I am appealing my financial aid award and the college wants to know what options am I considering to cover the rest of my educational costs. What should I say? Please help me with your input.
Loans, parents
What are your options if the college doesn’t come up with more aid? One option would certainly be attending a less expensive school. Not knowing what your family’s financial situation is, we aren’t really positioned to tell you what to say. Stuff people do: loans beyond federal loans, using house equity or retirement funds (NOT RECOMMENDED), asking relatives like grandparents for help.
How much are you short? If’s it a couple thousand, your options could include working a second summer job, but if it’s a huge amount, your only real option might be attending a different school.
The school wants to know if you are doing anything yourself to deal with the shortfall. So…be honest, and tell,them what you are doing. Maybe they will be able to help you if they see you are making an honest effort to help,yourself as well.
^^ yes
The school wants to know if they are wasting their time. They don’t want to jump thru hoops and possibly increase your aid by a small amount, only to find out that you don’t have the means to pay for much/any of the remaining costs.
You are applying for outside scholarships (you are, aren’t you?)
You are looking for a summer job – or two (you are, aren’t you?)
You will be looking for a part-time job during the academic year…
You are selling your prized collection of pokeman cards (or whatever)…
You set up a go-fund-me site…
You are looking at ways to reduce your living expenses, both at home now (obviously need to have your parents on board), and when you are at college…
You are willing to take the maximum allowable federal direct student loan…
What steps are your parents taking to help? Working more ( perhaps even second jobs), reducing their cost of living by cutting back on unnecessary expenses, contemplating a home-equity loan, contemplating a parent education loan…
Thank you all for the wonderful advice. My parents are willing to help. They have already taken a parent education loan
and can not afford to take more loans. I will be working to help pay for my education.
What’s the award you’ve received, and what’s the amount that your family is expected to pay? How much can your family actually afford to pay?
These are the awards that I have received from the following:
Colgate University
Colgate Grant
So sorry! Here is the information:
Colgate University:
Colgate Grant 29,460
Colgate Work-Study 2,800
Federal Unsubsidized
Direct Loan 2,500
Total Financial Award 34,760
Total Estimated Cost 66.990
Parent Contribution- 30,830
Student Contribution- 1,700
Total Contribution- 32.500
Gettysburg College:
Fall 2016 Spring 2017 Total
Presidential Scholarship 7.500.00 7.500.00 15,000.00
Gettysburg College Grant 4,850.00 4,850.00 9.700.00
Federal Direct Sub Stafford1 1,750.00 1,750.00 2,000.00
Federal Direct Unsub Stafford1 1,000.00 2,000.00
Total Award 30,200.00
Total Estimated Cost: 63,000
Which one of the colleges offers the best financial aid package? Please help me decide ASAP. Thanks in advance
Colgate leaves you with $37.53K to pay after Grants. Gettysburg leaves you with $38.3K to pay after grants. Pretty close. But Colgate also offers Work Study which is not taxed. Colgate has the better offer.
Colgate is definitely the better offer - more grant money, less loans. But how much can your parents actually afford to pay?
Can your parents afford to pay in the over $30,000 a year range for you to attend college?
Colgate also has a better offer because it looks like it meets full need while Gettysburg does not.
All colleges usually increase their prices every year by about 4%.
You can see that C. shows Parent contribution that should stay fixed (provided family finances do not change) year after year. G. package just shows a gap between the award and COA that will grow every year.
At C. you can also try to ask them to replace 2.5K unsubsidized loan with a subsidized loan. You still should be eligible to borrow additional 3K. G. package already has all your Federal loans accounted for and this leaves you with no cushion.
However G. scholarships are merit aid while C. gave you need-based aid. If your family considerably increases their earnings in 2016 and 2017 then C. aid may go down. G. aid will always stay the same. Are there any GPA conditions for G. scholarships?
Work study IS taxed!
The benefits of work study are that social security tax is not withheld which gives you about 7% more of your earnings to spend, AND work study earnings will not affect your FAFSA, unlike summer job earnings.
Yeah, but unless the student earns more than the single dependent standard deduction amount of $6,300, any income tax withheld will be refunded.
If a student can be claimed as a dependent by someone else (such as their parents), their standard deduction can be as low as $1050. $6300 is the MAXIMUM. There is a special IRS worksheet to determine the amount of the deduction.
I don’t mean to hijack this thread, just want to make sure people don’t get wrong ideas.
Certainly for most students, they are not going to be paying much in taxes, so it’s not a big consideration,
Mom2CollegeKids posted on 02-13-2016 at 2:25 pm in University of Alabama
In case there are NMF students who still need a financial safety.
Bama will accept and award the big scholarships to NMF’s who apply by April and who name UA as number one choice to NMCorp by May 1st.
Univ of Alabama routinely enrolls about 175-200 NMFs every year.
NMF award
5 years of tuition (AND you can use an extra semester to pay for summer abroad…nice! $12k towards study abroad))
1 year of housing, including the honors housing super suites
$3500 per year stipend (and if you’re eng’g or CS, you get an add’l $2500 per year)
Some kind of technology choice (latest iPad, laptop, whatever)
$2000 towards a summer experience.
Usually around this time there are some NMF students who are finding that they can’t afford their top schools, so they need financial safeties.
Alabama will award their NMF and National Achievenment scholarships to applicants who apply by about mid April, and name Alabama as #1 choice by May 1st.
Also…
If the NMF student is an engineering major or Comp Sci major, he/she gets an additional $2500 per year…stacked on top!
Mom2CollegeKids,
Does this also apply to out-of-state students? Please advise. Thank you