I was accepted to CMU through ED because it was honestly my dream school. However, last week I just received my financial aid package and I would have to pay the cost of attending the school in full. I understand that CMU is truly amazing, but paying around 80k annually including student work and loans that amount to around 10k is really daunting. I really don’t want to graduate with over 300k in debt.
I understand that I should have used the net price calculator but this is my family’s first time applying to American undergraduate universities. We are upper middle class and our EFC from the FAFSA was more than 20k below the cost that CMU gave us. Every other school that I applied had MUCH better financial aid than CMU (at least not forcing my family to pay full). If CMU gave us even just around 5k additional in grant annually, I would consider attending.
For people who have experience breaking the ED agreement, is this a legitimate reason for the university to let off a student on the ED agreement? I really hope that my high school doesn’t get blacklisted or jeopardize my decisions for other universities. I honestly don’t think that it is ok for me to face the consequences of being 80k more in debt because of the net price calculator mistake.
I would write something along these lines: “Based on our initial estimates from FAFSA calculators, we were anticipating receiving a small amount of aid, which did not bear out in the actual FAFSA calculations.”
Agree I wouldn’t mention the $5K because that doesn’t seem enough to break an agreement. I dont think any school is worth 70K+ loans per year. That is too much! Is there a chance you can ask for more merit or appeal to the FA Office?
Yea we aren’t going to mention to them about the 5k dw. We are definitely going to appeal to the FA office, however, idk if its gonna help since they don’t offer any merit at all.
Yes, you can opt out if the financial picture doesn’t work out.
Easy enough to just state that. No need to worry about blacklisting. That doesn’t come from one Early kid not getting aid and backing out. First, they still look at all apps. And the “problem” would be if a hs has a trend that accepted kids (including RD) declined an admit. Even then, it’s not blacklisting.
Someone at our high school that got into CMU ED a few years back, broke his agreement for financial reasons. We were blackballed for a few years after that (and may still be) for ED students. I know last year we finally got someone in RD but two years ago they rejected every qualified applicant from our high school. Unfortunately, counselors need to be on top of these things to make sure this doesn’t happen and I guess ours weren’t. For whatever reason, based on your family’s income and assets, they have determined you can pay. So make sure if you truly cannot you have a valid reason and it’s not because you’re running off to some other great school you were accepted in EA because they will find out and that will affect other kids at your school going forward.
CMU isn’t one of the most generous schools. It claims to meet (but not full?) demonstrated need but often gaps. Unless you’re willing to be full pay, ED is always a risky proposition.
Carnegie Mellon is famous for low fin aid offers. You don’t have to justify anything. You just need to notify them that you were expecting more financial aid, and hence cannot accept their offer of admission at that price. Don’t worry about kids from your school being blackballed in future. NOT your problem. This is a known issue for them, so it’s probably all for the best, anyway.
And then make a list of schools that would offer you a lot of merit aid, plus your state’s flagship state U. None of these schools are going to be as competitive and prestigious as CMU, but honestly, the degree from the school that will offer you excellent merit aid, or from your flagship state U, will serve you just fine, and for a whole lot less money.
If going to CMU at $80k per year would mean over $300k in debt, then that suggests that you can only afford $20k ($5k per year) without loans. Since $5k per year is a reasonable student work earning expectation, that probably means you have high income/wealth parents who cannot or will not pay. Since you can only borrow about $27k over four years, that means that your four year budget is about $47k, so any college that has a net price of over $12k per year would be too expensive. Hope you applied to less selective colleges where you would be competitive for full ride merit scholarships (or full tuition merit scholarships at colleges where room and board is low cost).
The question you have to answer is the CMU offer asking you to pay much more than FAFSA and the CMU NPC calculation. If so your ethical course of action is to contact finaid and request they fix that. If they can’t/won’t then you can back out with and should be ok as they failed to meet your expected need. If CMU meets the values or at least gets close then backing out can have consequences. They can meet using a combo that includes loans and work so its weak to say you don’t want any loans. If the loans are a majority of the aid you may have reasonable grounds. Schools do share ED info so its not just others that are impacted. You could have issues with RD at other schools if they check against CMU’s ED list and decide to not review your app because it should have been cancelled.
From his OP sounds like he’s an international applicant so may not have any state flagship to apply to and also it may be too late to apply RD (as he stated he is now applying to RD schools) to earn enough merit money.
Sounds like he had lousy advice from his school counselor, but if this is indeed an international, then that might make sense if they didn’t advise him/her as far as running the NPC. This is usually something high schools (at least ours does) can’t stress enough if you’re applying ED. Be prepared to pay the full tuition in case the school doesn’t come through with the aid you need.
“you can opt out if the financial picture doesn’t work out.”
Yes. My understanding is that the only legitimate reason to back out of an ED agreement is that you cannot afford it. It sounds like this is exactly the situation here.
“I really don’t want to graduate with over 300k in debt”
I am not sure that I fully understand how you would end up with $300,000 in debt. However, this is WAY too much debt. Even half of this would be too much debt.
You can back out if you can’t afford it. But you should never be in a position where you have applied ED and say “but other schools offered me more”. ED is not appropriate when you need to compare financial aid. It is not appropriate when you have run an NPC and don’t want to pay an amount close to that. No school is going to force you to attend, but this story is just one of someone who should not have applied ED in the first place. What does your guidance counselor say about this outcome? If you have younger siblings, or for others reading this thread considering ED, again: please run the NPC and understand that if your aid offer comes close to matching that, you are expected to fulfil your ED commitment.