If a student is looking at public schools out of state, and needs to stay under a certain amount, what information do you look at to figure out if there’s a chance it will be affordable?
There are some schools, such as the UC’s, where I hear all the time that there is no OOS aid, and some schools like Bama where aid is automatic.
However, there are other schools where it seems hard to tell. If you can’t afford a school’s sticker price, and they don’t meet full need, how do you know if it’s worth an application?
Do the net price calculator to see about need based aid. Some NPCs also ask for stats and give an estimate for merit aid.
Check the financial aid section for the college and look for scholarships that are automatic.
There are also public colleges that are reasonably priced for everyone…I believe Western Michigan might be one, and I think there is a school in North Carolina also where the costs are modest for all. @tsbna44 knows which schools I’m talking about.
I will say…the mission of most public universities is to provide a reasonable cost to the residents of that state who pay the taxes to support the public universities.
Best place to look for public universities is in your own home state…unless your student qualifies for significant guaranteed merit aid at some OOS school.
I would look at the school’s merit aid website and not CDS.
You can look at the CDS section H1 N-Q. But you’d be better to chance me or match me with a budget and desires (I think) than using CDS which won’t tell you things such as merit in state vs not.
I think there’s enough intelligence from the community that would be your better bet - just my opinion.
But if you wanted to do on your own, I’d use school merit aid websites and not the CDS.
@thumper1 is talking about C Michigan (but W might be good too budget depending) and the NC Promise schools of which there’s four but I think W Carolina is the most mainstream.
Agree…do a chance me/match me thread…and make sure you include your budget. There are many folks here who can help point you in the right direction financially.
So I personally think this is a useful starting point sometimes–as I understand it, this database is just scraped from the relevant CDS boxes:
But I really mean just a starting point. This won’t tell you things like how a public handles OOS versus in-state, whether there is auto merit, whether there is a max merit award, whether there are special purpose merit programs, and so on. All that sort of stuff you need to investigate. Often I think you can get a lot of information from their own pages, but I also agree other parents can sometimes be a really helpful resource.
Still–if you see a college where the average merit award deducted from the OOS COA is within your budget, and at least a decent percentage of kids without need get an award, that is maybe worth looking into more. If the percentage is very low and/or the average subtracted from the OOS COA would still be way above budget, maybe not a big priority to look into that one. That sort of initial sorting is what I have in mind, and even that can be trumped if you learn something else from another source that changes that picture (for good or ill).
With a couple of exceptions (like UVA and I think UNC), public schools do not meet full financial need for out of state students. This is understandable, as they are funded by their state’s taxpayers to primarily serve in-state residents.
If you qualify for need based financial aid, you may want to target schools that meet full financial need for all students. These are primarily elite private institutions, as well as your own in-state public universities.
If a school is highly ranked (which means, it gets a lot of highly qualified applicants), they will provide very little, if any, merit aid. Among the publics, these are schools like the UCs, Michigan, GT, UIUC, Maryland, Purdue, etc. The top private schools do not provide merit aid at all.
If you’re seeking merit aid, you’ll need to look a tier or two below these top schools, both among public and private institutions.
Finally, note that schools in the Northeast tend to be less generous with merit aid compared to those in the South. Southern schools also typically have lower costs of attendance, even without merit aid.
If you use CDS, it’s in the FA section, usually as H2 . The title is something like Students receiving non-need based financial assistance. This is only enrolled students. The school’s website will almost certainly be a better source.
I would use a combination of the school’s website, the NPC, the CDS, and the net COA by income range (in NCES/IPEDs/college navigator) to target which schools might get into your price range. It’s all based on averages though, so you don’t really know what schools might be affordable (beyond those with auto merit or those with total COA with no discount that’s at/below your budget)…this is why those who are hunting merit tend to have to apply to relatively more schools.
If you do qualify for need based aid, you will be looking at H2G on the CDS (which includes only enrolled students) to see how many students with need also received merit aid. If you do not qualify for need based aid, look at H2A line N.
Has your student identified at least one highly likely school (in terms of admissions) that will for sure be affordable? That’s where you should start with the list building.
Here’s Kenyon’s college navigator entry and CDS:
Many school’s websites don’t show data regarding how much merit aid it offered students from a given class (not talking the auto merit grid schools, which seem to be disappearing)…often the website only has the various scholarship programs the school offers, nor do many NPCs include merit aid.
The CDSs, even though they only include enrolled students, are often the best source of info for merit at these schools, at least in terms of understanding the proportion of students who received merit and on average, how much merit they received.
Yes, I meant that on their websites, many schools name the merit scholarships and amounts. If the top scholarship of $30,000 still isn’t going to make the school affordable and you don’t qualify for FA, you have valuable information.
Yes, lots of value in looking at the websites…many merit scholarships also go to only students who have financial need as well which is also important to know.
I agree with others that a simple chance me thread here will produce a lot of information. Something as simple as home state, GPA/SAT, and schools or even geographic areas of interest will garner tons of information from the hive mind here.
And they are VERY hard admits for an OOS student. So consider that too.
@Sportsball IIRC, you have a couple of other threads about affordability. And you have an extenuating circumstance which might require filing a non-custodial parent waiver for every college to which your kid applies.
No. Custodial parent is not relevant for FAFSA. The Parent Contributor is the parent who provided more than 50% of the student’s financial support in the past 12 months. If the school has any reason to question whether the particular parent named as contributor actually did provide the most support, they will request documentation proving that.
Assuming the school doesn’t have an auto-merit table on its own website, I would start with the Big J list, which is aggregated from 2023-24 CDS for each school and is searchable. As others have said, these raw numbers don’t account for in-state vs. OOS and other relevant contexts, but it’s a start.
You have to proceed cautiously, but I would also try searching for school-specific subreddits on merit aid. There are lots of teens on there and some are obviously not reliable narrators, but for big-merit schools you can often get a sense of what people are receiving in a given year. For example, on last year’s LSU merit thread, there were enough examples to make clear that $13k is the base offer, while $15k and $17k are available for more desirable applicants and a few may get up to $23k. Of course nothing is guaranteed for any future applicant and award ranges change (read: typically decrease) every year, but it does give a general sense of what’s happening out there.
Many schools have fairly accurate NPCs that give a reasonable estimate for need based aid. Many public schools don’t give any need based aid to out of state students (except for what the student qualifies for in terms of federal aid.) UVA and UNC meet full need for all students, but they are the exception among publics.
Among private schools, the more highly selective ones meet full need for all students. Below that tier, you will want to look at schools that stack need based and merit aid. Most of these schools don’t meet full need for all students, but they can and do meet full need for some students. And more importantly, may give enough financial aid (whether need based and/or merit based) to get in budget range for a given family.