Congratulations to your daughter on the merit awards! As others have said, please run the Net Price Calculators. I don't think that CUA is able to meet 100% of expected need. It is not known as a university with generous financial aid, as it does not have a large endowment. UMBC's financial aid depends entirely upon your income. Do you have any fallback options besides CUA and UMBC? Could your daughter commute to one of them to save the room and board fees?

Financial aid is for people with need. The colleges have calculators that help you understand what they will give you based on your need. You may not agree with what they say your need is. If that's your case, you can look into extra loans to cover the difference between what they say you can pay and what you feel you can pay.

Merit aid is like a coupon used to entice someone to enroll. It may or may not be related to need.

Some schools will negotiate after the first aid is awarded. Some want you to submit copies of other school's aid packages to compare.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?

If you applied for need based aid, you should have your dd call the financial aid office at each school to find out what the bottom line out of pocket is for each school. Then you can compare to find out which is better.

Pp here. It is also important to look at the amount of loans your dd will be expected to take out each year.

Anonymous wrote:So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?

If you applied for need based aid, you should have your dd call the financial aid office at each school to find out what the bottom line out of pocket is for each school. Then you can compare to find out which is better.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?

First question, did you apply for financial aid?

How do you apply for FA? Besides filling out the FAFSA and sending it to the school?

Anonymous wrote:So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?

First question, did you apply for financial aid?

Plan to pay all except if you are low income. If you did not save plan for loans.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?

Does she qualify for FA? If so, FA (most likely) will be adjusted (lowered in your case) and school will let you know. If not, yes, that's all you get. Did you expect schools to cover full tuition or room and board?? You expected a lot.

I don’t expect anything it it would be nice to know how much we’ll need to pay in total and to do that I need to understand how this all works. It’s not like there is a straightforward “sticker price.” Thanks for your help!

How on earth are we supposed to tell you your FA?

Some schools send out FA information with the acceptance letter and some send out separately on a later date. I’d contact the school if you are not sure

I have the same question OP. When do colleges let you know about financial aid and the total sticker price?? Our DC did a rolling application and got in in early December.

Financial aid, if available, will get your total cost of attendance closer to whatever the calculators tell you your household needs to cover. The actual amount of financial aid awarded will now be reduced because of the merit aid offer, and any other outside scholarship money there is. The only way for college to end up cheaper than what the calculator told you, would be a generous merit aid award. Also, be cautious when others talk about their merit aid. It's common for someone to refer to a free ride, when they are only referring to the tuition at their in-state school. Very nice to have, but room and board are a large percentage of the in-state cost of attendance. Also, taking loans is never part of the cost of attendance calculation, that is cost you will pay after attendance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?

Does she qualify for FA? If so, FA (most likely) will be adjusted (lowered in your case) and school will let you know. If not, yes, that's all you get. Did you expect schools to cover full tuition or room and board?? You expected a lot.

I don’t expect anything it it would be nice to know how much we’ll need to pay in total and to do that I need to understand how this all works. It’s not like there is a straightforward “sticker price.” Thanks for your help!

Actually there is. The NPC numbers are pretty close to your price.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?

Does she qualify for FA? If so, FA (most likely) will be adjusted (lowered in your case) and school will let you know. If not, yes, that's all you get. Did you expect schools to cover full tuition or room and board?? You expected a lot.

I don’t expect anything it it would be nice to know how much we’ll need to pay in total and to do that I need to understand how this all works. It’s not like there is a straightforward “sticker price.” Thanks for your help!

Anonymous wrote:So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?

Does she qualify for FA? If so, FA (most likely) will be adjusted (lowered in your case) and school will let you know. If not, yes, that's all you get. Did you expect schools to cover full tuition or room and board?? You expected a lot.

So far DD has gotten merit aid offers to both CUA and UMBC. However, these do not cover full tuition or room and board. Is this all she can expect to get or will she also get need based aid ?