<p>We just got back my daughter's first financial aid award. Our family's EFC is only about $2500, so we were expecting to get a lot of financial aid. But the school is leaving almost $13,000 unfunded and expecting us to take out parent loans for that amount! We don't even begin to have the money to pay back that large a loan, especially with it being only one of 4 years of college and two more children in high school who also need to be put through college! Is this typical for mid-level private colleges? I don't know what my daughter is going to do next year if the other schools she applied to come back with offers so far from our EFC.</p>
<p>You will have to wait to compare offers from the other schools to which your daughter applied. You will probably find quite a bit of variance between awards from school to school. One thing that families need to remember is that even for schools that meet 100% of your need, an amount of that finaid package can be loans. You don't say the amounts awarded in scholarships and grants, but if it's a private school and you are left with a $13K amount to pay...that is room and board plus only a small fraction of the tuition. Honestly, that doesn't sound like a bad award to me. Of that 13K, I would assume that your daughter would take the Stafford loan (which probably would be subsidized). That means that about 10K would be remaining. 2500 is your EFC leaving only 7500 in loans for you or payments for you to make. Does that make sense? I know it sounds like a stretch...but from what I've seen and read here EVERYONE feels that what they are being asked to pay for college is a stretch.</p>
<p>
[quote]
**$13,000 unfunded
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**</p>
<p>and so you are saying that if you are asked to fund by loan or cash any amount over $2500. that you find it no acceptable? You refuse? Did your daughter apply to your state schools? Did they cost you more than $2500???</p>
<p>I think the OP is saying they "gapped" her. It happens at all level of schools. Look at NYU for example. With an EFC at $2500 there is certainly not going to be $13k a year sitting around after the EFC is paid, and maybe not enough credit to take out the parent loan for $52K plus whatever the costs go up to before graduation. I'm fairly sure the OP is saying that COA is $30K. Her need is found to be $27,500 but $13,000 of that need is unfunded or "gapped" plus they still have the portion of need met by student loans and the parents own contribution in the form of the EFC.</p>
<p>IOW, the OP is complaining that the subject school did not meet 100% of FA for her daughter. That number, % of need met, is readily available on many websites (Collegeboard for one) and should be the first stop parents with need make to avoid this.</p>
<p>Yes, I understand that the family has been gapped. It is hard to determine in the first few posts whether a family didn't know what gapping is or that they don't want to pay the differential for public/private school. That is my question.</p>
<p>hazmat, I read it again-I see no mention of public schools. I think this parent just wasn't aware that schools routinely, most of the time, almost always fail to meet EFC (excepting the most generous schools or the most wanted at other schools).</p>
<p>Futhermore I'd suggest the OP determine the % of need met at the remaining schools immediately and if they are the same as the school with the FA award they can't do-then find another school or two or three now to apply to. There are several excellent schools still accepting applications. Last year on the NACAC site very good schools were still accepting apps through the early summer and I can recall at least one poster who received a very happy FA package long after this point.</p>
<p>T,</p>
<p>I think that there is $13,000 left on the table after the FA package (which probably already has stafford/perkins loans).</p>
<p>I am looking at it this way (you know I am a visual person, so I need to see this :) )</p>
<p>example:
COA= 40,000 , EFC = 2500 (40,000-2500 = 37,500) demonstrated need.</p>
<p>37,500 - 24,500 (the need that was met in a combination of grants, student loans, work study) = 13,000 the unmet need.</p>
<p>using this scenarion 24,500/37,500 = 65.33 % of your need was met.</p>
<p>13,000/37,500 = 34.66 % of your need was unmet (gapped)</p>
<p>Sounds like the school does not meet 100% of demonstrated need (gaps) which means that there is a portion left unfunded which you /family would have to come up with a way of paying.</p>
<p>Like Curm suggested you should go to the college board website adn research the rest of the potential schools. That way you will find out</p>
<p>what % of need is met
Of the need that is met, the percentage of grant and loan/workstudy.</p>
<p>Does D also have a financial safety (a school that if she is admitted, she will be happy to attend and is a financially feasible option for your family) in her list of potential schools?</p>
<p>Curmie,</p>
<p>EFC is on the family and it will be up to them to figure out how they are going to meet it.. The school did not meet 100% of the OP's Daughter's demonstrated need.</p>
<p>I believe the OP was looking at the amount of "free money" they were not awarded. Perhaps the OP could clarify what they meant by the $13k in loans. Does that include the student loans? In a school that costs 40K per year, that means the student received 27K for the year in aid. I'm sorry, but that sounds very good to me especially for a school that does not meet full aid.</p>
<p>Indmom
I would suggest go to collegeboard site and check out what is typical awards for your D's schools are. Find out procentage of grants/scholarships and loans in typical package, what is % of students get their full need met, whether they follow federal methodolgy or institutional or mix of both. Compare it with your D award letter and figure out what other schools will be proposing. Many schools do gap and you have to be ready for that. It is also matters where is your D compare with other applicants. Majority of schools will do preferential packaging, giving better package to students they really want.
My D receved award letters from 2 of her schools and both of them were way above her EFC. But if you think that private school now cost 30-40K and you are asked to pay 1/3 of it it seems very generous to me. Both offers for my D are less expensive that public school tuition. Hopefully she applied to at least one financial safety school which you can afford no matter what.</p>
<p>Thanks for your replies so far. To clarify, I did look up the % of need met on collegeboard.com. The school states 76% of need met, but they only met 39% of our need according to the EFC. Do some colleges just not want to sink that much money into kids with just average statistics for the school?</p>
<p>If the school costs 40K and you got 27K in finaid, that is 67.5% of the cost of attendance at the school. I don't understand how they only met 39% of your need. Please explain.</p>
<p>I am a novice regarding financial aid. Have they perhaps recalculated the fafsa or profile and come up a different number?</p>
<p>the 76% would be the average need met not what every student recieves
for a school that does not pledge to meet 100% of need-aid for a student with average stats may be less than for one with similar need but higher stats
still $13,000 is not much to come up with
the student can take out loans
work summers
and the parents can take out loans
or go to a cheaper school
If they were to attend an instate public school what was determined to be your cost?</p>
<p>COA=$30,000. Our EFC=$2500. Grant aid=$11,000. Student loans=$4000. Work/study=$2000. $10,500 is left in addition to EFC and all student loans. As a low-income family with two more kids approaching college age and us approaching retirement, we'd never be able to handle the kind of additional debt that that loan would entail. Two family friends had to drop out of college after a year or two because they had reached their loan limits.</p>
<p>This school sounds like a poor economic choice, but this is just my opinion. I would not go into debt for that kind of money, if I were you!</p>
<p>Indmom:</p>
<p>Cost of attendance 30,000
EFC = 2500 (you will have to pay the EFC regardless of what school your daughter attends unless she receives a full scholarship that covers tuition/room and board)</p>
<p>COA-EFC = demonstrated need</p>
<p>30,000-2500 = $27,500 (your demonstrated need)</p>
<p>D's FA package $17,000 : Grants 11,000 Loans, 4000 workstudy 2,000 </p>
<p>17,000/27,500 = 61.8% of your need was met</p>
<p>there is a gap of $10,500 (unmet need)</p>
<p>Your total out of pocket expense (including loans ) for one year would be $17,000</p>
<p>10,500 + 4000 + 2500</p>
<p>Based on your posting this school does not sound like a financially feasible choice for your daughter. Unless she can get some outside scholarships to cover the gap for the next 4 years, she will basically have to leave this offer on the table and look at other schools.</p>
<p>sybbie, our math was exactly the same. Thanks for fleshing it out for the OP. I do wish though that I wasn't aware who was responsible for paying the EFC. That would be a nice delusion to have. LOL.</p>
<p>What do you do when you have a parent with bad credit who can't take out ANY loans, and they won't let the student take out any because you don't have anyone else to sign for it with good credit? And then, on top of that, the school that covers all of your need, will only offer loans and very little grant money. What do you do then? You have been gapped and there is absolutely no way of filling it. Even with state schools, there is too much of a gap, what do you do? Do people turn to friends or distant family members or something?</p>