One of the colleges (Barnard?) made a big deal of the difficulty of getting out of ED offers. You have to “jump through a lot of hoops”. Were they just blowing smoke?
What if you get what you think is an unacceptable financial package - can you reapply RD in case you learn in April that it was a pretty good deal - perhaps the best you got?
@dragonmom3 Tulane made an extremely generous offer to my kid, second only to Amherst.
@MON824, this is a nice guide, but I wonder what is your source for popular majors?
If “Biz” means “business”, you might want to double-check some of your entries.
Some of the extremely selective schools listed in post #1 don’t even offer business majors.
Law generally isn’t offered as a major (although some schools may offer interdisciplinary majors/tracks promoted as appropriate for pre-law). Pre-med (listed for Bryn Mawr) isn’t a major (and is not one of the “degrees conferred” categories tracked by the CDS section J).
@OHMomof2 – did your kid’s generous offer from Tulane include merit aid? (see my post #16 - I’m just curious, but my experience with other colleges was that where merit aid was an option, my kids generally received first year offers that combined need-based aid with merit money).
@calmom yes it did. $32K merit included in the package.
I was leery about it being on her list, I didn’t think it would be affordable, so it was a pleasant surprise when the offer came in.
If you turn down a school ED because it’s too expensive, why would they admit you RD? I don’t think you can apply twice in the same cycle but, even if you could, how are you going to explain how something that was unaffordable in Nov. suddenly becoming affordable in April? That doesn’t sound like “can’t pay,” it sounds like “don’t want to pay.”
The idea of ED is early consideration for you in exchange for giving up the right to compare prices. It defeats the purpose of ED for them to allow you to change your mind about rejecting them after you’ve had an opportunity to compare all your other offers. You could take a gap year and reapply during the next cycle, but there’s no way of knowing whether or not they’d accept you.
OK, that supports my hypothesis about why Tulane’s grant numbers on the CDS seemed low in proportion to other colleges. That’s very generous aid and it is wonderful that your daughter received such a generous offer --but as I noted before, merit aid may not necessarily be sustained in future years.
But I would agree that Tulane should be on the OP’s list, given that they can be extremely generous with merit money to supplement need based aid.
@austinmshauri - That makes perfect sense though I can imagine one or two valid reasons for RD application:
If I designed the system I wouldn’t allow it, but I didn’t design the system.
Yes, the net prices can vary by thousands of dollars.
However, in running many NPC estimates for a variety of colleges and income/asset levels, I’ve found that if you’re below a certain income level with commensurate assets, even the worst of the “full need” offers tend to be better than (or at least competitive with) net prices for public colleges (even at in-state rates) or for private schools that don’t make the “full need” claim.
Example
$85K/year family income; no significant assets (home is rented); 6 people in household.
According to college board’s EFC based on the FAFSA, EFC is $11,000 (according to the student/poster).
Net price estimates for several “full need” schools:
$10,490 Bates
$13,090 URichmond
$13,700 Colorado College
$14,807 Grinnell
$16,394 Boston College
Net price estimates for several that don’t claim to cover full need:
$18,976 Whitman College
$22,528 University of Utah (in state)
$42,658 Colorado State (OOS)
So for this middle income family (and for many other scenarios I’ve observed) the net price variation among “full need” schools may not be as great as the variation between “full need” colleges and the alternatives (assuming merit aid doesn’t offset the difference).
(YMMV)
@tk21769 For #22, great catch! I had to do a lot of guess-work on that on top of trying to find sources because the common data sets are of no help to me (I cannot break down the Social Sciences category, which is big in all of these). I was considering using Niche’s top majors list for each, but was not sure about that. What would you recommend? I will certainly revise this list closer to August.
Also, I saw your net price list at #28 and, humorously enough, it is comparable with my results in their relationships (UR and Colorado switched by close to that difference). I will also consider putting Whitman on my list later, because it seems to be comparable (according to CDS, at least) to others like USC despite lower actual percentage of need met, which implies somewhat they they assess need differently (although I could be wrong). Out of curiosity, can you test University of Rochester, Union College, and Oberlin College? I want to see how they compare to your other ones; they seemed to be much less generous when I tried them out.
By the way, a user suggested [this list](http://downloads.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/Compass-360-College-Profiles-New-SAT-and-ACT.pdf) for the SAT/ACT percentiles for the next time. Does everybody agree that that would be better? Again, I know it’s not the biggest deal and many people below these percentiles have a great chance anyways, but I’d like to improve the list where I can.
I personally love that handy compass list because my S18 used it to reference the schools on another printed list he had.
@MON824 each college has a # of majors breakdown at collegenavigator if that’s what you are looking for.
For Tulane, for instance: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?id=160755#programs
College entries on https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ show degrees granted in each type of major.
For example, https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=stanford&s=all&id=243744#programs shows that 1,746 students graduated from Stanford with bachelor’s degrees, of whom 259 were computer science majors, 154 were human biology majors, 117 were “engineering, other” majors, 107 were biology (general) majors, and 105 were economics majors.
@ucbalumnus and @OHMomof2 Thank you very much, both of you! Bookmarked
@MON824, Here’s a do-over with slightly different assumptions and the addition of Union College.
Assumptions:
$85K/year family income; $42,500 home equity; $42,500 cash; $42,500 investments; 3 people in household (no siblings). Texas resident.
Net price estimates for several “full need” schools:
$15,400 Colorado College
$17,740 Bates
$19,142 UChicago
$19,640 URichmond
$20,610 Grinnell
Net price estimates for two that don’t claim to cover full need:
$25,062 Whitman College
$28,9600 Union College
To run these estimates, I’m launching the NPC from the College Board site, which saves data so I can re-run on multiple participating schools. Oberlin and Rochester aren’t in the lists of participating schools.
https://professionals.collegeboard.org/higher-ed/financial-aid/netprice
Here’s what I get from URochester’s own NPC, using the above assumptions:
$31,322 URochester
(Oberlin’s NPC isn’t working for me.)
@tk21769 Thanks. That’s . . . pretty high. I’ll have to look into Union and URochester when I get a chance.