<p>I think this is actually an easy decision. There’s no way your family can pay for Muhlenberg if they don’t increase their offer by most of the 10K gap, so if they don’t come back with a much sweeter offer you need to get yourself released and move on. There’s no way you should make the deposit at Muhlenberg with that offer on the table. Where will you get the extra 10K? You cannot get additional loans in your own name beyond those in your package, and if you are Pell eligible that is a pretty strong sign that your family cannot come up with 10K for one of 3 kids in school.</p>
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<p>Nope. That’s the whole point of this thread! I don’t like the offer I was given, but I don’t know if I’m going to get a significantly better offer elsewhere.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if I’m going to get a significantly better offer elsewhere.”</p>
<p>kittycatwindow -</p>
<p>I would suggest that you sit down with your parents, and revisit the issue of just exactly how they plan for you to pay for your education. Yes, it is possible that you do not have one single truly affordable institution on your list. If that is the sad fact, then much better you face it now than a year from now when you have been in college somewhere for a year and have lost the chance to apply as a freshman and get a decent aid package. A gap year might turn out to be your very best option of all.</p>
<p>The problem with ED is that you have to make a go/no-go decision on Muhlenberg without knowing if you’ll get a better offer elsewhere. But it sounds like if they can’t improve the offer substantially, your family simply cannot afford it, so that’s a “no go”.</p>
<p>If it turns out that you don’t get any better offers, well, you still couldn’t have afforded Muhlenberg so you won’t have lost anything by turning them down. As happymom says, you may need to take a gap year and apply to some more affordable choices for the next year.</p>
<p>Have your parents log back into your FAFSA account and look at your SAR. On there they can see what your EFC is. That’s how much the US Government thinks your parents and you together can pay toward <em>your</em> college (and pretty much the same amount two more times over for your sisters). Private colleges that “meet need” however may decide you can afford a different (often larger) amount. If you don’t get an affordable offer anywhere else, knowing your EFC and your stats others on this board may be able to suggest other schools you can apply to that would offer you better aid.</p>
<p>Do you know what your EFC (parent plus student) is? Get out your PIN, go to FAFSA and look for your SAR and see what your EFC is.</p>
<p>Please bear in mind that Work Study is not a Grant and should not be counted as such. It is NOT guaranteed. You don’t get the money until after you earn it, and freshmen are often last to go after the jobs. It is not unusual for a student to be unable to find enough Work study hours to use up the funds they are allowed to make. Also, it takes away from the time you might have to make a little extra money towards your EFC. My SIL’s niece could not use her work study hours for most of her first year which was fine with her since she found a job on her own that gave her a lot of hours, whereas her WS award was small. Just by luck, she did find a work study job that was left over and it fit into a little niche in her schedule, perfect location, perfect timing, and turned out to be a perfect job. She worked it until the WS hours were depleted and they hired her privately because it worked out well. But she said she could not live on the hours that the school gave her for workstudy . </p>
<p>So what are your Grant amounts? You do know that at each school, you will be entitled to $5500 in DIrect Loans from the Federal Government, with $3500 most likely in your case subsidized? Also your PELL grant will come from the Government and each school will like give you the exact same amount. So whatever M gave you which is their grant money is what you should be using in comparison because the Stafford Direct Loans ($5500) and PELL will almost certainly be the same at each school.</p>
<p>Is Albright a PROFILE school? If it is, their definition of need may not agree with what the FAFSA EFC says your family should be paying. </p>
<p>Right now, your loan burden is at M is $7500, and my guess is that includes $5500 in Staffords, with $3550 of that subsidized which you would get at any of those other schools and $2K in Perkins which would also be subsidized. If a parent gets turned down for the PLUS loan for you , which will happen if their credit report shows bills unpaid for more than 60-90 days, you can get another $4K in loans on your own. That’s still a gap of close to $7K for the year, and if you want to leave any allowance, I would say $7K is cutting it tight. Can’t work much since WorkStudy already take that into account. Can you or your parents come up with another $7K each year at minimum, or $11K if the Parent PLus Loan route is not taken? IF M does not come up with any more money that is what you need to go there. </p>
<p>For Allegheny, you need about the same. The package is very similar, especially when you consider increased costs for transportation. </p>
<p>What is the COA for Albright? You will get PELL and Staffords there too. If they do meet full need and if you can afford a school that meets your full need as they define it, it might be the way to go.</p>
<p>It concerns me that you don’t even know what your official need is. For all you know right now, Mulhlenberg may be meeting it 100%. Do find out what your EFC is and how close these schools are coning to meeting it. If M is that close to meeting your need or meeting it, that might be the best you get. Unless you get a merit award that exceeds your need, schools tend to reduce the need by the merit award, and then meet the reduced need which means your EFC is usually the least you are going to have to pay. The only time I see that exceeded is when the merit award is greater than that need and is a full ride or full tuition award.</p>
<p>Very interesting piece of information for me is that Albright College does guarantee to meet 100% of need as defined as the Cost of Tuition, Fees, Room and Board, less FAFSA EFC. Grants, loans and workstudy can all be used as part of the financial package.</p>
<p>Those Costs come to $46,660. So you are being guaranteed That amount less YOUR EFC. As you can see that EFC number is becoming very important. </p>
<p>Right now I see your Albright Package being the Merit of $18,500 that they have awarded you plus PELL which you know the amount because it is the same across the board plus $5500 in Stafford loans and the a big question mark as to what is left since we don’t know what your EFC is. I don’t see on the Albright site that the aid is all grants, by the way. It specifically says loans and work study. </p>
<p>Also that $46,660 does not include books, supplies, necessities, travel and other money you may need over the school year. My guess is that the amount would be about the same as what Muhlenberg’s estimate for “other expenses” would be. So add that to your EFC as to what you will have to come up with.</p>
<p>If Albright gives you the $18 500 and I’m guessing you are getting $2K in Pell, just pure guess work, plus $5500 in Staffords and another $2K in Perkins loans and another $2K in work study, that comes to $30K A few more thousand in a need based grant will come pretty danged close to what M has been offering you.</p>
<p>I think you should also be looking at some safety choices financially as well if you cannot meet your EFC. Do run your numbers through Gettysburg’s NPC and Albrights and see what you get in terms of a package, as those should be close if you don;t have an unusual family situation. </p>
<p>OP, it is very possible that M can end up being your most generous package.</p>
<p>I cannot find my Student Aid Report. I’ve checked everywhere on my FAFSA account.</p>
<p>Albright’s not a Profile school. & I know it doesn’t say anything about meeting need with loans on the website. When I went to visit last week, I ran into the admissions counselor who happened to read my application, and she took my sister and I into her office to answer any questions we might have had. She’s fairly new to Albright so, as an admissions officer who probably has no part in financial aid, it is very possible that she gave me incorrect information. I asked how need was met because, when I did a Net Price Calculator, it was basically saying that I would have to take out 25,000 in loans a year! She said, “No, we will meet the rest of the need with a grant. Loans would come from the government, not from here.”</p>
<p>I just used an online EFC calculator on <a href=“https://www.aidcalc.com/[/url]”>https://www.aidcalc.com/</a></p>
<p>It estimated that my EFC is 3,558. I’m not sure how accurate it is, though.
It also estimates that I’ll be eligible for $2,000 in the Pell Grant.
I will try to find out the real EFC from the SAR as soon as possible. My mother isn’t home right now, so I can’t ask her for help with it right now.</p>
<p>You should be able to tell if that is accurate if your Muhlenberg package actually contains $2000 in Pell Grants.</p>
<p>This is directly from the Albright site:
“Expected Family Contribution
The expected family contribution results from either the CSS Profile, the FAFSA, or from a combination of both aid applications. On occasion, we may use data in your admission application, or ask your family for clarification of family financial data.”</p>
<p>This is also on the Albright site:</p>
<p>"Financial Aid Programs
You will receive a letter with the total amount of your award, and the award amounts from each program. A typical financial aid award includes:</p>
<pre><code> Grant/Scholarship/Award - a gift to you that does not have to be repaid ;
Loan(s) - borrowed funds that must be repaid, with interest; and
Employment - on-campus jobs that provide money for educational costs."
</code></pre>
<p>That tells me that the school is not committing to using JUST the FAFSA EFC, nor is it going to meet 100% need with just grants. </p>
<p>They also do guarantee to provide 100% of cost less expenses of books, travel, supplies, personal needs less the EFC, but then they define EFC as I have shown above.</p>
<p>Gettysburg also guarantees to meet full need, but they are clear that the need is institutionally defined. </p>
<p>What the Albright fin aid officer was saying to you was that the school itself does not give out loans. The only loans it will give out are the government ones which are Stafford, Perkins and possibly referral to the Parent Direct loans for gaps. All of those are government loans that go through the schools. The same with Work Study. Those are government funds that go through the school, though I believe the school has do to some augmentation there. But it is clear that the financial aid there is not going to be 100% grants most of the time.</p>
<p>For Albright, I never submitted a PROFILE. It was only optional, so I saved the $16. They only have information from my FAFSA. </p>
<p>Speaking of which, I still can’t find this Student Aid Report! </p>
<p>For some reason, it’s saying my FAFSA hasn’t been completed… even though every school I sent it to has confirmed the fact that they got it.</p>
<p>I did just check on my sister’s account and found the SAR & the EFC: “02619 *” (not sure why they wrote it like that) and “you may be eligible to receive a Federal Pell Grant of up to $2,900 for the 2013-2014 school year provided you have not met or exceeded the lifetime limit established for the Federal Pell Grant program.”</p>
<p>Did everyone in your family e-file their taxes? Did anyone owe federal tax and pay by check instead of electronically? Those could be causes for delay of your final completion of the FAFSA. Remember it isn’t truly done until the taxes are filed and can be linked to it.</p>
<p>Your sister’s EFC and yours will be different if you have different amounts in savings or earnings for 2013.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t see why colleges would say they got my FAFSA if it wasn’t completed! Maybe someone clicked “make corrections” by accident & never fixed it… DSGJkzdmhkfd I’m so confused.</p>
<p>My sister actually had a job while I didn’t, so she had maybe a couple hundred more than me, which I don’t think would’ve made a drastic difference; if anything, mine would be less then.</p>
<p>Unless you or your sister made over $6K or so last year, it would not affect your EFCs. Where the difference would be would be in the assets each of you reported. 20 cemts pf each dollar in assets you have go directly onto your EFC. If you sister had $1000, then her EFC would be $200 right there. If you had $3000 saved up, that would $600 for your EFC.</p>
<p>Hopefully one of your schools comes up with enough money for you to comfortably attend it. Has your sister gotten affordable options?</p>
<p>How does income impact EFC for the student if they do earn over $6K?</p>
<p>Your FAFSA was “completed” when you filed it with the taxes recorded as “will file”. Then after everyone who needed to file taxes actually did so, and then went back in to do the updates with the tax status as “have filed”, and then resubmitted the FAFSA, it is “completed” again. If you open it up and try to link the taxes from the IRS but can’t do that, the status you will see inside the FAFSA is “incomplete”. Crazy huh? But the colleges have your current figures to work with, and after you eventually link the taxes properly, and re-send it, it will be truly done. Hang in there!</p>
<p>We completed the FAFSA after we filed taxes, so we didn’t click “have filed”. My sisters both don’t have the same problem I’m having, so I’m guessing someone accidentally clicked “make changes” or something and never finished…</p>
<p>Mathvt, for students, it’s 50% of income over $6000, I believe. Pretty big hit on the EFC.</p>
<p>Is there anyone else who has a problem that a student who applied ED is now shopping for the best deal among six or seven schools? I thought that the ED agreement is that if you get accepted you renounce all other applications assuming that the numbers for financial aid work. It now appears that you have become aware that you might have better offers and are uncomfortable with the numbers and think you can do better elsewhere. If you wanted to shop around for the best deal, ED was clearly not the way to go. But that should have been a decision that was made before filing ED, not after you were accepted and kept soliciting other offers… I understand the ED concept might not work out the best for this student, but I thought those were considerations that one would make before they took that step by applying ED.</p>