I understand that many families don’t want to discuss the extent of their financial resources with their kids. That’s okay. That’s different from saying, we are willing and able to pay $30k or $50k or $whatever per year for four years of college. It’s like if your family gives you $30 to go out with your friends. You have no way of knowing if they only have $30, or if they have $100, or if they have a million dollars. They’re just giving you an amount that you can spend.
If your family does not want you to know more about their financial circumstances, then they will need to run the Net Price Calculators (NPC) at different schools under consideration, especially for those that do not offer merit aid.
Below is a list of schools that I pulled from this post in your other thread:
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
- Seton Hall
- SUNY Albany
- U. of Delaware
- U. of Denver
Likely (60-79%)
- CUNY City College
Toss-Up (40-59%)
- American
- Connecticut College
- Fordham
- George Washington
Lower Probability (20-39%)
- Brandeis
- Dickinson
- Trinity
- U. of Richmond
- U. of Rochester
Low Probability (less than 20%)
- Georgetown
- NYU
- Tufts
Ask your family to run the NPC at the schools in the low probability bucket. If those schools would provide sufficient need-based aid to be affordable, great! If not, then they should be eliminated, as they do not offer merit-based aid.
The other schools on this list do offer merit-based aid. So then you would want to look at the NPCs (if they ask for merit aid info) or their scholarship pages. NPCs, when they ask for merit info, will usually indicate the minimum amount of merit aid that you could expect. (Seton Hall, I believe, is one that asks for academic info.)
When you look at the schools’ scholarship pages, first you want to see if there is a chart that will tell you the specific amount of merit you would receive. If that’s not available, you want to find out what the highest amount of merit aid that they offer. Macalester, I believe, has a maximum merit scholarship amount of about $25k/year. So, if Macalester costs about $80k/year and the maximum amount of merit aid is $25k/year, then you know that Macalester’s costs (before need-based aid) will not go lower than about $55k/year. If the NPC doesn’t come back with an affordable amount and $55k is not affordable, then you would know that Macalester should not be on the list.
Additionally, just because a school offers a high maximum merit award, it doesn’t necessarily mean you would get it. This aggregator is a tool that you may want to become familiar with: Average Merit Aid - College Transitions. For many popular schools it will indicate what percentage of students without need received merit aid and what the average merit award was.
At Macalester, 24% of students without need received merit with an average package of $18,034. That helps give you a sense of the likelihood of getting an award there. For instance, you would probably want to be in the top 25% of applicants if you were hoping to get a merit aid award. At U. of Denver, 53% of undergrads without need receive merit scholarships, averaging $21,438. Thus, to get merit aid here, you would probably want to be in the top half of applicants if looking for a merit award.
If a school is not listed in the aggregator, you can still do a search with “college name” and “Common Data Set” (CDS). If you look at section H2 of the CDS, then you can calculate the percentage of students getting merit and the average merit award. Additionally, for schools you’re very interested in, I would look at the CDS to verify the info in the aggregator, as sometimes there can be mistakes in a third-party tool.
If you let us know the budget and whether the NPCs are indicating the schools on your list (whether the one in this post or a different one) are affordable, then that will help the board to provide better feedback and suggestions.