College Aid: How to Qualify

Determine How Colleges See You

Find the type of aid you’re most likely to get.

Some schools reserve price breaks for low- and middle-income families, but many also offer awards to affluent students. You need to figure out whether you qualify for need-based aid, which means that your chosen school costs more than your family is considered able to contribute. If not — if you are deemed rich enough to swing college out of your own resources — you’re going to be applying for merit aid. The right aid calculator will help you see yourself as financial aid offices see you.

Ask a College About Its Particular Policy

Weed out schools that won’t offer the aid you need.

The guidelines schools use to dispense financial aid vary wildly. So you’ll want to grill each institution about its aid policy. Ask the critical question, "What percentage of a student’s financial aid need do you typically meet?"

Seemingly similar schools may answer quite differently. Columbia University aims to meet 100 percent of need and offers grants that don’t require repayment. A New York University student is more likely to graduate with debt since the university typically meets less than 68 percent of the needs of its financial aid students, and a portion of that assistance is loans. (But NYU reserves some of its institutional cash to entice top students from affluent families, while Columbia seems to feel that its reputation is enticement enough.)

Ask schools about their merit aid rules. Most colleges, public and private, dispense merit awards to well-off students with solid academic records. Case Western Reserve University baldly states on its Web site that “you could be Bill Gates’ kid and still receive a merit-based scholarship.” The average merit award at Case: $19,409. A few dozen highly selective schools, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Amherst College, Pomona College, Williams College, and Brown University, don’t offer merit aid, however.

Amass Key Data on Each College

Find out everything you can about a school’s aid handouts.

It’s imprudent to rely on just the verbal assurances from a school’s financial aid or admission officer.

To get the real scoop, check out an obscure, yet amazing document called the Common Data Set. Each school’s Common Data Set is a treasure trove of statistics on enrollment, freshmen class profile, retention, and the characteristics the institution most values in its applicants. You’ll find the number of students who request financial aid, the number who get it, the percentage of need the school usually meets, what the average package is worth, and how awards are split between grants and loans. (To find this cache, Google “Common Data Set” and the school’s name.)

You can often also find a great deal of data about a college’s aid and in-house scholarships on its Web site. Baylor University, for instance, posts a scholarship calculator that can instantly tell prospects which type of awards they could be eligible for based on their SAT or ACT scores and class rank.

Request a “Pre-read”

Gauge the true cost of the college.

Blindly applying to schools with only a vague idea of their ultimate cost is not just financially unsound, it’s unnecessary. Instead, ask a college for a candid assessment of your family’s financial aid chances before sending in an application.

Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., for one, gives an early assessment or “pre-read” on a teenager’s chances for merit aid before he or she applies. If you provide your child’s grade point average, class rank, standardized test scores, and activities, a financial aid officer should be able to form a pretty good idea if his or her school would cut the price for your child.