State School vs Harvard: Any Middle Ground?

Kei-o-lei
Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:09:36 +0000

OP said: “Call me lower middle class, middle class, rich, whatever word you want. Im looking for a good college that i can go to for under 20k a year.”

All of the following mix and match different sets of aid to end up costing about the same ~ 20k

Lots of different ways to skin the cat

Examples:

OSU with an OOS scholarship

Brown with a family of four with income of 103k and a kid in college
https://financialaid.brown.edu/Cmx_Content.aspx?cpId=333

Princeton with family income of ~ 100k per year
[Princeton University | Who Qualifies for Aid?](http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/)

Oberlin with a 15k merit scholarship, 2 kids in college and familhy income of ~140k per year

McGill with summer earnings and 3500 federal subsidized loan

Olin College: you get in, they pay for you

Grinnell with 2X the average merit award, summer earnings and 3500 subsidized loan

UMass Amherst Commonwealth College, instate rates

If there’s a school you really like you can gather the info you need from your parents to do the FAFSA estimator, then take it with you to talk to the college

P.S. Take the info you quote about your sib and Harvard and Princeton and toss it out; nobody’s saying it wasn’t real but so far the most reasonable explanations why they were so far apart have nothing to do with current financial aid policies (e.g., different info going to the schools, missed deadlines, etc.); approach this process systematically, not anecdotally (e.g., there is hard data that will tell you which collges give more merit aid than others)