<p>People say pepperdine is an expensive private school. Well, I know 38,000/ year is definitely alot of money but compare to other schools like BU, NYU, USC and almost every other private universities in the state, it isn’t that much. Am I wrong?</p>
<p>If you’ll be paying out of pocket (as most international students will be doing), no, Pepperdine is not more expensive than the other schools you mentioned.</p>
<p>But, if you’re applying for financial aid, Pepperdine IS often MORE expensive than those other schools. Here’s why: Pepperdine relies heavily on loans in its financial aid package. In fact, Pepperdine consistency tops the list of schools where students graduate with the highest dollar value of loans. The other schools tend to give grants and merit scholarships (i.e., “free” money that you don’t have to repay) much more often than PEpperdine does.</p>
<p>So, say you need $20,000 to attend any of these schools. You get full financial aid packages from all of them. Your package at, say USC, might look like this: $5,000 a year in loans, 3,000 in work study, $10,000 in a grant, and a $2,000 merit scholarship. Your cost of accepting that package: $8,000 (because you have to pay back the loans and earn the work study).</p>
<p>At PEpperdine, the financial aid package often looks like this: $15,000 in loans, $3,000 in work study, and $2,000 in grants. Your cost of accepting that package would be $18,000, even though the financial aid package is the same size overall.</p>
<p>Both schools are meeting your “full need” but obviously, it is going to cost you less in the long run to attend USC, even if their overall tuition, etc. is exactly the same. (A disclaimer: these are just off my head examples to illustrate the point. There ARE some people who have received nice grants and merit scholarships from Pepperdine but many more who do not.)</p>
<p>I have seen this happen several times with Pepperdine financial aid packages and, in my opinion, they deserve their reputation as being expensive because of this.</p>
<p>Yeah, my Pepperdine package was like $20,000 in loans, $4,000 in actual grant money </p>
<p>Sigh…and it would have been so nice to study right in malibu…</p>
<p>Sigh …ours was all loans and work study with an EFC of under 15,000. That would put it at 20,000 more than any other school ( all these other schools offered loans and work study as well off their 15,000-20,000 cost). And of course guess where her first choice was…Pepperdine. She is accepting that it is not feasable but we are hoping she gets as excited about one of her other schools… tick, tick, tick sigh…</p>
<p>Oh that is 20,000 more per year so 80,000 more over 4 years!!! Sorry for ranting!!!</p>
<p>Cause it costs money?</p>