<p>Northwestern was my first choice, but their financial aid offer was the lamest of all my choices. They think that if you have assets, you MUST be rich even if you're in total debt to those assets. My net worth of assets is zero, since I'm almost in as much debt as what the assets are worth. I got a EFC of 0 from FAFSA, too, and my parents made $14,000 last year. Northwestern offered me $15,000 and expected my parents to contribute $36,000. OK. My parents are having trouble getting income from the assets but NU doesn't give a damn. Obviously other colleges understand my family's situation better. I was offered $46,000 in aid for USC, $45,000 for Johns Hopkins based solely on financial aid. Also, for public schools, I got $23,000 for UCLA, $23,000 for UCSD, and $24,000 for UC Berkeley. Wow! Poor public schools give more than a rich private school! Sure gives me the image of "Rich White Greedy NU"</p>
<p>yay, racist ranting in the post too!</p>
<p>NU actually calculated my EFC at below the FAFSA one, and my family has sizeable assets. I'm actually getting more money than you were offered, which is amusing.</p>
<p>why would u post this now, ever heard of appealing? its not that complex of a process. maybe you should have tried that. doesnt matter now its may so be happy</p>
<p>Northwestern's offer was a few thousand less or about the same as my other schools. My EFC from NU is around 6k for next year, and my fafsa efc was like 1.5k. shadow, I don't know how in the world you got such a high efc, but you could've tried to talk to the financial aid people to reconsider their offer, but now its too late unless you have enrolled in NU. I don't think that you have any right to label NU as "rich, white, and greedy" because they certainly weren't greedy with everyone. They probably saw your family had a significant amount of money in investments and stuff, so that would yield a higher efc.</p>
<p>I did appeal, but it seems like I won't get anything unless I sell all my assets/house, which would be pointless because I would get NO profit from doing so. They suggested I do so anyways or "simply" get a loan. And of course I didn't enroll since it's much cheaper to go elsewhere and I'm pretty down on that... I loved NU too....</p>
<p>"Rich White Greedy NU"?
Ha ha ha, I'm glad my first post will be on this thread...</p>
<p>What did your outside scholarships look like? Probably not $36k, but they could've helped...</p>
<p>Definitely appeal, but write a good letter and send in documentation. I've done this for three years now, and I get several thousand dollars more each after appeal.</p>