Reply to Am I screwing us over for financial aid?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you’re grinding for savings, your assets might screw you over even if your HHI didn’t. [/quote]

OP here.  Yes, that's what I meant.  We're racking up cash to pay for college, but wondering in hindsight if we needed to work so hard to do that or should have maintained and looked for strong aid packages.[/quote]

Look for merit aid instead of need based aid. All you have to do is go below the top 25.[/quote]

+1 my kids were not straight A students, but had SATs above 700 in both sections. We did not apply for financial aid, but every private school out of the top 25 offered merit aid, even an ED school.[/quote]

OP here.  I [b]didn't realize merit aid was as easy to come by as some posters are suggesting[/b].  That's good to know.  One of our DCs is a very strong motivated student, with a heavy course load and all As.  Did well on PSAT too.  So I will hope that will give her options via merit![/quote]

Token discount [/quote]

OP, merit aid is a possibility ONLY if you are willing to drop down in the rankings below what institution your kid could get into, full pay.  Do you want a sub-standard slac? Then, sure, you can get into innumerable struggling slacs like Otterbein or Occidental College and get "merit" aid (a paper subtraction off the $93K ask).  But if they want T-25, then no, you aren't going to get it unless you are URM or first-generation, and even that is now fading away. We weren't willing to sacrifice that for our kid so paid full freight at the Ivies and slacs he got into. That has been the trade-off in college admissions for about a decade.  The top schools don't have to give merit aid so they don't.  The lesser schools offer merit in exchange for a) top GPA; b) top test scores; c) minority status; d) other hooked aspect that they can report to USNWR.  It's really that simple.  And, no, you won't get anything from FAFSA.   Start running the calculators on the colleges pages and look seriously at your in-state options and start reading more,  There are tons of resources on financial aid .[/quote]

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