15 Colleges Frugal With Financial Aid

HomeFinanceApply15 Colleges Frugal With Financial AidThis page may contain affiliate links.Nov 9, 2019In case you havent heard, some colleges are more likely to provide institutional scholarships and grants than others. Some are generous with merit aid while others give better need-based aid. And just as some colleges are known for their aid, there are those that are known for the lack of it. In this post, were listing 15 colleges you should avoid if youre looking for significant help in cutting the cost of college. At 13 of the schools, less than half of freshman with financial need had 100% of their need met. Emerson, University of San Diego, NYU, and Loyola Marymount meet the full financial need of less than 20% of freshman. Students are very likely to be gapped at these schools which would explain the high percentage of parents taking out PLUS loans. At NYU, 34% of parents of students with need and 19% at Boston are taking out PLUS loans. Colleges That Are Not Generous With Financial Aid These colleges arent known for their commitment to meeting full financial need. If students qualify for tuition waivers, dont use them to apply to these schools. These arent good places to look for merit aid either. At 11 of the schools, less than 15% of non-need students are receiving merit aid. Colleges such as Santa Clara University, Whitman College, TCU, and Loyola Marymount University, that have higher percentages are providing smaller average awards. Now some might argue that $10,000 isnt nothing to turn your nose up at but when tuition is almost $60,000, it doesnt make as big of a dent as compared to a college that has a total cost of $45,000. And these are expensive colleges. The average total cost of attendance for all private colleges with 500 or more full-time undergraduates is just under $43,000. Five of the institutions cost $60,000 or more. All but two on the list cost more than $55,000 and the lowest is TCU at $50,720. We are defining significant merit aid as something that gets the cost of a private college close enough to your state flagship to make it viable. The average amount of merit aid at some of these schools suggests a lot of the scholarships fall into the boutique or dinner party category. These are awards just big enough to convince wealthy parents to pay the rest of the cost and they can brag about their kid getting a scholarship. Yet despite their costs, these schools are in demand. Maybe because six of them are ranked in the top 50 on US News Best Colleges national rankings. Ten are in the top 100 and another three are in the top three of regional universities. Twelve accept less than half of applicants while three admit less than 30%. They also have a location advantage. All except TCU are located in the Mid/Northeast or west coast-the preferred location for many college bound students. Which is probably why they can get away with their miserly financial aid awards. Of course, theres always some students who will receive generous aid from these schools. Its just that the odds are against you, more so than at other schools. Should any of these schools appeal to you, you might check out similar schools by using our College Data Spreadsheet. At the very least, use the schools net price calculator before falling in love with it. Ultimately, if cost is a major factor in your college search, these are not schools to include on your college list. Colleges Frugal with Financial Aid How this list was compiled: Using our College Data Spreadsheet we identified private colleges where 85% or less of freshman are receiving institutional aid and the average was $30,000 or less. Only schools that have an average net price of $25,000 or more and accepted less than 60% of applicants were included. This produced a list of 35 schools. At this point we started looking up information from the schools common data sets, which is also included in the College Data Spreadsheet. Specifically, the following information was included: On average, the percentage of need that was met of students who were awarded any need-based aid. Number of students whose need was fully met Number of students who had no financial need and who were awarded institutional non-need-based scholarship or grant aid Average dollar amount of institutional non-need-based scholarship and grant aid awarded to students Schools where 60% or more of freshman had 100% of financial need met were dropped. Also eliminated were schools where 10% or more of freshman without financial received merit awards that averaged $14,000 or greater. This left us with 15 schools on the list. TCU is the borderline school on the list. With the lowest tuition of the schools and the second highest average non-need average merit award, it could be a decent option for students looking for merit money. If you take the $5,000 students save by attending TCU over American University (the school with the highest average merit award) and add it to TCUs average merit award, it would be well above the $14,000 cutoff. Road2College Debbie Schwartz is former financial services executive and founder of Road2College and the Paying For College 101 Facebook group. She's dedicated to providing families with trustworthy information about college admissions and paying for college. With data, tools and access to experts she's helping families become educated consumers of higher ed. View all posts CATEGORIES ApplyFinanceScholarships TAGS Financial AidResearching CollegesNEWER POSTHow to Get Your Student On Board With the College Application ProcessOLDER POSTIs College Worth It?