It’s said that most of the net price calculators hosted by College Board are accurate for financial aid, so considering the FA estimates from there together with your merit scholarship situations might give you a good picture of where you are on financials.
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Except in most cases the merit and FA do not stack.
If the gross cost is $90K and the NPC kicks out a $50K number and the kid was awarded a $20K scholarship, the school is going to kick in another $20K to get to the $50K number (and that $20K will consist of the $6K loans and some grants, etc).
They’re not getting you to the $50K and THEN layering in the scholarship to go to $30K.
So, for SU the NPC number is the top benchmark, meaning any merit scholarship amount will be deducted from this benchmark number to make up the final award number? If this is the case, merit scholarships are effectively good only for people with no or limited FA eligibility.
Do you know what lead to this drop? It’s very low compared to peers
From the SU FA FAQ:
Entering students are reviewed for merit scholarships by completing the common application and reviewed for need-based aid by completing the CSS Profile and the FAFSA. If you are eligible for a merit award, this award may impact a student’s demonstrated need as calculated from the CSS Profile. For more information about need-based aid calculation please speak with a financial aid counselor.
You are correct - Merit Scholarships generally only benefit you if it gets you BELOW the NPC (or can offset the loan expectation).
I read through that Copilot screen shot a little more carefully. It’s accurate - if somewhat carefully worded.
Scholarships stack - no argument there, except that in some cases one scholarship might replace a different one just in the way the school awards them. But if you get the Founders Scholarship and then some scholarship for Band or Athletics, those would stack.
Then it says “Students can combine those with other such as need-based aid or external scholarships”. It doesn’t say that the need-based aid doesn’t get adjusted based on what those scholarships are (which it does).
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Our financial aid estimate is in MySlice. Not good: net price is a lot higher than the NPC estimate.
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Did you access it on a laptop? If so was there a button to view the estimate. Having trouble viewing on my phone that’s all.
I read it on a computer this time, but MySlice was accessible from phone when I visited last time.
I saw it on My Slice on my desktop earlier. Our FA estimate is insulting. It is devastating. It is mind boggling. It’s almost 35k more than our FAFSA SAI and about 10k more than the NPC. I expected it to be a decent amount more than our SAI, but SU is by far our worst estimate. My daughter will be heart broken as this is her first choice…it’s totally out of reach for us.
Hi, where do you see the actual FA estimate, when I pull into MySlice and click on Financial Aid it is just showing the year and no awards noted.
click on the year 2025
Super odd, when I click on it nothing happens, maybe it takes time to download:)
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Or maybe we got zero:)
If with the $10K, the option becomes feasible I would suggest a conversation with your FA Counselor with it focused on the NPC. Provided you put the criteria accurately into their NPC I’d look to understand from them why there would be a $10K gap from that (I would expect there to maybe be some gap but it should be relatively small).
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Does Syracuse stack merit? D was lucky to receive the half tuition leadership scholarship and was also asked to apply for a community impact one for $15k a year. We won’t be getting need based aid. Is it worth applying for Maxwell community impact?
Yep, thank you! I already emailed the FA Office and was pleasantly surprised that our assigned counselor wrote right back. We are in the processing of setting up an appointment for one day soon. We’ll figure out if I entered something incorrectly (pretty sure I did not) and go from there…
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NO. half tuition is 100% deducted from the grant.
I’m sorry, can you explain?
My D24 also has leadership scholarship. This scholarship is a part of her aid package with a total amount much lower than their NPC estimate.