I don’t think we showed the offer. We went on an admitted student day, spoke with the financial aid department. They had us send an email requesting an increase and then fill out some forms on the portal. Then about a week later, she got a notification that her financial application was approved.
There is another scholarship on the Syracuse site, for students that have completed their first year carrying a minimum of 15 credits per semester and a certain GPA. Unfortunately my daughter got off to a bad start in one class in the fall semester and had to drop the class so I forget the exact details of that scholarship.
Also keep in mind that if you qualify for need based aid, unless the Merit Aid is more than that expected amount, the merit award is somewhat irrelevant. Syracuse does not stack aid and they will consider the merit award as part of the overall aid package.
No, no list that I’ve ever seen (though someone else might chime in with one) but for most colleges, merit does not stack with need aid. And every persons situation is different and there’s a ton of different scenario’s. I would say the burden falls to the applicant to understand the possible financial picture at whatever schools they’re applying to - why most schools have Net Price Calculators.
The problem this year is that almost every place we applied said hey, just a heads up, FAFSA is totally jacked and you can’t really rely on it. But don’t worry we’ll have it all figured out by December.
Not the school’s fault that it’s not figured out. But I don’t think the NPCs had much to offer this year.
I’ll say that I was deeply skeptical of the non-need offers my kids got this year for this very reason. “Hey! Come play exports here! We’ll give you 5k!” Yeah ok. But when you also tell me 99 percent of kids get financial aid, I dunno.
I get it - the whole FAFSA thing is throwing a bit of a wrench into what schools might be doing this year but schools differ in their intent to even meet the federal need calculation.
Some schools exclude some/specific scholarships from the calculation (the baseball scenario).
Like I said - tons of scenario’s and situations. In my limited experience schools aren’t looking to bait & switch. They publish what their policies are right on their website. We may not always LIKE what the policies are - but that’s a different matter.
I would still - generally - rely on the school NPC’s as a guide to what you should expect to see.
I have found the NPC’s frustrating. There have been at least a couple of schools…I think Yale was one of them and can’t remember the others…who offered a NPC on their website but gave you the option of two different versions of them to compare. Once was quite simple and one was a little more complicated in that it had more questions, but essentially I was giving them both the same #'s. One scenario had our EFC at $70K a year (yeah, no way we can swing that because we have an older daughter in college also), and the other had it at $35K/year. Same school, with the same #'s received, with two wildly different answers.
So merit offers we get or do not get will definitely be key in our decisions, along with whatever FAFSA actually spits out.
Syracuse in the Spring, Summer and Fall are very different than Syracuse in the winter…It can be absolutely brutal (similar, if not worse than Vermont as an example). Need to make sure you and/or your student is onboard with this fact as part of the decision-making process.
Can’t (and won’t try) to address the disconnect for Yale.
For the dozen or so schools S23 applied to all the NPC’s except 2 kicked out numbers that were in the same ballpark which ultimately was a number pretty close to the EFC (now SAI).
We got on this topic because I made a statement above about making sure people understand that most schools do not stack Merit with Aid. Merit is considered part of Aid. With a kid already in school you probably already knew that.
So if it’s a school that “meets need” and gross cost is $80K and your NPC comes out at $50K, unless the merit award is greater than $30K it’s irrelevant. An overly simplified example.
Thank you so much for getting on this subject. I did not know that colleges do not stack merit aid and financial aid! This process has been brutal finding out that not much merit is given and all private colleges cost about 85k. With my older daughter we stuck with sunys because that’s what we afford now that my middle child is applying and she’s also a different student she tried for more ‘popular more sought after colleges’. She got into all but differed to one from EA. 4 of the 7 colleges she applied to gave her about 25,000 merit. Still it will bring cost down to around 60k! She was invited for the coronat scholarship but did not get interview, she was told she would be considered for other scholarships! Will see…she applied RD
Yep, I totally get it. I appreciate you bringing up the topic of aid, both need and merit. Until you see the ‘final’ numbers /offers from each school, its hard to compare. I wish FAFSA wasn’t so delayed this year!
While recovering from knee surgery I had WAY too much time on my hands, so I went through past threads. It seems that they leak out some acceptances on Fridays starting in March…not a ton, and no particular rationale as to who or where. But acceptances came out first and then toward end of month there were more waitlists and rejections. So, TLDR, yes some top applicants may hear tomorrow
It’s our first time through so others pls chime in!
I think the last couple of years the bulk of decisions have been mid-March, so that would indicate Friday, March 15 this year (it appears they roll out decisions on Fridays only). The fact that some decisions appear to have come out last Friday offers a glimmer of hope that today may include more decisions. Something today would be great but I’m not holding my breath.