Having introduced readers to my daughter Julia last week, it’s time to continue the story of her process, because it has to do with finding a college that truly fits her—and one that we could afford as well.
When I wrote for the Daily News some years back, the title of the series was “Finding A College That Fits.” Increasingly, the trick is finding the right fit at the right price. That was very much what we had to accomplish for Julia last year, and here’s how we did it.
While Julia filed her applications for admission to Agnes Scott, Dickinson, Goucher, Swarthmore and Wellesley, her mother filed the forms for need-based financial aid. She filed the CSS Profile, available at www.collegeboard.com in the late fall; then followed up with the FAFSA form, available Jan. 1 at www.fafsa.gov, as soon as possible thereafter.
Because the Profile is quite long and complicated, the first filing was not entirely accurate. With the help of financial planner Brad Baldridge (www.baldridgecollegesolutions.com), Julia’s mother was able to amend the filing, and get the FAFSA 100 percent right on the first attempt.
Because Julia had applied Early Action to Agnes Scott, Dickinson and Goucher (with deadlines in November), she had three offers of admission in hand in December, making for a very nice holiday. She then applied to Wellesley in early January, under its unusual Early Evaluation plan, and received a Likely To Be Admitted letter in February.
So far so good, right? Wrong. We hadn’t heard everything about the money yet.
The good news on the financial side was that Agnes Scott had offered Julia its Dean’s Scholarship, worth $20,000 per year, plus a $3,000 travel stipend available after two years. Dickinson offered her its Dickinson Scholarship, also worth $20,000 a year; Goucher offered its top merit award of $15,000 per year. That’s all good news, and we were very proud of Julia. Then the proverbial Reality Check arrived.
It came in the form of total cost of attendance figures and the first round of financial aid packages. As one example in round numbers, Dickinson’s total cost of attendance was more than $55,000. With $20,000 off the top for the merit award, that left $35,000, about half of which Dickinson proposed to cover with need-based aid, a $5,500 annual loan, and about $2,500 in a work-study job for Julia.
As I recall, that left us with an out-of-pocket bill of about $18,000. Living on high-cost-of-living St. Thomas with two more kids in school and heading for college, that seemed like a lot of money, so Julia’s mother wrote a very effective appeal letter to Dickinson financial aid, documenting our high island expenses for WAPA, gasoline, rent, food and other essentials with receipts and evidence from websites that describe cost of living here.
To Dickinson’s credit, their financial aid office was prompt, sympathetic and generous.
Wellesley, on the other hand, with precisely the same information, gave Julia nothing more than its original offer, denying even to consider our appeal. Given that Wellesley last year also cost more than $55,000 and offers no merit aid of any kind, our bill there was going to be more than $25,000 a year.
When Julia read Wellesley’s email denying an appeal for more aid, she said, crisply, “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever read.” A strong candidate for the college that would have been a great fit, Wellesley had disqualified itself by simply being too expensive.
Then came Agnes Scott’s offer, which was good, but not as good as I had hoped. What they appeared to have done, as Dickinson and Goucher had originally done to an extent, was give Julia a lot of so-called Merit Money, but use it in large part simply to cover our demonstrated need.
In other words, the colleges did not initially “stack” the merit money on top of the need-based money—which is what I had naively believed they would do. In the midst of all of this anxiety over expenses, it just so happened that the recruiter from Rollins College came to visit.
When I expressed my financial fears to him, he looked at Julia’s transcript and scores and said, “I think we’d give her more money than the others did.” So Julia put in a late application to Rollins. That’s right, if circumstances are right, and you ask properly, you may be able to file a late application. I have done it a number of times through the years to help kids who were in need of that sort of help.
Rollins did come through with an offer of admission and a very generous offer of aid, but by the time those arrived, Agnes Scott had listened to Julia’s mother’s appeal, and actually moved to match Dickinson’s very generous terms. In addition to Julia’s mother’s calling and writing the financial aid office at both colleges, I happened to be at Agnes Scott with a group of students last April, and was able to sit down face-to-face with the director of financial aid to discuss the situation.
I am telling you this story in detail to illustrate how much time and effort you may need to put into getting the right place at the right price. Be sure to file FAFSA and the Profile on time. Then be prepared to appeal for more aid, in a well-documented fashion; then be ready to bargain, sometimes pitting one college’s better offer against a lesser offer from the college your child would really prefer to attend. That’s what worked for Julia.
By the time Swarthmore’s decision to Wait List Julia came back in early April, a result that came about because her application did indeed “lack depth,” it was clear she was probably going to attend Agnes Scott; however, she was waffling.
When I pressed her as to why, she said that her visit for the Scholars Weekend, when she interviewed for more merit money, had left her concerned. I asked why. She said one girl had been awed at the places Julia was applying, saying, “I’m not that smart,” and she said the English class she had attended had been pretty rudimentary. Julia was now worried Agnes Scott might not be challenging enough.
After a deep breath, I said, “Well, don’t worry about that other kid, and think about the following: both of your parents were English majors, and the aunt who helped raise you is a master teacher of English, reading you Greek myths for bedtime stories when you were young. You probably know more about English than most kids by osmosis. And don’t you want to be a doctor? I think you should go back to Agnes Scott, meet with the pre-med advisor, and sit in on some pre-med classes. Then you’ll know if the place is challenging enough in what you plan to study.”
So that’s just what Julia did. She went back one more time, for a third visit, had lunch with the pre-med advisor, and attended a number of science classes. Then, and only then, after a process that took more than a year, a lot of effort, and some extra plane tickets, Julia had the right fit at the right price.
When I saw her there in October, she was happy. When I see her again soon for the holidays, I will be additionally happy for all she has already accomplished.
And, I’ll probably do what I did when we dropped her off in August: cry. A lot. At least for me, that’s the parent’s-eye view: one seen through eyes filled with tears of pride and joy.
Chris Teare is College Counselor at Antilles School on St. Thomas. Read his column here each Monday; listen to his radio show, Making The College Choice, Wednesdays, 4-5 p.m. on AM 1000 or www.amg.vi.
