<p>Hi, thanks for all that great info! Unfortunately, I just got off the phone with a nice young man from the FA Office (a vast improvement over the monosyllabic young lady last Friday who seemed like she couldn’t wait for me to leave and stop bothering her) and he said that policies have changed. While in the past they wouldn’t reduce an award based on a change in the EFC, they cannot promise that now due to “the economic environment and their budget issues.” I told him I heard that CAS awards are very rarely reduced but he said that that will no longer will be true. The way I calculate it on the College Board site, our EFC will increase from $26K to $42K after my son graduates (not only is his tuition no longer factored-in but family size decreases from 4 to 3) – he said my daughter’s award would probably be substantially reduced. I asked whether there’s a strictly merit component to the scholarship, some number of dollars that I can still count on getting if my EFC is $42K, and he said “No!!!”. So much for NYU, onto her other choices. Seriously depressing. Too bad i didn’t have kids a few years earlier – it sounds like your daughter graduated just in time, before these policies changed! </p>
<p>P.S. Thanks very much for that info about the FLAS program. Yes, she’s into foreign languages (has been taking German, Latin, French and, starting this year, Russian – gets A/A+ in all of them too!). Seems to have a gift for languages (math/science, not so much…). Will look into this FLAS thing. She apparently wants to pursue reseach or “Translation Studies” which I think may end up in her being an extremely well-spoken & multi-lingual Barista at Starbucks after graduating. (Does the UN have a Starbucks? She’d be perfect.)</p>