required to say exactly what are those resources?</p>
<p>But what if it isn’t - what if it’s a school that funds 100% of admits? Is it appropriate to then say something like “will be able to attend only if offered funding” as it itstoomuch’s son’s example?</p>
<p>I need to clarify. If the school funds 100% of admits, then there is absolutely no point in discussing personal funds. It means it will fund children of janitors and children of billionnaires. This allows the school to admit students strictly on merit rather than ability to pay. The package may be made up of outright grants (Princeton) or a combination of outright funding and TA-RA positions (most other schools). Whatever the case, the outside funds available to the students do not impinge on admission decisions. </p>
<p>In other cases, when a student applies for admission into a graduate program, the student also files an application for financial aid. It is a given that the student will attend only if the level of financial aid offered makes this feasible.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what son put down on as his financials since we did not have to file for aid or FAFSA. His available funds for GSch are sufficient primarily because we got lucky in the investment area. His personal attitude was more like, take me or leave me, I got it. This probably is not a good strategy for most students.</p>
<p>Marite, thanks, I am going to sound really stupid here - in the case of a school that funds 100%, how does she answer the question “how do you plan to pay” on the form? Does she leave it blank? Does she ignore that she knows they fund 100%?</p>
<p>Yeah but itstoomuch this question is on the admissions application itself, not on the financial aid forms. BTW I love your son’s mindset LOL. Congrats to him. :)</p>
<p>Don’t put down anything. They can guess without you telling them outright.</p>
<p>I would imagine that if the school has a need for graduate students, there could be money there. The larger state schools have a tremendous need for grad students to aid in the instruction of undergrads and research. </p>
<p>Son’s success ratio for grad school acceptance was very much less than his undergrad applications, even though his qualifications were probably better as a college grad than when he was a HS grad. </p>
<p>But rethinking this, Any answer may not make much difference.
Good Luck.</p>
<p>hmmm…
There are some schools that will fund some students 100% and not others, I would imagine. I was thinking of those that fund all incoming students 100%, such as Princeton and Harvard, and refuse to admit others who might be self-supporting in order to keep their cohort a certain size. By 100% funding, I mean that the package may include some teaching or research assistanship after the student has passed the Ph.D. qualifying exams. This is not the case at Princeton, which gives outright grants for 5 years, but it is the case for Harvard and other “peer” institutions. </p>
<p>If the application asks about how the student will support herself, she can fill in “personal funds.” It does not matter whether she earned the money herself or if it comes from parents.</p>
<p>Thanks, that will likely work perfectly, I’ll tell her. She was expecting the applications to look like undergrad applications, and so she didn’t know what to do.</p>
<p>One possibility is that they are trying to screen out people who would drop out for financial reasons if there is a term where funding doesn’t come through.</p>