Colleges That Award Grants

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:to the PPs posting about Princeton's great FA.

#1, $120-$160K is pretty low wages for the DC area. No way can a family of four (on average) pay $60K+ for college on a $160K income.

#2, Princeton's FA is not offered if you have assets, a paid-off mortgage on a cheap for DC house and retirements savings not in a retirement account.

We're a family of 6 living on a very low income for the DC area, but we're savers and live frugally, so have paid off our mortgage and have some retirement savings. Too much to qualify us for FA, according to the schools. It's very frustrating to us because we can't gut our retirement fund or take out a mortgage on our house to pay for DD's tuition at a private school. If DD doesn't get a lot of merit aid from a "lesser" school, she has to go to our Big State U, which would not suit her.

It's crazy that private schools cost $60K!!! They ought to cost $30K, then they'd be within reach of the middle class.

My neighbor's daughter will start Princeton this fall (only child) and though I don't know their income per se, I know what they do for a living and know what their home is worth (not being nosy but we live on the same street). According to her parents who I queried last night, DD got over 60% of the tuition paid. This was a tremendous help and since the parents were already paying private school tuition, their contribution is actually lower than the full pay private school tuition. They did admit they own no other assets other than their home and cars and retirement funds.

Schools like Princeton with this type of financial aid are a minority overall. Couple that with the low admission rate, if you can get in, it's a great deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:to the PPs posting about Princeton's great FA.

#1, $120-$160K is pretty low wages for the DC area. No way can a family of four (on average) pay $60K+ for college on a $160K income.

#2, Princeton's FA is not offered if you have assets, a paid-off mortgage on a cheap for DC house and retirements savings not in a retirement account.

We're a family of 6 living on a very low income for the DC area, but we're savers and live frugally, so have paid off our mortgage and have some retirement savings. Too much to qualify us for FA, according to the schools. It's very frustrating to us because we can't gut our retirement fund or take out a mortgage on our house to pay for DD's tuition at a private school. If DD doesn't get a lot of merit aid from a "lesser" school, she has to go to our Big State U, which would not suit her.

It's crazy that private schools cost $60K!!! They ought to cost $30K, then they'd be within reach of the middle class.

My neighbor's daughter will start Princeton this fall (only child) and though I don't know their income per se, I know what they do for a living and know what their home is worth (not being nosy but we live on the same street). According to her parents who I queried last night, DD got over 60% of the tuition paid. This was a tremendous help and since the parents were already paying private school tuition, their contribution is actually lower than the full pay private school tuition. They did admit they own no other assets other than their home and cars and retirement funds.

Schools like Princeton with this type of financial aid are a minority overall. Couple that with the low admission rate, if you can get in, it's a great deal.

Okay, would you mind telling us what they do for a living, or extrapolate and provide an approximate HHI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's crazy that private schools cost $60K!!! They ought to cost $30K, then they'd be within reach of the middle class!!!

You need to google tuition discounting and understand that -- with VERY FEW exceptions -- a tuition at a school with a sticker price of $60k will be discounted by 40-50% for the vast majority of students. If 30K is within your reach your kid will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's crazy that private schools cost $60K!!! They ought to cost $30K, then they'd be within reach of the middle class!!!

You need to google tuition discounting and understand that -- with VERY FEW exceptions -- a tuition at a school with a sticker price of $60k will be discounted by 40-50% for the vast majority of students. If 30K is within your reach your kid will be fine.

Not really. We have a HHI of $180K, which is hardly astronomical, and were expected to pay close to full price at every private school my child got into, including Yale, Penn, and Duke.

[Anonymous]

^^ of course you were.... OMG.

[Anonymous]

The above two posters are both correct. Many colleges below the first tier or two offer substantial tuition discouts in the form of merit aid. Upper tier schools (except u Chicago) and a few others perhaps offer no merit aid. This includes schools like Tufts that discontinued merit aid a few years ago in the wake of the recession. The most competitive ivies have no merit aid but generous no loan policies for need aid and are FA blind in admissions. Many families, however, still take out s,maller loans to supplement, and kids are expected to work to make a portion of their aid contribution at school jobs. But some LACs are not aid blind - cannot afford to ne.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:to the PPs posting about Princeton's great FA.

#1, $120-$160K is pretty low wages for the DC area. No way can a family of four (on average) pay $60K+ for college on a $160K income.

#2, Princeton's FA is not offered if you have assets, a paid-off mortgage on a cheap for DC house and retirements savings not in a retirement account.

We're a family of 6 living on a very low income for the DC area, but we're savers and live frugally, so have paid off our mortgage and have some retirement savings. Too much to qualify us for FA, according to the schools. It's very frustrating to us because we can't gut our retirement fund or take out a mortgage on our house to pay for DD's tuition at a private school. If DD doesn't get a lot of merit aid from a "lesser" school, she has to go to our Big State U, which would not suit her.

It's crazy that private schools cost $60K!!! They ought to cost $30K, then they'd be within reach of the middle class.

My neighbor's daughter will start Princeton this fall (only child) and though I don't know their income per se, I know what they do for a living and know what their home is worth (not being nosy but we live on the same street). According to her parents who I queried last night, DD got over 60% of the tuition paid. This was a tremendous help and since the parents were already paying private school tuition, their contribution is actually lower than the full pay private school tuition. They did admit they own no other assets other than their home and cars and retirement funds.

Schools like Princeton with this type of financial aid are a minority overall. Couple that with the low admission rate, if you can get in, it's a great deal.

Okay, would you mind telling us what they do for a living, or extrapolate and provide an approximate HHI.

We live in Dc and fit this profile - 160K HHI, own our home, have some college savings and retirement accounts. This would be a big help if Princeton and others do this. I think you can input your financial information into any college website and see where you net out on your own. Lots of misinformation being spread and people just repeating things because they heard it somewhere else. Best to do your own research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ of course you were.... OMG.

Let's see, HHI of $180K. Amherst costs $62,000. Family of four, takes home, what, maybe $130K? Do you think this family can pay almost half of their income to send one child to college, and pay mortgage, taxes, food, clothing, insurance, auto costs, vacations, school fees, etc. on $68,000? That's barely above the poverty level.

Now if the college cost $30,000, the family would be on a much better footing, and would probably be able to pay some of it, take out a student loan and possibly a family loan, and still pay their bills. But no way could they afford private school for their other child.

But if your HHI is $180K, and you have some assets, savings, etc., you will not qualify for FA anywhere but Harvard. Go to the FA calculators on every private college website, and plug in the numbers. You have to have very few assets and a very low income to qualify for FA. Princeton gives some aid for people with incomes up to $200K, but you can't have any assets.

Private schools are out of reach of the Upper Middle Class. That's insane. Just insane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most important thing to know re merit aid is you can't plan on it. It's a constantly changing scenario.

DD applied to 10 schools - similarly ranked, similarly priced - got into 7, got merit aid at 5. It ranged from $2,000/yr to $15,000/yr

Apply widely.

So nice your DD got merit aid, but $15K out of a $62K tuition won't make any private schools DD wants to attend affordable for us.

We're looking for $35-40K in merit aid. Anyone's kid get that? DD is a 3.94/1470 student. Ideas?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost all of them. It is referred to as merit aid.

Yep, only a very small number of schools DONT give merit aid. Pretty much only the Ivy League, Stanford, and a handful of highly ranked SLACs have policies against merit aid.

duke, MIT caltech and Carnegie mellon don't give merit either

CMU offers merit aid.

not any more, according to their presentation earlier this year...if you are a great student, you may get a more attractive need-based package according to the admissions person running the show....

[Anonymous]

http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/financial-aid-statistics though there IS this page on their website...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most important thing to know re merit aid is you can't plan on it. It's a constantly changing scenario.

DD applied to 10 schools - similarly ranked, similarly priced - got into 7, got merit aid at 5. It ranged from $2,000/yr to $15,000/yr

Apply widely.

So nice your DD got merit aid, but $15K out of a $62K tuition won't make any private schools DD wants to attend affordable for us.

We're looking for $35-40K in merit aid. Anyone's kid get that? DD is a 3.94/1470 student. Ideas?

Sadly, no I don't - which is why we went with the Virginia universities. Even my SLAC isn't worth it at 65K a year.