<p>*Many CC posters do not have safeties (financial and admissions) *</p>
<p>This is very true. Every spring there are kids who sorrowfully post here when they receive their FA packages and find out…</p>
<p>1) Their schools don’t meet need (or they meet “need” with huge loans)
2) Their families have been given an EFC that is unaffordable.
3) They were only looking at tuition costs and weren’t looking at COA (or they only looked at “semester costs” and thought it was for the entire year).
4) Their OOS publics don’t ever meet need of OOS students (almost none do).
5) Their parents aren’t going to pay as much as the kid **assumed **they would/could.
6) Their families can no longer pay what they thought they could (or one spouse committed to an amount that the other spouse wasn’t aware of and won’t agree to.)
7) They had no idea that financial aid often includes loans. They thought that they’d only have to pay their EFC and would get the rest for free.</p>
<p>During the application season, everyone can get caught up in applying to big name schools (even the parents). Kids don’t want to even consider financial safeties (I’d NEVER go there). Some parents wrongly inflate how much they can truly afford or how much “need” their child will get. When spring comes and those hard numbers come, we see a lot of unhappy kids (and parents) on CC.</p>