Paying for TAMU with high EFC

lessonwitch2
Thu, 17 Aug 2017 18:45:55 +0000

@itsgettingreal17

While I am not saying most students get a continuing student scholarship (after all, every school has a good chunk of students holding 2.0s with little extracurricular involvement) but for students that are high achieving earning awards is much easier. However at A&M, kids who study abroad receive automatic scholarships, or run an S. I. , or join certain clubs. A good chunk of their need blind aid goes to actual students. Other schools don’t offer as many as A&M since they give thousands to continuing students each year but only hundreds of president endowments for freshman . And a family with an efc that exceeds the coa will always have to deal with trying to be excessively competitive for merit aid.

I’m a little confused on your next part though.

Average student debt isn’t a helpful measure since many, if not most, attending A&M aren’t taking out any loans …38% with financial need

You do know that means that most of the people attending would not have a component of financial need and thus wouldn’t be eligible for most scholarships on the scholarship page right? Since most require a component of financial need. That is where the continuing student awards come in handy and that is where A&M is more generous with disbursement for people with High EFCs. Your income doesn’t matter if you have a component of financial need. My parents make over 100k but I have a lot of siblings in school so my EFC is modest.

And I think the schools a little expensive with a COA of 30k . That means students with no awards should end up taking 120k ideally. But you only need to pay for tuition and housing for about 21.5 k so only about 86k in debt. However that number is still way higher then the 27k average.

If you work for $8 an hr for 20 hr a week (I know that’s a lot for a college student trying to make a great GPA and manage extracurriculars so they have a chance to get accepted, however, let’s pretend) they would make 16640 in savings over two years of saving. Which ends up being 14144 after taxes. Not only is this not enough for a year of tuition, but it removes the student from the possibility of earning more scholarships when they re apply. With student loans you can cover the second year but on average people who transfer end up taking 3.5 to 4 years to earn their degree because of how degree plans are structured (for example a telecommunications major needs to take Class A which is a needed class for class B, which is a needed class for class C and so forth for so that a student must take 8 semesters. And only 1 of those classes is offered over the summer . Not to mention if a student failed or what not. And when you remember the years of working income you lose from taking a total of 5 to 6 years to finish your degree, it won’t, economically, make the most sense. (if it can be prevented)

I personally used the ideas listed at the start of this discussion to fully fund my entire four years of education. I wasn’t an NMF. My standardized test scores sucked. I failed SO MANY APs / IBs. And my family was too rich for Aggie Assurance. I was a review applicant that was out of the top quarter and still found their way to money at A&M. But I would not have had these opportunities had I taken a different path which is why I advocate for students not being afraid to apply here with a high efc. And I think that if a student puts forth the work that I explained earlier they will get the same (if not a similar) result. However, for the sake of discussion, I also wanted to point out how the university directly can still give aid to students that aren’t expecting it with a high efc.

EDIT: And I’m an incoming freshman