There is plenty of merit money out there, just not at the very top schools (unless you are a superstar of course).
My D applied to 8 LACs ranked from 45 to 90 on USNWR. She received excellent merit at every single one - most scholarships in the $20,000 per year to $26,000 range. This is a kid with 30 ACT, 3.7 UW. The money is there, just don’t expect much at the top schools because it is most definitely a recruiting tool.
The folks voicing these concerns have made the jump from low income situations through hard work, sacrifice, and determination without a hand up, handout, or a “holistic” process to help them out. After all that hard work, sacrifice, and determination, what do they get for it? A pat on the head and an it’s OK if your kids are discriminated against because you worked hard and sacrificed. They have all these other wonderful choices for college.
Do you imagine you’re the only person who used to be poor? What we “get” are children who don’t have to face the same struggles that we did, who appreciate the value of hard work for the satisfaction that comes from doing a job and doing it well, who understand the opportunities and advantages they enjoy, and who have open hearts that can be truly happy for the success of those who’ve faced hardships they’ll never know.
And there are those who worked harder, sacrificed and were determined but did not get the jump up. Many of them. So they remain low income and without much in assets as emergency funds, options, etc. Those who made it up there have the choice to put some of their money or all of it towards college. If you really want the fin aid enough, get rid of the money and see how good that gravy tests by itself. You are getting the prime rib when you can afford to pay.
Here, let me change something around a bit:
Or this:
Or this:
Or one last one (though of course there are many, many more):
Funny, isn’t it, how some folks fixate on how it’s the poor kids stealing all the opportunity?
I graduated from college in the 1970’s and fully appreciate the help and “handout’s” I got to make it possible. Federal loan program which subsidized my borrowing even when interest rates exceeded 12%. Generous philanthropists who donated money to my university, subsidized by the taxpayers who gave them a write off for doing so. Thrifty and hard-working parents who did their part, and gave me a stable home in which to grow up. The foresighted corporations and government entities who fund research and think tanks; the foundations which give money for the U’s museums and archives, etc. all of which made the education the best that it could be, using the resources available. And of course the wonderful taxpayers of the city and state I lived in, who provided funds for roads, tunnels, an efficient airport, and all the other infrastructure that makes urban living possible.
It takes a special kind of curmudgeon to assume they did it all by themselves through their own hard work and sacrifice!
Even parents who are full pay (as I was, for my own kids) are benefiting from the largesse of named and un-named others.
But sure, blame the kids who grow up in poverty, and begrudge them their Pell grants!!!
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Duke and MIT are offering similar amounts but it is need based. WashU offered almost nothing in merit aid, and a token amount in need based.
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The problem is that at schools like these, EVERYONE has high stats, everyone worked hard,…so, who should get the merit? EVERYONE??? Who would pay the bills?
Some top schools offer few merit awards to target some students for various reasons…regional diversity, gender diversity, and ethnic diversity…or some other reason/hook.
Retirement savings doesnt’ hurt you for aid.
Aid is mostly based on income…UNLESS you have a LOT of unprotected non-retirement assets.
Mom2collegekids- some of the schools hit you hard for home equity, and they do use savings. I don’t have a problem with schools looking at family resources, I don’t like when I read how we should or could game the system. And yes, getting into MIT, Duke, Rice, JHU, Princeton, and WUSTL are great achievements, and we are extremely proud of kid. I guess I should look at the process differently. The merit award being the acceptance.
I am very very late, but UA has been pouring so much money in research facilities and science department in general, and it has bunch of opportunities for engineering and other things. For example, I am just a Freshmen but I will be doing a research with one of my ChemE professor next semester. Very excited!
It is one of very, very few STATE school that gives very good and fairly easy(assuming you are smart, which your daughter is) merit scholarship, and full tuition offer is hard to beat for ANY student! I don’t know much detail about other great schools’ engineering program, but U of Alabama does have a good eng. department.
There are pockets of situations where in one’s view, there are applicants with differing circumstances treated better of the financial package - it is not a level playing field for all. “Not all things in life are fair.” However some parents and students are so use to having their hard work and student’s high stats with many good things offered to them. In the end, high stat students will do well where they are planted, and parents have to decide how to use their financial resources.
A pretty smart student and his parents decided to go 3-3-3 - supposedly applying to 3 safeties, but they really didn’t. He is on two OOS wait lists. He would not look at UA, and now has just his state college WVU that has accepted him into his field, environmental engineering. Another OOS public accepted him in a different major, which he is rejecting. A small private accepted him but he can only do 2 or 3 years there and it would need to be in a field like physics before transferring to finish (they dangle finishing a master’s with the 5 years of education). If he had done the 15 minute application before the Dec scholarship deadline, he could have compared what he got at WVU and what UA had to offer. If I was his parent, I would have submitted the stuff electronically for UA and then he would have a real other option, but the parents decided the kid could direct himself. I think WVU will offer him a pretty decent education, but the parents and the kid were a little bit snobby about schools (visited and applied to Stanford w/o high enough ACT score for realistic chance) and really thought one of his ‘reaches’ would have panned out. His parents and he had not visited UA either. Parents and others around them have inflated this kid and a few other’s egos and expectations. GF has been accepted to one school that is highly selective, but may not be able to afford.
Parents need to be the dose of reality for students. If a school is out of financial reach, they need to say so early in the process so the student does not go through application process and have built up hopes dashed late in the game. Don’t want to pull the rug out from your child unless they continue to live in a ‘dream world’.
I know of a number of situations where the FA and the reaches just didn’t work out - then the student needs an attitude adjustment to where they are going. How many international students with high stats and limited funds would want the chances our students have?
My DD is at UA studying engineering. She is getting an excellent education and had great automatic merit (Presidential and Engineering) and a couple of smaller music awards.
We parents are 6.5 years away from retirement. Our finances are in order.
Some parents/families make some financial sacrifices and that is their choice.
Education is something that cannot be taken away from you, however the cost/benefit between various schools needs to be weighed out with a realistic view.
The paradigm keeps changing on the college scene, as followers can see.
Getting your kids educated through college is a real accomplishment, considering all the ‘land mines’ including our me me me society, the ‘get it now’ immediate gratification environment, and the rampant drug culture that hasn’t gone away.
Good luck to all making the decisions on colleged prior to May 1 deadline.
anytime I start to get insomnia about the upcoming college bills, I remind myself that D’s friend who is getting a nearly full ride from an excellent school has been living in a home with far less money than D. While their lifestyles may be similar (same school, same activities etc) D WILL have more choices in schools because I’ve made more money and saved it. I won’t say I’ve worked harder, cos I can’t swear to that. If I work 50 hrs a week at my better paid job, am I working harder than a social worker putting in 50 hrs?
I have 3 children and consider scholarships when allowing my children to visit schools. If they want to go out of state (which they all do so far), then they must get enough money to cover the variance between UC schools (in state) and the out of state school of choice for tuition plus housing and food. My eldest is a sophomore in college and with a 29 ACT and 4.35 weight GPA (tons of awards for academics, sports, extras) got scholarships solely on the GPA to open the door and the test score to close it behind her.
She received in state to just enough to get her to go out of state and of course she picked the school with the smallest scholarship but fell in love with the campus. We only visited schools that met the criteria. We found that most of the money is in the Midwest or South but not in the top 50 schools. Schools that she applied to we found for her stats that threw big money were Minnesota, South Carolina, Bama, Florida State, Ohio State and Texas A&M. Schools that threw enough to make is plausible were Purdue, UGA and Colorado.
There are other schools with great deals but those are the ones she applied to and got the required dollars (she got into UCLA and Michigan as well but I wasn’t paying for Ann Arbor full price). And there were some rejections as to be expected. My son graduates HS in 2 years and his grades are much lower so we will await his test scores and react. He has visited his sisters school (won’t get in but loved it too) and Bama which he can get into but not the money needed barring a miracle on the test score (higher IQ than his older sister but stereotypical lazy boy).
So my target market will be different for child #2 and will focus on easier merit money and or in state opportunities. Also my scholarship threshold for him will be those that maintain a lower GPA than a 3.0 which further limits him. But this is a learning experience for him and he’s making his choices now that affect him later. Friends of his in our area let there kids go wherever they can without regard to finances but I want my son invested in this process. He hasn’t wanted to talk about it (I stated his freshman year).
We are visiting another school this summer that he is interested in that meets the requirements and that he is interested in. I have a spreadsheet that tracks every school in the 5 major conferences for COA and compares it to our highest in state UC costs with probable scholarship dollars for my child in question. This visit should meet those requirements as a safety school. Once we get the test scores next year, we will hone in one another trip or two (mini vacations).
My research had taken me tons of hours and developed over the years with the first child. I update my spreadsheet every year but sometimes it is off as schools changes fees mid year. College is expensive and I treat this as a family investment program. But I try not to loose site of the intangibles. My daughter is loving her school, in a great sorority and has a boyfriend finally that seems to be getting serious. She doesn’t come home during summers either. I think she has found a new home and personally I am so happy for her and she knows home is always waiting if she needs it.
Where my son ends up is his doing and things have a way of working out. But nothing is permanent as I went to a lower ranked school (well over 100 in USNR), met my wife and have 3 fantastic children being raised in a nice area in CA. Rankings are not everything. He too will go to a school ranked below his best school he could get into and should have a memorable 4 years.
Now that the last top schools have given their accepts, the pipers have to be paid, and the parents are scurrying around looking for money. Each year, I am surprised by who doesn’t know that you ain’t gonna get a dime from the ivies if you don’t qualify for financial aid. I actually heard a parent who is going to try to play one selective school off on another to try to get some award, when there is no fin aid or merit in the picture for his kid. Have fun with that one.
Sometimes when the dust clears, some families realize that they cannot afford the prices. Each year this happens with NYU here. Parents realize that even commuting to NYU is more than they can afford, and all of a sudden some of those other schools with big awards look awfully good. Binghamton gets a lot of accepts when reality hits.
It’s pretty surprising how some parents can be as oblivious as their kids are
This board provides a wealth of information. The parents who follow it learn a LOT. And, going through the process with a few kids is eye-opening.
But - the vast majority of parents do not research this college stuff the way people on this board obviously do. I too am always surprised when I hear people talk about financial aid issues and they clearly have no clue. There is a lot of misinformation out there. And, sadly, a LOT of it is generated by the colleges themselves who send out glossy brochures about how you can afford their school…etc. Their game is to increase the applications, which makes them appear more selective. Sadly, even if an acceptance comes, the bill can be a real shocker.
At one of the admissions meetings, the person addressing the group stressed how finances should NEVER prevent kids who want to apply from applying, followed by impressive fin aid and merit info. What they did not mention was that if you don’t qualify for financial aid by their standards, you don’t get any of those goodies, and that there is very little in the way of merit money. Sounds good in the presentation; the reality is a whole other story.
One issue is the parents (including me) always feel their kids are the best and deserve a scholarship. The reality is, there are plenty of smart kids at each school while the merit money is limited. Many top of the class students found out to be just an average person in the match school they enrolled.
^^
I’ve noticed that some people equate getting an acceptance to a school to an expectation that a nice-sized merit award will also be forthcoming. But, if they thought about it, that would just mean that every accepted student would get a good size merit award…and if that were the case, who would be paying?