Which private colleges have the best financial aid for donut hole families?

[Anonymous]

Which private colleges would you say have the best financial aid for donut hole families. Thinking of a school like Rice, which now provides a significant amount for financial aid for families that earn up $200k. Has anyone else come across colleges that are generous to that income level like Rice?

[Anonymous]

Look for schools with large endowments like the Ivies. Princeton would give us aid. Carnegie Melon would not. Also, if you apply to a school where your child is a strong candidate you may get merit aid regardless of income.

[Anonymous]

For any CSS school, your income is just one factor. The amount of assets you have, aside from retirement savings, is taken into account too.

In my DS' case, applying for fall 2019, the NE LACs were not particularly generous -- Bates, Haverford, Swarthmore. Didn't apply to Colby, but they have the same kind of language as Rice on their website.
Grinnell and Carleton are supposed to be more so. I think Wash U is trying to diversify its student body economically as well, which can help families in that range.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For any CSS school, your income is just one factor. The amount of assets you have, aside from retirement savings, is taken into account too.

In my DS' case, applying for fall 2019, the NE LACs were not particularly generous -- Bates, Haverford, Swarthmore. Didn't apply to Colby, but they have the same kind of language as Rice on their website.
Grinnell and Carleton are supposed to be more so. I think Wash U is trying to diversify its student body economically as well, which can help families in that range.

Thanks, PP. I hadn't realized that Colby also had that approach to financial aid.

[Anonymous]

The net price calculators are your best source of information. Assume the net price number they provide is the worst case scenario. If admitted you likely won't get less than that amount and maybe you will get more.

The NPCs for the 8 colleges DC applied and was accepted to were accurate within $1,000 (meaning at a couple $1000 more was awarded than estimated).

[Anonymous]

As stated above, you basically have to try your luck with Ivy caliber high endowment schools, or you have to hunt for merit aid. The latter route is highly untransparent and usually means going down a tier or two in terms of school competitiveness.

[Anonymous]

Are you looking for actual financial aid or merit aid? If you will receive some financial aid, then most schools will come up with similar cost of attendance numbers for your family. But then the thing to remember is loans are not part of cost of attendance, since they aren't paid until after school is over. So schools that offer to meet your cost of attendance without loans, are the most generous. Schools that offer an institutional loan as well as Federal loans are the least generous.

If you are looking for merit aid, it's somewhat correlated. The top schools that meet COA without loans, usually have no merit aid, or possibly a single highly competitive scholarship. The schools that have things like institutional loans, also seem to be more likely to have merit packages they can use to sweeten the pot should they want to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you looking for actual financial aid or merit aid? If you will receive some financial aid, then most schools will come up with similar cost of attendance numbers for your family. But then the thing to remember is loans are not part of cost of attendance, since they aren't paid until after school is over. So schools that offer to meet your cost of attendance without loans, are the most generous. Schools that offer an institutional loan as well as Federal loans are the least generous.

If you are looking for merit aid, it's somewhat correlated. The top schools that meet COA without loans, usually have no merit aid, or possibly a single highly competitive scholarship. The schools that have things like institutional loans, also seem to be more likely to have merit packages they can use to sweeten the pot should they want to.

Looking for financial aid at this points and was hoping to get names of schools that offer the most generous financial aid. It seems harder to find lists of these types of schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you looking for actual financial aid or merit aid? If you will receive some financial aid, then most schools will come up with similar cost of attendance numbers for your family. But then the thing to remember is loans are not part of cost of attendance, since they aren't paid until after school is over. So schools that offer to meet your cost of attendance without loans, are the most generous. Schools that offer an institutional loan as well as Federal loans are the least generous.

If you are looking for merit aid, it's somewhat correlated. The top schools that meet COA without loans, usually have no merit aid, or possibly a single highly competitive scholarship. The schools that have things like institutional loans, also seem to be more likely to have merit packages they can use to sweeten the pot should they want to.

Looking for financial aid at this points and was hoping to get names of schools that offer the most generous financial aid. It seems harder to find lists of these types of schools.

One way to search is for ‘need blond’ schools that agree to meet 100% of need. Not a lot of them frankly, and what they think you need and what you think you need can be really different.

We are weird but DS and I literally ran every net price calculator for about 60 colleges over one weekend. It became a bit of a game — some wanted academic stats, some didn’t by the way.

Why are you specifically looking for private schools?

[Anonymous]

Ha. Need blind.

[Anonymous]

Need-blind and no-loans is the path to follow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Need-blind and no-loans is the path to follow.

Note than need-blind schools also tend to have low acceptance rates. You have to have the goods to even get accepted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you looking for actual financial aid or merit aid? If you will receive some financial aid, then most schools will come up with similar cost of attendance numbers for your family. But then the thing to remember is loans are not part of cost of attendance, since they aren't paid until after school is over. So schools that offer to meet your cost of attendance without loans, are the most generous. Schools that offer an institutional loan as well as Federal loans are the least generous.

If you are looking for merit aid, it's somewhat correlated. The top schools that meet COA without loans, usually have no merit aid, or possibly a single highly competitive scholarship. The schools that have things like institutional loans, also seem to be more likely to have merit packages they can use to sweeten the pot should they want to.

Looking for financial aid at this points and was hoping to get names of schools that offer the most generous financial aid. It seems harder to find lists of these types of schools.

If you're looking strictly for financial aid, the biggest variable will be no-loan colleges. There aren't very many, and they're top schools. After that you're looking for schools that ignore something specific to your financial situation, e.g. there are schools that limit home equity or don't consider it at all. To find those, you pretty much have to run calculators.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you looking for actual financial aid or merit aid? If you will receive some financial aid, then most schools will come up with similar cost of attendance numbers for your family. But then the thing to remember is loans are not part of cost of attendance, since they aren't paid until after school is over. So schools that offer to meet your cost of attendance without loans, are the most generous. Schools that offer an institutional loan as well as Federal loans are the least generous.

If you are looking for merit aid, it's somewhat correlated. The top schools that meet COA without loans, usually have no merit aid, or possibly a single highly competitive scholarship. The schools that have things like institutional loans, also seem to be more likely to have merit packages they can use to sweeten the pot should they want to.

Looking for financial aid at this points and was hoping to get names of schools that offer the most generous financial aid. It seems harder to find lists of these types of schools.

One way to search is for ‘need blond’ schools that agree to meet 100% of need. Not a lot of them frankly, and what they think you need and what you think you need can be really different.

We are weird but DS and I literally ran every net price calculator for about 60 colleges over one weekend. It became a bit of a game — some wanted academic stats, some didn’t by the way.

Why are you specifically looking for private schools?

We're not exclusively looking at this option, but it's an area of interest, and I haven't really been able to find good information on this yet.

[Anonymous]

Harvard. Very hard to get into but dd did, our HHI was 200K and her total cost of attendance is 23K. That includes books, room, board and transportation. I have one other in college.