Our income declined by 50,000.00 in 2017. I was told Universities can take thatched not consideration to assist us more financially. UPITT is only offering 12K scholarship and based on FAFSA we made 50K more. Can I appeal? Penn State and Emmanuel in Boston are offering to help us with 20k off tuition based on decline.
Are you in state or OOS? It seems that you are not eligible for federal or state need based aid. Does this decrease in income now make you PELL eligible or eligible for a PA state grant?
The reality is must public schools don’t have much money to give. Either you are inapositionyo get merit Porto can be a financial struggle.
Is penn state going to be an affordable option for your family?
We are out of State. We were at 154 and now 104. I am not sure how to check what we are now eligible for. It is too late for our D to apply to a UC, she also got accepted to Oregon. I have not checked if they can assist more then the 12K they are offering. She has her heart set on UPITT, her goal is to be a surgeon.
An out of state public school has no incentive to give you more gift aid. The state’s taxpayers get priority not out of state applicants.
Unless you are full pay never let your child “fall in love with” a school, especially an OOS public.
She doesn’t have to attend Pitt in order to be a surgeon. In fact she would have been better served attending a UC where the costs would have been lower and depending on the number of people in your household, with 104k in income she may have been eligible for a Calgrant. For med school at schools that give need based aid, the school will still ask for your income and assets. Your family needs to keep her undergrad debt as low as possible
At 104k you are not eligible for any federal grants and since you are OOS, you are not eligible for any PA state aid… It looks like this is not an affordable option for your family ask your OOS cost will be the 30k after the scholarship
Is Oregon going to be affordable? It is not a matter of how much a school is giving you, but a matter of how much you can afford to pay over the cost of 4 years. If there are no affordable options your D may need to consider a gap year and come up with a list of more affordable options
Would this scenario have even been feasible on 154 gross? It seems like you need to regroup. I assume you have oregon as WUE? You are from California, but you have no UCs, CSU’s or even CCC as a back up but would have paid OOS for Oregon over a UC? Why?
What are your DDs stats?
There is no undergrad for becoming a surgeon, and premed means cheap as an undergrad as possible, not OOS, premed students who are smart enough to get to med school have this worked out. Were you involved in the application process? Why would a family on your income look OOS from California other than for cheaper than UC, not more expensive?
Pitt, Emmanuel, Penn State and Oregon do NOT guarantee to meet full need for all accepted students. With an income that exceeds $100,000 a year, I would not expect any of these colleges to increase your need based aid.
In addition, you are out of state for Pitt, Penn State and Oregon…so you will be paying the higher OOS rate. Their first obligation is to the students from those states…not OOS students.
$104,000 income would make you NOT eligible for any federally funded grant aid either.
Did your daughter apply to ANY instate colleges…at all?
If not, she may need to take a gap year…and regroup…and reapply to affordable schools.
Is she NMF?
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Can I appeal? Penn State and Emmanuel in Boston are offering to help us with 20k off tuition based on decline. <<<
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Are you sure that penn state is giving you more free money based on need…are you including loans in those amounts??? Penn State is typically awful with aid for instate and OOS. Was your daughter accepted to their honors college? If so, usually the award is for about 4K per year and it’s a merit award. Are you sure that PSU is awarding an add’l 20k per year??? If somehow they said that they’ll give you an add’l 20k, i would not trust that will be given after the first year. PSU doesn’t give 80k to anyone as need based aid or merit aid.
Oregon isn’t going to give you any add’l need based aid and it does not participate in WUE. The 12k she was awarded was likely a merit scholarship. Which award was she given?
Since you knew last year that your income was lower, it was terribly naive not to apply to some instate UCs.
Who advised your daughter when she made her app list? She was very poorly advised.
As the parent of a new physician, i know that one does not need to go to upitt or spend extra money for an expensive undergrad. Med schools don’t care about a school’s name. Upitt has nothing to do with becoming a surgeon.
What are your daughter’s stats? Is she a NMF? Perhaps it’s not too late to apply to some schools that will give her large merit.
How much can you afford to pay each year?
What are the names of the awards that Oregon and PSU awarded?
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Our income declined by 50,000.00 in 2017. I was told Universities can take that into consideration to assist us more financially.
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That may be true for some privates that have large endowments. However, OOS publics don’t usually care, mostly because they don’t have the funds to give and their state’s taxpayers expect their limited aid to go to taxpayer’s children. OOS publics charge OOS students higher rates because their parents don’t pay taxes there. It wouldn’t make much sense to charge higher OOS rates and then cover those costs with need based aid. Why then bother to charge OOS rates. Lol. OOS students who go to your instate UCs do not get need based aid and that’s fair. I’m sure that you wouldn’t want to pay more in taxes so that your dollars could fund the OOS rates for UC bound OOS students.
Did you do the cost analysis process at Pitt to see if they would award more merit?
Tuition for A&S at Pitt for OOS is about $30,000 and instate $18,000, so it looks like they gave your D enough scholarship to have instate tuition.
Fees and room and board is about $12,000 so total at Pitt would be $30,000.
If that’s the case, then about the same cost as a UC instate. Maybe a UC would be a bit cheaper if they qualified for middle class scholarship at some point…if that’s still being offered by UCs
It just seems like they had a naive app list. It seems like they were naively thinking that a student who wants to be a surgeon needs to go to some OOS school. Can’t imagine why Oregon and Penn State were on the list. Still wondering what is the name of the aid that Penn State awarded. Penn State is notoriously bad with giving out free money. I’d be afraid that whatever they offered for free money would be a one time award. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone get a $20k per year free-money-award from Penn State. They never give 80k out in merit or grants to OOS students. (Not talking about athletic scholarships…separate issue.)
Is the drop in income temporary? If your income goes back up, you could lose any increase you get. Could you make up a $20k deficit if you lost it due to an increase in your AGI?
Money aside, even if you could afford full pay, why these schools? Oregon vs UC/CSU, PSU vs UC? What was behind this thought process, period? Obviously it isn’t about targeting merit, or cost, it certainly isn’t about superior options. It just looks so random.
My friend learned this lesson the hard way. She had a drop in income in the same range. It was permanent as a royalty she’d been receiving expired and her husband’s company decided there would be no more overtime.
Most public schools give no need based aid for an income of $150k or $100k. You can appeal, but there just isn’t that much money available.
If it is a drop from $100k to $50k, you may get some mercy.
OP said it was a drop from $150k to $100k