DIII and Financial Aid - what's your experience?

[cncsoftball]

Reminds me of advice I once heard given by a CEO to a group of high school students:

"All else being equal, go to a college with a well-known sports team."

Lol, yes, he graduated this past spring and was editor-in-chief of the school paper, so football season was pretty fun!

 

[Vertigo]

Understood, but my main point was each school (even the Ivies) have a fixed pot of money to offer, and they have no reason to offer you any if you apply early decision since they've already got you on their hook as soon as you hit the *submit* button. ;-)

Not really. If they are considered needs-based and they agree to fully meet your demonstrated need (as shown in the NPC), it doesn’t matter if you apply ED or RD.

 

[vicimus]

Not really. If they are considered needs-based and they agree to fully meet your demonstrated need (as shown in the NPC), it doesn’t matter if you apply ED or RD.

Understood, but I was specifically talking about non-needs based cases like my DD and others who replied to this thread.

 

[Vertigo]

Understood, but I was specifically talking about non-needs based cases like my DD and others who replied to this thread.

Gotcha. You had mentioned Ivies so that’s where I was thrown off - as they don’t offer merit money, only needs-based FA.

 

[vicimus]

Warning Long and probably boring!

Food for thought about a well rounded education amongst highly motivated and intelligent peers. Also why starting salary may not be the best tool to analyze the value received from education.

As background 25 years ago I graduated from a very good not elite(Top 50) small liberal arts school. Upon graduation I was accepted into a program run by the Big 6 accounting firms combining a job and concurrent admission into an MBA program at Boston University.

At the time these firms had a fairly straight forward hiring system. They hired two 30 member classes of recent accounting undergrads from business schools annually. Periodically each of these hires were evaluated and either promoted to the next level or fired, this along with the attrition from class members leaving for other jobs created a pyramid like structure where 1 or 2 hires from each class of 30 would wind up becoming a partner at the firm.

The program I entered was created in response to data from these firms indicating a disproportionate number of the individuals eventually ascending to the partner level had a liberal arts background and skewed towards more prestigious schools. This information was confusing and confounded firm leadership. How was it possible that such a high number of partners had liberal arts backgrounds if they only recruited students from undergraduate business schools with accounting degrees not liberal arts degrees. They then had the bright idea that if these liberal arts students are performing so well as to make partner maybe we should try to recruit them.

The very long winded point being the benefits of high level liberal arts education may not always be recognized in starting salary. This in no way is intended to degrade pre-professional and STEM majors. On the contrary I would advocate for liberal arts majors getting a little more stem and stem majors to get a little more liberal arts.

Even more importantly my pet peeve proposal is to provide practical STEM education to younger students. I have ranted about this since my kids were young. We should replace ALL time spent teaching elementary school children cursive writing teaching them coding instead.

I hope I did not leave the impression from my comments that I was not advocating for a well-rounded education, since I spent 3 hours per day coding at a *vocational* technical high school (before vocational became a dirty word) and then became well-rounded only after getting my B.S. in computer science with a double minor in mathematics and philosophy from Loyola College (now Loyola University of Maryland).

That said, not all majors are equal, but I'll guarantee the average computer science major from a liberal arts school is making considerably more than the average art history or sociology major from the same school and not just starting salary but also 10+ years out. ;-)

 

[Vertigo]

I would say that if you make over $150K per year (maybe even a little less) and your kid is applying to a school that only offers needs-based money, your chances of getting a good amount of FA to really offset the cost of tuition are fairly low. Not in all cases, but most.

 

[vicimus]

Gotcha. You had mentioned Ivies so that’s where I was thrown off - as they don’t offer merit money, only needs-based FA.

Roger that. Sorry for the confusion but I meant *early decisions* regardless of Ivies or Patriot League or any school which is why my DD applied *regular decision* to sevarl schools in Sept-Oct since they only offered *early decision* and not *early action*.

 

[vicimus]

I would say that if you make over $125K per year (maybe even a little less) and your kid is applying to a school that only offers needs-based money, your chances of getting any FA are pretty low. Not in all cases, but most.

That has been our experience as well and some schools actually publish their household income ranges for FA with some having a maximum household income threshold of $250K.

Also interesting is that some schools offer *household-income-blind* merit scholarships whereas others factor in household income to the total merit scholarship offered.

 

[Vertigo]

That has been our experience as well and some schools actually publish their household income ranges for FA with some having a maximum household income threshold of $250K.

Also interesting is that some schools offer *household-income-blind* merit scholarships whereas others factor in household income to the total merit scholarship offered.

Ha. You quoted me a little too soon. I had edited my reply above as I don’t want parents to be discouraged from applying anywhere before completing a NPC.

 

[Vertigo]

Also, the shock when you see your EFC from the FAFSA is no joke!!