Help: looking for Financial Aid options

External Since: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 4

I'm a rising senior and I'm looking at possible college options. I'm
a good student with a 1500 SAT score and a 3.9 GPA. I participate in
many extra curricular activities including two varsity sports. Here's
my dilemma: I'd like to attend a small to medium sized college where
the maximum undergrad student body is approximately 5000. Many of the
universities I'd like to
apply to have a price tag of approx. $40K. My parents are willing to
pay in-state tuition ($15K) and have asked me to find the rest of the
money if I want to attend one of these colleges. The in-state college
in question is one of the "public ivys" but has a undergrad student
body of approx. 16,000 students.

We filled out one of those online expected family contribution
calculators at http://www.finaid.org/calculators/scripts/estimate.cgi
today and to my dismay, discovered that my family's contribution was
39K! All I plugged in was my parents' annual income of $160K and no
other assets. I intend applying for as many external scholarships as I
can. I will also apply for merit scholarships offered by the colleges.
But I doubt that will be enough to cover the cost of attending these
colleges. I have no problems doing as much work study as a full course
load will allow.

I'm fortunate that my parents are financially well of and we don't have
any "extenuating circumstnces". My $64K question is: for an income of
$160K is $39K in the ballpark for the expected family contribution? Is
it possible that I missed something in the calculations?

Thanks so much for reading this.

Danni

External Since: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3

There are other estimators on line you can try, but the results will likely be similar.

The good news is that with your scores you will qualify for merit aid - AS LONG AS YOU IDENTIFY AND APPLY TO SCHOOLS THAT OFFER IT.

I wouldn't be so set about the 5,000 students limit. What's more important is student/faculty ratio, class sizes, and faculty interaction at the undergraduate level. Look at % of classes under 20 and under 40. Most likely the state schools will not do well on this, even if they are under 5,000. But private schools of any size likely will do well on this and you'll be wanting to form a list of them that offer merit aid.