Just went through the college application/financial aid process last year w/one of my kids. Be skeptical of the sales pitch in many of those financial aid workshops, which emphasize that private colleges may cost less than a UC in the long run, due to the privates’ huge endowments and the amount of aid they have to give.
Our kid was admitted to many top tier private colleges, as well as a few UCs, but none of the privates gave us any aid at all, not even a token amount, probably because we have a decent (not exceptional, merely good) financial situation and they knew technically we could come up w/the money (even if it meant putting a huge dent in our retirement savings). But, strangely, we ended up getting hefty scholarships from both UCSB and UCLA.
So you can throw out the whole spiel we heard from the financial aid pros because, by far, the best aid we got both on a percentage and total dollar basis, was from two UC’s, which gave almost a full ride. And it was “merit aid”, which is what we’d been told the private colleges had more of to give, not “need-based” aid, which we’d been told is the only kind the UCs have to award in this tough economic climate.
We also know many friends whose kids were good students (most had 4.0+ GPAs) and are financially able to pay, but to their surprise, they received pretty nice aid packages from a couple of UCs (around $10,000) while not getting any aid from private colleges. Makes me wonder if those financial aid “pros” are just reeling parents in with the hope that there’s big money out there just waiting to be granted to your well-deserving child. Didn’t happen to anyone I know, including many superstar, unique kids…but then again, we’re not ethnic minorities (and if I sound bitter about that, I’m not because I believe it definitely benefits students at small private colleges to be in a more ethnically and socio-economically diverse community).
The other thing we found surprising was the complete inaccuracy of the EFC (“expected family contribution”) calculators found on each school’s website, including UC’s, which are there to help families understand what they can expect to pay for the college, including aid. You plug in a few key numbers from your tax return, answer a few questions about other kids in your family in college at the same time, etc, and theoretically, it should provide what your contribution to the school’s cost will be. Ha! Our EFC numbers were not even close to what each school’s tuition estimate ended up being on their offer letters.
I used to chuckle at friends whose kids would apply to a dozen or more schools, but now I see why. It’s such a crap shoot, not only with admissions, but also with aid, and the stakes are so high that you have to cast a wide net hoping to come up with the right combo of admission to a school that’s both a good fit for your kid and also “affordable” (which makes me choke since the UCs are all well over 100k, including room & board, for an undergrad degree, not exactly affordable for most).
