<p>OP, I think you may be having a very common and understandable knee-jerk reaction to what seems unfavorable. If you are a Christian then you believe that God has a plan for your life. You also believe that tithing is not just a discipline, but an act of faith - belief that none of what you have is your own, but rather God’s. You give back, tithes and offerings (beyond the 10%), as a demonstration of this belief. You trust that your needs will be met through God’s provision.</p>
<p>Be careful of the advice you seek and take. Try to live what you profess to believe and you will find your way. You might want to look up Proverbs 3:5-6. It’s a favorite of mine.</p>
<p>If you truly believe that your parents money is better spent on charity than on your tuition for one of the best schools in the world, then so be it, don’t attend Yale. There are clearly plenty of people that are more willing to attend than you are if that is what you believe.</p>
<p>To answer your question: No, they do not take charitable donations into consideration. That charity money can be spent on tuition.</p>
<p>Donating money is essentially sacrificing your income so that someone else can have it. Obviously, we all make sacrifices of some sort at some time or another - this seems to be your family’s sacrifice. Going along that line, by wanting to be so altruistic, by wanting to maintain your level of donation, you are going to have to sacrifice your tertiary education at Yale. </p>
<p>You have to sacrifice something- will you give up your donations for Yale, or will you give up Yale for continued donations?</p>
<p>In any case, I admire your dedication to donation. But you can’t essentially have the best of both worlds, and so you face a difficult choice.</p>
<p>I don’t think you’re throwing away money or that your family could just change its values. Still, it’s fair that the financial aid policy counts the money you tithe as part of your disposable income. It’s part of your income that you strongly believe should be spent somewhere else, but if Yale accepted that as a reason to give you more aid, that would not be fair to nonreligious students whose families also spend that much on something they feel strongly about (just not in a religious way). It’s like the policy on divorced parents-- it sucks for the people whose noncustodial parents really won’t pay, but it has to be there or else the whole system is too exploitable.</p>
<p>I cannot believe how a rational person, especially considering that she was accepted to Yale, could feel surprised and then “insulted” by the reactions on this thread. Even if she were so devout that she strongly believed in giving one fifth of her income to charity and forgoing an opportunity to go to Yale, she should have been able to predict what kind of answers she would have gotten.
It’s fine that she disagrees with the overwhelming majority of rational people in the US (and everyone on this thread), but to be completely ignorant of their views and be shocked and insulted upon hearing them is idiotic.</p>
<p>I assume your parents are not discontinuing their tithing while you are in college. If that is true, then by accepting the additional aid from Yale, you are in essence forcing Yale to support your charities, and you are possibly depriving other Yale students of the money that has been given to you. While donating to charity is admirable, I agree with KiwiKid that you cannot expect your charitable work to come with no sacrifice on your part.</p>
<p>I certainly hope there was some good reason for Yale’s upping its aid, other than your family’s unwillingness to suspend tithing during your college years or to allow you to take out sufficient student loans.</p>
