How Do I Choose A College?
Each year, college bound students will receive offers of financial aid from colleges who have accepted them as students. In addition, every year, enrollment and financial aid offices across the country wait for one of two responses from the student and their families.
Usually the first response is; Is this the most we qualify for? The second response is in the form of a matriculation fee, also called a “deposit.” Colleges hope students respond favorably to their financial aid packages, and send the required deposit fee, saving them a chair in that school. However, families are usually considering their first offer of financial aid a starting point for bargaining with the colleges. How does a college award financial aid? How would a family know if this is the best offer a college can give them?
Financial aid is made up of three main components:
(1) Merit Scholarships,
(2) Grants, and
(3) Self-help. Generally, merit scholarships are intended to reward the student for academic achievement in high school as well as extra-curricular involvement. College has many different definitions of achievement and many different methods of awarding merit scholarships. Some colleges do not offer merit awards to families with no financial aid need. Others will limit merit scholarships to non-athletes. Check with the colleges you are considering for the exact method they use to determine ones eligibility, if any, for the different merit programs they will offer.
Grants, on the other hand, are generally a need based award. Like merit scholarships, grants are not paid back to the college. Again, every college uses many different methods of determining financial aid need against the total college price: tuition, fees, room, and board, etc.
The third component, self help, is made up of all other sources such as college student loans and work study. When all forms of financial aid are compiled for a particular student, the remaining net cost is commonly known as expected family contribution. This is often considered to be the amount that families or the student must pay to make up the difference between the college’s total award and the remaining charges left on the annual charges for attending that particular college.
Each college will have an award ceiling it will set for individual student packages. The ceiling is the total amount of financial aid, from all sources, that will be awarded to that particular student. What will make up the ceiling? Financial aid need, determined by the Federal Methodology (FAFSA), or by other required financial aid applications, is one factor. Another would be academic quality determined by the individual college on variables unique to that college alone. There could be special considerations, such as alumni status, athletic ability , musical or art talent, demographic and ethnic issues, and thousands of other variables can be found in the models colleges will use to determine who qualifies for what institutional financial aid.
Your goal as a consumer is to try to reduce the list price and know the final net cost of attendance for the different colleges you are seriously considering attending. Once you have the system down each college uses to determine your net cost, the decision about which college to attend is usually one of value. Weigh the net cost at each college against what you and your family are considering to be the most important values. The college that matches your values, needs, goals, and offers the most reasonable cost for those values, will most likely be the one you will choose to attend.
