First financial aid package for CompSci major - $15.5K merit offer still leaves $27K gap - typical?

We're in basically the same boat! Daughter got accepted for CompSci at 3 private colleges and their "generous" aid packages still leave us with $30-35K/year. One school had the nerve to list parent PLUS loans as part of the "aid package" lol. Like thanks for the opportunity to go into debt, really helpful 🙄

As someone who works in college financial aid, I can tell you that for competitive STEM fields like Computer Science, the merit scholarships are actually often lower than they used to be because the demand is so high. Schools know CompSci graduates have strong earning potential, so they're less incentivized to discount heavily. A few tips: 1. Appeal the aid package with any competing offers from similar institutions 2. Look for department-specific scholarships within the Computer Science department (many go unclaimed) 3. Check if they have cooperative education programs where students alternate semesters of study with paid industry work 4. Make sure you've maximized your SAI (Student Aid Index, formerly EFC) by properly structuring assets before FAFSA submission The $18,700 merit award is actually fairly typical for a student with that profile at a small private college nowadays. Private universities are currently averaging a 53% discount rate off sticker price.

My son is a junior in CompSci at a private college in Pennsylvania. We got almost exactly the same offer as you - about $19K in merit scholarships with a remaining cost around $30K per year. What worked for us was appealing the financial aid package with competing offers. He had a similar offer from a state school that was about $10K cheaper overall, and the private college matched it by adding another $5K scholarship. Definitely worth trying!

jus want to say dont forget to check for outside scholarships!! my kid got like $7,000 from random places, his employer (mcdonalds) gave him $1,500 just for working there and maintaining grades. also check your parents employers sometimes they have scholarships for kids!!

Trying to reach the Federal Student Aid office for clarification on these packages can be frustrating - I spent 3 weeks trying to get through regarding our FAFSA verification that was holding up my daughter's aid packages. Finally used Claimyr (claimyr.com) and got through to an agent in under 20 minutes. They have a video demo showing how it works: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ I've found that speaking directly with FAFSA agents gives you leverage when talking to schools because you understand exactly what your official SAI means and how schools should be interpreting it. Most families don't realize that the same SAI can result in wildly different aid packages depending on the institution.

I think your financial aid offer actually sounds pretty good compared to what we've seen. My daughter applied to 8 schools for software engineering/comp sci (all private colleges) and the HIGHEST merit scholarship was only $12,000, leaving us with $38,000+ per year to cover. Her GPA is 4.1 weighted with tons of extracurriculars. The state schools offered better packages but she's got her heart set on a particular private university. Have you checked if the school offers additional scholarships once students are on campus? We've found that some schools have substantial department-specific scholarships that are only available after freshman year.

we were told by our kids guidance counslor that computer science is a "profit major" for colleges so they dont give as much aid for it as they do for like history or english. is that true???

Update: I called the financial aid office today and asked about appealing. They said they do have a formal appeal process and encouraged us to submit our state university offer as comparison. The financial aid officer hinted that they might be able to add another $3-5K in institutional grants if we can demonstrate the cost difference. Fingers crossed! Thanks for all the suggestions.

THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS RIGGED!! My kid had a 4.2 GPA and got National Merit recognition and these greedy colleges still expect us to pay $25K+ per year. It's criminal what they're charging for education. And don't get me started on textbooks and all the extra fees they tack on AFTER you commit. Our generation could work summer jobs to pay for college but now kids graduate with mortgage-sized debt. And the "financial aid" is a joke - mostly loans that will take decades to pay off.

my nephew got full ride for computer science but he had perfect SAT scores and did all those coding competitions and stuff. most kids dont get that much tho