@botcom A decent need based package, imo, should make the school affordable for the family without more than the max student loan. Generally speaking. A great one would not require any student loans.
Next Friday is doomsday for us!! We’ve to make a decision between bigMAC and fullpay, if DS don’t get into his first choice. Fingers crossed!!
@ACT2017 --first choice being UT??
@carachel2 - yes.
@ACT2017 --good luck! D is interested to see IF she will be accepted. But beyond that she has already moved on. She has lots of friends who have received auto admission but not to their major and a few who are awaiting admission. It’s going to be a nailbiter! I will be out of town and will miss all the action so I’m bummed!
@carachel2 - thanks. We didn’t take a chance to apply to CNS undeclared major (hoping to get internal transfer later). Either he get into CS major or move on!!!
@botcom --holy SMOKES! Not to go all stalker on you, but I clicked on your past posts to see what school you might be referring to. Boston University? And they calculated your EFC to be $55K?? Or did you get that situation sorted out?
D used to want to go to school in Boston. We both love the city. But then thank goodness I found CC and realized a.)they are crazy $$ and b.)they don’t give a lot of merit aid and c.)we would be very close to full pay there.
It’s been quite the journey but over a year has passed and she built another list. She did apply to Northeastern just for fun since their engineering and co-op experiences sound great. Even with a $21,000/year merit scholarship the total costs would still be almost $42,000 = NO! It was fun for her to get the acceptance and have the EA experience but it was a pretty quick decline.
I hope it all works out for you!
QOTD: When do you think your child will make their final decision? Next weekend and the weekend after are our final 2 college trips. In approx 3 weeks, Dd should have heard back on her all scholarship offers. She plans on making a decision at that point. All other schools she applied to RD with late acceptance notifications have been written off at this point. She is no longer considering any of the schools she hasn’t heard from bc she knows they will not be as affordable as her current options.
Anyone else besides ED people close to making a decision? (I am so glad to be so close!!)
Final decision - We’re thinking April 1st. D should have all scholarship offers in by then and have visited all schools. Apri 1 seems so far away. At this point, I have no clue where she will end up. sigh
Final I decisions have to wait all of the RA results - and then there will likely be revisits, hopefully admitted student days, etc. No way to tell if decision will be easy or hard at this point! So sometime in April.
@carachel2 When we allowed her to apply back in October EFC was $8K when I ran the numbers again in Dec. $55k application was already submitted so we just hoped for a good need based package based on information on the BU website.
D was admitted ED to BU. Thankfully they offered her a need based grant that will completly cover the cost of tuition .We will just be responsible for housing and meal plan.
I posted just to confirm that we made a good choice. It seems we did as the replys to my post were similar to how we came to our decision.
QOTD: It looks like some of the schools he applied to will announce decisions on March 28 and April 1. Depending on how the acceptances turn out, he may need to wait until after accepted students’ visits to decide. There are several tippy-tops on the list that we didn’t bother visiting in advance.
He’s been pretty decisive in the past about multiple summer program options, so I expect he will be pretty quick to decide once he knows which colleges accept him.
QOTD: We are waiting on scholarship notifications, which will take place later this month for one school and the last half of March for the other two. Also, we are planning a trip to all three schools for spring break in late March. My hope is that D17 reaches a decision by April 1.
@botcom --oh that’s fantastic to hear!!! I never saw an update to that thread so it looked like BU was still coming in way too high! That’s awesome. You aren’t going to get better than almost full tuition in most cases. Congrats!
Don’t expect S will make a decision until late April. Has one MAC acceptance EA, but waiting until RD (mid-March to April 1) to see what the options are. He will probably do 2 or 3 revisits then. He has visited all but 2 so far.
QOTD: DD is nowhere close to making a decision. She is definitely going to wait for all her RD notifications and attend some accepted student events. She takes time to make decisions so I will consider myself lucky if she decides before 5/1. She says the Jefferson Scholar interview today was terrifying.
No decision here yet either until we hear from all schools and he visits his top choices. The visits will be in March. He is leaning, but not yet committed.
@Testingearly --terrifying as in…how? I don’t know anything about it and don’t have a kid in that game, but I’m just curious.
QOTD: S17 will make his decision in April. The wait seems endless. He has 3 RD schools to hear from and won’t make a decision until he knows where he’s been accepted.
We also consider the instate public COA + a little as our benchmark (<$33K).
It depends whether we get any RD acceptances at the end of March and if we do then impressions from admit events in April. It could be as early as April 1 or as late as May 1.