I have been writing college blog posts recently about teenagers who have arguably been applying to the wrong colleges. (Scroll to the bottom to see my three previous posts.)

All my posts have involved families who required financial aid, but today I’m sharing the plight of a father who is too wealthy to receive need-based help.

Anxious Dad’s Email

Here is the email that I received from the father, who is a financial adviser:

I have a high school senior who applied to Johns Hopkins University and was accepted.  She is also going to play field hockey there.  Being a typical “rose colored” glasses person, I figured we’d get some financial assistance.  I filled out the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE.  The package came back and there was ZERO assistance on there.

I thought the field hockey thing would provide her some backing and consideration but I was wrong.  Additionally I’m usually very good at getting a straight answer from people and for some reason I didn’t from our liaison at JHU.  I can’t believe JHU considers us rich!  Does anyone back there know how expensive it is to live and raise a family in Southern California?

Needless to say, I’m a little discouraged and concerned since it’s such an expensive school.  I know JHU has resources.  I’m very surprised we did not get any assistance. I was wondering what you recommend.

 My Response

I am sorry that your daughter didn’t receive any money from Johns Hopkins, but this is a university that almost never gives money to rich students. If you have a high Expected Family Contribution, which was generated by the PROFILE, your daughter would have had a slim to zero chance of getting any money.

Finding the Answer in the Common Data Set

Okay, so how did I know that Johns Hopkins rarely gives scholarships to well-off students? I looked at John Hopkins’ Common Data Set, which is a valuable document that many schools complete yearly that contains a great deal of information about such things as the institution’s need-based aid, merit awards, acceptance figures, academic profile of freshmen and much more.

Section H of any school’s Common Data Set contains the information on the number of students who apply for financial aid, the number who receive aid and what the typical financial aid package is. In the same section, the Common Data Set also shares whether the school gives merit awards to wealthy students.

Only a handful of wealthy students received money from Johns Hopkins, which reserves its financial awards to  students with demonstrated financial need. Here is the pertinent section of Johns Hopkins’ Common Data Set:

In the 2010-11 school year (latest available),  just 10 freshmen received merit scholarships, which were worth an average of $26,318. To give you a frame of reference, there were 1,241 students in the university’s freshmen class and 551 freshmen received need-based grants. The average need-based grant was $30,791. Doing the math, you can see that the majority of students — 680 – paid full price. Like a lot of highly prestigious East Coast schools, Johns Hopkins is crawling with rich kids, whose parents are footing the entire bill.

Almost all schools in this country award merit scholarships to rich students, but a few highly prestigious ones don’t give awards to these teenagers or they dispense just a few token scholarships.  Johns Hopkins belongs in this category. Schools like all the Ivies and the very top liberal arts colleges don’t have to hand out merit money to wealthy teenagers because they institutions enjoy such high perches in US News & World Report’s college rankings that rich students flock to them without any carrots.

What About the Other Schools?

In responding to the dad’s email I suggested that there could be other schools on his daughter’s list that do give wealthy students merit money. Unfortunately, the two additional schools that he mentioned — MIT and Tufts University — are in the same category at Johns Hopkins.

Another way that you can research a school’s financial aid practices is to look at the institution’s profile on the College Board’s website. Click on the school’s  Cost and Financial Aid link. Here is the link to MIT. You’ll find the pertinent statistic for the dad on the second-to-last line that says average non-need-based aid. In MIT’s case it says not reported. Whenever you see not reported that simply means no merit awards for rich kids.

When I checked Tufts University’s financial aid stats on the College Board, I saw that the average non-need based aid was $500. That’s essentially nothing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find Tufts’ Common Data Set, which is irritating, but some schools don’t release it.

Bottom Line:

It’s always important to research the financial aid practices of schools before applying. Don’t make any assumptions.

Here are more posts on applying to the wrong schools when money is an issue:

Applying to the Wrong Universities

Another Dreadful College List

Catholic Universities and Yet Another Botched College List

ynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller,  and a financial aid workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College: Great Ways to Cut the Price of a Bachelor’s Degree.

Families tend to use this advice to justify their children attending expensive dream colleges even if these schools will require taking on crushing student debt.

I am a huge advocate of families researching schools before hand to see if they are not only an academic fit, but also a financial fit. You can find how to do that by spending time on this blog and I’ve compiled a lot of advice on my workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College.

A Dad’s Worry

I’m bringing this up today because I got a heart-breaking email yesterday from a dad. Here is an excerpt of his note:

I think I made a critical error in telling my son to follow his dreams. Please assess my judgment. Currently, my son is at Duke University and by default kind of wants to go into Wall Street, he doesn’t have a clue when I ask him what you want to do there, besides, “make lots of money”. Right now, he’s $100k+ in debt and will be a total (estimate) of  $140k in debt after next year, when he graduates….

What’s your advice? We tried to get more financial aid from Duke, but they aren’t buying it. Also, my son could have gone to the University of Florida on a full-ride, but chose Duke instead. I know some kids who are going there on an almost full need-based grants. What’s your advice, did we take out too much for undergrad?

Here was my response:

I feel for your son. Your son would have been better off with a full-ride to U. of Florida, but what’s done is done. Your son does face a potentially huge problem and he doesn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation that faces him.  If he did, he never would have gone to Duke when he was forced to borrow such a large amount of money.

If there is anyway he can finish  school without borrowing anymore, I’d urge him to take that route. Have you helped him with college? I would urge you to do so if you can handle it financially. If he didn’t qualify for financial aid, I assume you are affluent. If so, I’d would strongly suggest that you help with this debt and tuition. If he doesn’t have a job on campus, he should get one. And find work during the summer and use all that money to help pay for his college tab. I’d also suggest he look into becoming a residential assistant. He may be able to get room and board for free that way.

Because of the high amount of debt, your son has probably borrowed most of the money through private loans. These are scary because there are no consumer protections, the rate isn’t fixed and there isn’t any ceiling. I suspect you or someone in the family cosigned for these loans which means you/they are on the hook to pay them off also. It’s best to borrow through the federal Stafford student loan program and hopefully some of your son’s debt is in government loans. For federal debt, he should look into the Income Based Repayment program if he graduates and is underemployed or unemployed. There is no such program for private student loans.

I wish I could be more encouraging, but at this point limiting future borrowing and paying off the student debt that he’s accumulated is what I’d strongly suggest.

More more thing…

One thing that I forgot to tell the dad is that he should double check that he’s filling out his financial aid applications correctly. Financial aid is driven by a family’s expected family contribution and if the papers are completed incorrectly, a family could be mistakenly shut out of financial aid consideration.

Like many elite schools, Duke is generous with its financial aid to families who qualify. According to Duke’s Common Data Set, it meets 100% of a family’s financial and the vast majority of that need is met with grants and not loans.

For everybody out there who are still looking for colleges, be careful about where your dreams lead you!

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller and a workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. Follow her on Twitter.

Finding the Success Rate of Applying Early Decision

As I promised at the time, I want to delve into the specifics of a high school senior, I’m going to call her Sarah, who wants to apply early decision to The College of New Jersey. I’d love to hear whether you think Sarah should apply ED.

Sarah has a 3.7/3.8 unweighted GPA.  She’s a very hard worker, but she’s taken only honors classes and no AP courses except an AP literature class this fall. Her combined SAT scores are around 1900. The teenager, who wants to be a special-ed teacher, is madly in love with The College of New Jersey.

Part of the family dynamics is that the girl is a twin. Her brother, a late bloomer has an unweighted 3.4 GPA, but he continues to improve academically and he earned a great SAT score — 2100. Sarah has been the better student, but The College of New Jersey sent her brother an invitation to a reception for possible merit scholars and not her!

This snub might seem shocking unless you take a look at  TCNJ’s Common Data Set. In the section of the Common Data Set that states what admission factors are most important,  the school clearly states that while grades are “considered,” test scores of applicants are “very important.” The rigor of the high school record is also “very important.”

You can discover more about using the Common Data Set to learn about a school’s admission factors here:

Common Data Set 101

Applying Early Decision

Sarah wants to apply Early Decision, which should boost her changes of getting into this very selective public liberal arts college and she doesn’t want to consider any other schools.  If Sarah’s family had unlimited cash, I’d say go for it, but that’s not the case here. Here is an excerpt from the dad’s email:

We went along with this (Early Decision intention), but now I have lost my steady income as a psychologist and am piecing together consulting work…hence, we are concerned that even the modest full freight of TCNJ will be a lot.  I want her to consider other schools to see what kind of merit packages they might offer (even privates, where her scores and grades are above their admitted means)–but she won’t hear of it.  My wife is concerned about her emotional status if we push the issue…

Here’s my suggestion:

Because of the family’s tenuous finances, I’d tell Sarah she can’t apply early decision. If she got in through early decision, Sarah would be committed to attending the school regardless of whether the family received any financial aid or merit awards. In this case, it’s better to see what other colleges would offer too.

I’d recommend she apply to The College of New Jersey during the regular admission process and apply to other schools as well.

What do you think?

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

I got an email last night from a psychologist who asked if his daughter should apply early decision to The College of New Jersey, which is a public liberal arts college.

Last month, I wrote about the early decision dilemma that a mom from Minnesota was facing regarding her daughter’s desire to apply early decision to William and Mary College. Here is that post:

Case Study: Applying to William and Mary College Early Decision

Today, I’m revisiting the early decision issue, in part, because I wanted to share a resource that may help students make the correct choice.

A Great Early Decision Tool

Before applying early decision to a school, it’s a good idea to see how much of an edge, if any, applying to a school early decision would make. A great way to obtain this statistic is to look at a school’s Common Data Set. At the end of this college blog post, I provide links to the three posts that I wrote on the Common Data Set for those who don’t know what this valuable document is.

Once you obtain a school’s Common Data Set, you can find out the success rate of early decision applicants by looking in Section C. First-Time, First Year Admission of any Common Data Set. Right under the heading, Early Decision and Early Action Plans, you learn the number of applicants who applied early decision and the number who were admitted.   Specifically, check Section C21.

When I examined The College of New Jersey’s early decision data, I found that 450 students applied early decision and the college accepted 258 of those applicants. That’s a success rate of  57.3%. That’s significantly better than the 46% overall acceptance rate that I pulled from the College of New Jersey’s profile on CollegeBoard.com.

The 57.3% rate is also much better than the success rate for women applicants at this public liberal arts college. In Section C., you can also get the gender acceptance rates of any college or university. In The College of New Jersey’s most recently posted Common Data Set, 2,696 women applied and 1,273 were accepted.  That’s an acceptance rate of 47.2%. The acceptance rate for men was 44.7%.

Just because early-decision applicants enjoy an edge doesn’t mean the psychologist’s daughter should select this route. Tomorrow I’ll share details about her situation. In the meantime, here are my recent Common Data Set posts:

Researching Colleges With the Common Data Set

Common Data Set 101

How Generous Is This School?

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

You can get an idea by looking at a school’s Common Data Set.

If you don’t know what a Common Data Set is, you’ll want to read the posts that I wrote last week on this valuable document:

Researching Colleges With the Common Data Set

Common Data Set 101

Today I want to focus on the financial aid section of any school’s Common Data Set. You’ll find all the financial aid information located in Section H of the document.  I’m going to use Macalester College in St. Paul for my example simply because I learned from Alexa, which ranks websites by Internet traffic, that the biggest concentration of people visiting my blog come from Minneapolis-St. Paul. Who knew?

To obtain Macalester College’s Common Data Set, I just Googled the school’s name and Common Data Set. Macalester has its nine most recent Common Data Set’s posted on the Institutional Research section of its website.  FYI, you can often find other information about a college on its Institutional Research site. For instance, I discovered the Macalester College Fact Book on its site that contains lots of valuable info.

When I look at the financial aid section of  any Common Data Set, I’m interested in finding out these sorts of things:

• Average financial aid package.
• Percentage of financial need met.
• Average institutional need-based scholarship or grant.
• Average need-based loan.
• Average non-need-based scholarships or grants for affluent students, who don’t require need based financial aid.
• The number of students who receive need-based or merit aid.

Macalester College’s Financial Aid Stats

At Macalester, 400 freshmen were determined to be eligible for aid in the 2009-2010 school year. Of that number, 397 students received need-based grants.

The average financial package was $32,533. That looks very impressive, but you also want to know how much of that comes from grants or scholarships versus loans. In Macalester’s case, like many elite institutions, the vast majority of this aid was free money (grants), which is great. The average grant for those receiving financial aid was $28,280. The average need-based loan that students received was $2,909. Students also cut their cost with work-study jobs.

When looking at financial aid awards, you obviously also need to know what the cost of the school is. During the 2009-2010 year, Macalester’s tuition, fees and room and board added up to $49,124.

I also like to see whether a school gives merit awards to students who are wealthy and won’t qualify for need-based aid. You can find this information in H2A. At Macalester, the average institutional scholarship for these affluent students was $10,000. Only 29 wealthy students, however, received a merit award from the school.

Macalester’s Common Data Set clearly shows that this is a school that dispenses most of its institutional awards to students who truly need a helping hand. This practice is common among elite schools. In fact, the most selective schools — such as Ivy League institutions — don’t provide any merit money to wealthy students.

Bottom Line:

When evaluating any college or university, I’d download a copy of its Common Data Set to learn far more about the school’s financial practices than you’d ever get from an admission officer.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

Researching Colleges With the Common Data Set

Today I’m going to explore how you can use the Common Data Set to gain insights into what admission officers are looking for at an individual school. For this example, I’m going to use Cal Tech’s CDS.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Obtain a school’s Common Data Set.

To do that, you’ll want to Google the name of a school and “Common Data Set” to find the document. As I mentioned yesterday, most schools post their Common Data Sets on their websites. Look for a school’s latest CDS. By now, most schools have posted this document for the 2009-2010 school year.

The document will either be saved as a PDF or an Excel spreadsheet.

2. Head to Section C.

Section C of every Common Data Set is going to be titled, First-Time, First-year (Freshman) Admission.

You’re going to discover lots of statistics about a school’s latest crop of freshmen including SAT/ACT scores and grade point averages. These are the sort of stats that you can find if you buy those big thick collegiate guides from Princeton Review, Fiske and elsewhere, but any Common Data Set will provide more in-depth numbers.

Statistics that can be particularly revealing in this section involve the acceptance rates of men and women. Sometimes the gender acceptance rates are very similar at colleges, but sometimes they differ dramatically. That’s the case with Cal Tech.

For the 2009-2010 admission season, 3,318 men applied to Cal Tech and 390 men were admitted. That’s an acceptance rate of 11.7%. In contrast, only 1,095 women applied and 284 were accepted. That’s an acceptance rate of 25.9%. Obviously, women have an advantage at this school where 58% of the students are men. You will see this same phenomenon if you look at MIT’s Common Data Set.

3. Check Out Basis for Selection

We’re still in Section C, but I want you to scroll down to line C6. Here is where every school shares what academic and nonacademic factors the institution weighs — or doesn’t weigh — when making admission decisions.

The schools ranks a total of 19 factors in four ways:

• Very important
• Important
• Considered
• Not Considered

It’s rare to see a school rate only one factor as very important, but that’s the case with Cal Tech. That one factor is the rigor of secondary school record. I’d interpret this to mean that if a student didn’t take a lot of Advanced Placement or other comparably rigorous classes, you can forget about this school.

Cal Tech considered seven factors important:

• Class rank
• Academic GPA
• Standardized test scores
• Application essay
• Recommendations
• Extracurricular activities
• Character/personal qualities

It can also be interesting to see what a school doesn’t care about. Cal Tech, for instance,  does not consider whether a applicant has expressed interest in the school before applying. The school also doesn’t care about interviews or what state a student resides.

In contrast, some schools favor applicants who have visited their campus, had an interview and requested materials. That’s referred to as “demonstrated interest.” Some schools also give brownie points to students who live outside their  state or region.

There’s a lot more to discover in any school’s Common Data Set. In my next post, I’m going to share some additional ways to examine a school’s Common Data Set.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch.com and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.