Dad Donald W. Crowley, Chief Engineer (Retired)
Formerly “Professor of Micro-biological Physics”
at Yale University
You probably wouldn’t believe the amount of money available for your assistance at the big name, super-expensive schools. Harvard has in excess of $40,000,000,000.00 in endowments for student financial aid.
Yes that was 40 billion, with a “B”. I taught at a poor school down the road; Yale survives on only $21,000,000,000.00+ in student aid endowments.
Any money manager can always get a minimum guaranteed return of 10% on a large amount of capital. Harvard has well over 4 billion dollars in student aid available, to give away every year. Yale has over 2.1 billion. That is without touching the principle of the endowments, so that they produce a new “cash crop” of the same (or bigger) size to harvest each year. Other big name, big price tag schools have very deep endowment pockets, too. That doesn’t, however, mean they are necessarily anxious to give it away to untried freshmen.
Getting accepted is itself a good trick. Harvard and Yale each have more students that have 1600 (‘perfect’) SAT scores AND a 4.0 (or better) GPAs apply every year than they have room for in the freshman class. Some of those “super students” are turned down. Meanwhile, some students with merely good academic credentials get accepted, because they also have some other talent (say in music, or art, or poetry) that the school desires to have in it’s student body.
While Yale and Harvard don’t give athletic (‘jockstrap”) scholarships, it’s amazing what amounts of academic financial aid happen to become available to a letterman (or letter woman). Especially if they lettered in several sports and also have the academic moxy to be accepted.
By the way, everybody always wants the most bang for every buck of aid given away. So, an athlete who brings several sports with them (while being able to hold his or her own in class,) will be more welcome. The super nerd who never emerges from his or her room, except to go to class, may not get that Letter of Acceptance.
The same is also true of some smaller but highly selective liberal arts colleges, which often don’t specifically subsidize athletes. The star athlete will still find aid that is more “academic aid” available than the non-athlete.
If you can be accepted at a big name school, beg, borrow, or …well, whatever you need to do … get the money to go for the first year. If you prove you can do the work they expect of you, and keep your grades in the A and B range, money will appear, seemingly out of thin air, to subsidize the rest of your career at the school.
So, don’t think you can’t afford the exorbitant prices of the big name schools. Don’t let the ‘sticker shock’ of the price tag keep you from even applying to those prestige schools. Give them a shot. Go there if you are accepted, no matter what the cost, and prove that you are good enough. Once you do that, the money will take care of itself.
- Dad Don
