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Tag: tuition

  • Financial Aid – Premier Schools

    Stanford’s announcement came two months after Harvard publicized its expensive new financial aid policies and over a month after Yale and Dartmouth followed suit with their own. Since Harvard’s announcement in December (at which time it saw its application rate spike by 19 percent), other top ranked schools including Williams, Princeton, Swarthmore, Cornell, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, Bowdoin, Pomona, Cal Tech, Duke and Davidson have announced new financial aid policies in what some people consider an effort to “keep up with the Harvard’s.”

    Similar to Harvard and many other elite universities, on February 20, Stanford University announced a new financial aid policy dramatically increasing the eligible amount of aid for middle-income families. The announcement comes as the latest in a series of policy revisions over the past three years designed to ease the burden of paying a tuition averaging $47,000 a year and to ensure that no high school student considering applying to Stanford decides not to because of cost.

    In addition, the plan also calls for eliminating student loans. All students qualifying for need-based financial aid no longer need to take out the expected $4,000 loan before receiving money from the scholarship fund. Beginning in the 2008-09 school year, students are only expected to earn $2,500 from working during the school year and earn approximately $2,000 over the summer.

    Each fall, the financial aid program is reevaluated by the Financial Aid Office, the Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, the Budget Office, the Provost, and the President, with consultation from the Board of Trustees. Cooper added, “There are no specific plans in the works for more changes at this time. We will be evaluating the success of our current changes next fall.”

    The changes were made possible through an increase in the endowment payout and doubling the financial goal of the Stanford Challenge, an effort to increase fundraising for the university, to $200 million. The Board of Trustees approved the increase in endowment payout from 5% to 5.5%, or by $160 million, on June 14, 2007, at the time intending to fund capital improvement projects.

    The announcement follows the House of Representative’s passing of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, which aims to expose the allegedly corrupt relationship between expensive colleges and loan agencies and give greater transparency to the consumer. The Senate has put forth its own version of the bill. If passed, the law would require colleges to report financial information that Stanford University officials claim to be unproductive and difficult, namely revealing the rate of their endowment spending.

    Many people believe Stanford’s increase in endowment spending on financial aid from five to 5.5 percent this year is aimed to counteract the repealed provision of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act that would have required colleges to spend at least five percent of their endowment on financial aid. But the Board of Trustees approved the increase in endowment payout in June, nearly five months before the act’s proposal. As far back as 2003, Republicans had been discussing a bill that would penalize colleges that raised tuition significantly faster than inflation.

    These policy revisions have also coincided with and followed those of other top ranked schools. In 2006, Stanford eliminated educational costs for families earning less than $45,000. Harvard had enacted a similar policy in 2004 and Yale in 2005.

  • How will schools help fund families?

    How exactly do all the schools start to help poor families, or even middle class?

    Harvard took the lead. Two years ago, Harvard implemented a policy in which students whose parents earn a $60,000 or less no longer pay for tuition or room and board. Stanford has just adopted the same policy, adding that students whose parents earn $100,000 must only pay room and board. Stanford Financial Aid has not provided a formula for evaluating aid for students who come from families with income over $100,000.

    Princeton has taken a similar approach in which it evaluates aid on a case by case basis rather than the more formulaic sliding scales that Yale and Harvard have decided to use. At Stanford and Princeton, students in the income bracket range between $60,000-100,000 can expect to pay $11,000 or less, approximately the cost of room and board.

    But at Harvard and Yale, students in the income range $60,000-120,000 can expect only to pay on a sliding scale between 1 and 10% of their income ($600-12,000), which is significantly less than students at Stanford. Students at Harvard and Yale from income brackets between $120,000 and $180,000 can expect to pay between $12,000-18,000. Cooper has refused to make comparisons between higher income students at Stanford and Harvard, saying she does not want to mislead them about their potential aid package. She cautioned that aid will be evaluated on an individual basis with a number of factors including home equity, other siblings in college, and cost of living taken into account.

    The new financial aid policy isolates the upper-middle class. Universities are increasing tuition fees for students who do not receive financial aid. It is called “Take from the Rich and Give to the Poor”. While the financial aid policies have made it less expensive than some state schools for students from households less than $100,000, colleges generally remains much more expensive for students from households with income well over $100,000. State schools also usually offer merit aid, which can often significantly decrease the expense for top students.

  • Picking a Field of Study

    How Not to Pick a Field of Study

    Just because parents are probably paying for a student’s tuition, does not mean they can choose your major or potentially, your career. Although it is tempting to let someone else make the hard decision, do not take the bait. Seeing as this is the student’s life, the student should be in charge. Parents should remember that they didn’t want their parents making their decisions for them.

    Just because a student doesn’t want to think about the course selection doesn’t mean the student should pick a random topic for the heck of it. This is a very important issue and it must be considered and every aspect weighed.

    How to Actually Pick a Field of Study

    • Make a list of pros and cons when choosing a major: For example, a student might want to be an English major because he/she enjoys reading and writing. That’s a “pro.” A possible “con” might be that the lack of clear-cut career. Recognizing the positives and negatives of any potential field of study can help a student be honest with the decision. This way, the student will always know that he/she is selecting a certain field of study for the right reasons.
    • Discuss your decision of college major with your parents and/or close relatives. Now, this does not mean a student should have others make the decision for them, but it does mean a student should seek outside input. Besides, it’s always encouraging when someone else thinks that the choice is a good one.

  • Best Valued School

    Which school has the best value? Value is what you got for what you had paid. It is about spending less money and getting more than you paid. The more grants the school provides to you, the better value to you. You can always borrow money, but that does not lead you to a better value. This is especially important during current recession.

    The No. 1 Best Value for public schools is the University of Virginia. This year’s tuition, fees, room and board totaled $18,499 for in-state students and $37,749 out of state. The average grant UVA offered (including scholarships) totaled $9,531. The average 2008 graduate’s debt was $16,847. At top-rated private college Swarthmore, with 1,480 undergraduates for the 2008-09 year, the total cost is $47,804 (with large portion $36,154 — for tuition). But the average grant is $30,073, this is very attractive. The school did not report the amount of student debt, but at each of the top two campuses, about 70% of students graduated debt-free in 2008.

    The Princeton Review’s aim was to determine the average annual cost that a freshman paid for the 2008-09 school year. The selection criteria looked at academics, costs and financial aid, using the most recently reported data from each institution for its 2008-09 academic year. Overall selection criteria included more than 30 factors in three areas: academics, costs and financial aid. Academic ratings were based on student surveys about such issues as professors’ accessibility and class sizes, as well as institutional reports about student-faculty ratios and percent of classes taught by teaching assistants. The financial aid rating is based on a combination of school-reported data and student surveys. Tuition, room and board, and required fees, as well as book costs and other factors, are included in the financial measurement.

    The TOP 10 best value schools from Princeton Review are listed below.

    PRIVATE School;

    1. Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, Pa.)
    2. Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.)
    3. Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.)
    4. Rice University (Houston, Texas)
    5. Yale University (New Haven, Conn.)
    6. Williams College (Williamstown, Mass.)
    7. Amherst College (Amherst, Mass.)
    8. California Institute of Technology (Pasadena)
    9. Pomona College (Claremont, Calif.)
    10. Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.)

    PUBLIC School

    1. University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
    2. New College of Florida (Sarasota)
    3. College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Va.)
    4. State University of New York-Binghamton
    5. Florida State University (Tallahassee)
    6. North Carolina State University (Raleigh)
    7. University of California San Diego
    8. City University of New York — Hunter College (New York, N.Y.)
    9. University of Georgia (Athens)
    10. The College of New Jersey (Ewing)

  • College Tuition

    College tuition has been on the rise for decades, and now the prices are just getting ridiculous. To go to a mid-ranked university it costs more money than it took to go to the best school, 10 years ago. In the upcoming 2009 tuition fees, there could easily be a high record of over 70,000 dollars per year. Not to mention, students usually have to buy their own books, rooming, etc. When it comes down to it, parents and relatives don’t have that kind of money. Universities will be giving out many, much fewer scholarships because of the recession/ economy blowout. Money should not be an issue when determining which college a person wants to go to. However, in this day and world it’s the rich that are going where they want, while others have to stand by and watch. The solution to this problem remains to be seen.