Financial Aid appeal

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

<p>Today, I appealed my financial aid package. </p>

<p>Has anyone seen a great discrepancy between their Penn package and other schools, espcially along the efc front. Northwestern calculated my efc to be a whopping $16,000 less than Penn did. Now, I know that Penn has more money to give, and hence, the no-loan pacakges. </p>

<p>Mainly, I was wondering how successful appeals usually are? Will it help me that I made them aware of the large difference between the calculated efcs? Any thoughts on this one guys? Do I have any leverage here?</p>

2

<p>Same here, NU gave me about $17k in aid ($12k grant), but Penn only $5k in Stafford loan. ***.</p>

3

<p>nehs: i was wondering if you could explain how to appeal the financial aid package. sorry for my ignorance</p>

4

<p>After talking to someone in the office and getting the sense that the appeal would be worthwhile (boy, I really hope so), you have to fill out what is called the "reevaluation form."</p>

<p>Here's the link, the rest is self-explanatory.</p>

<p>Special</a> Downloads</p>

5

<p>yeah, apparently northwestern gave us 38k in loans per year (we don't qualify for grants, really...so basically we wouldn't have to worry about paying it all sooner rather than later) whereas Penn did the 5500 dollar loan. when we visit my dad's going to talk to someone haha.</p>

6

<p>does penn even use FAFSA to determine EFC? or does it only use FAFSA to calculate estimated pell grant</p>

7

<p>^^</p>

<p>Penn, like most other private colleges, uses its own institutional method to calculate your efc, which may be completely different from your Federal efc. I think you're right on the second part though, they only use the FAFSA to see if you're eligible for Federal aid.</p>

8

<p>i spoke w/ sfs and they told me they use the CSS profile NOT fafsa to determine your FA package :[</p>

9

<p>^</p>

<p>See, this is why my situation is so odd. </p>

<p>Both Northwestern and Penn use the CSS/profile to determine EFC. </p>

<p>So why the huge difference in EFCs? </p>

<p>If it was <5k, I probably wouldn't think anything of it. But 16k! That's a lot. 64k over four years. </p>

<p>I filed my official 'reevaluation'. It seems like a worthwhile idea. I hope that I can get a better pacakge from Penn, it really is my first choice.</p>

10

<p>nehs: thanks for all the info. But when you did the reevaluation, did you mail it in or fax it in?</p>

11

<p>I thought that UPenn didn't even use loans in their FinAid packages...</p>

12

<p>To each of the questions/concerns:</p>

<p>I faxed my form (following all the steps with the cover sheet and what not).</p>

<p>Penn does not use loans to get you to your EFC number, that of course is exclusively grants/scholarships; however, they offer you loans in addition to these grants... so these loans go beyond your EFC. Which, IMHO, is a very nice and fair deal. </p>

<p>I hope to hear the decision of my appeal sometime this week. Hopefully it is favorable.</p>

13

<p>Sorry to keep asking questions, but is there a specific coversheet for Penn financial aid? or is it just the standard procedure for a cover sheet?</p>

14

<p>The cover sheet can be found on th SFS website.</p>

<p>Here's the link.... <a href="http://www.sfs.upenn.edu/pdf/2009-10/US-coversheet-taxID-2009-2010-freshman.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sfs.upenn.edu/pdf/2009-10/US-coversheet-taxID-2009-2010-freshman.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p>There is also an official reevaluation form you have to fill out (so when you use the cover sheet and it asks what you are attaching, it is "other: reevaluation form").</p>

<p>The link for that form is posted above.</p>

<p>Hopefully helping you guys will give me some good karma. ha</p>

15

<p>nehs, thank you so much. I really want my appeal in by tomorrow. It's crazy that penn's efc is 10-15k higher than other comparable schools.</p>

16

<p>I had a similar situation between penn and mit. mit offered like 5k in lame loans and penn offered like 40k in need grants. <em>**?? so i appealed mit and then they never responded! Then when I was visiting campus i stopped by their fin aid and finally found out my appeal was denied. they're a</em>*holes. anyway penn was most generous to me, but the truth is that institutions that only offer "institutionally determined need-based" aid determine it themselves largely based on how much they want you, only about 50-70% on ur actual need.</p>

17

<p>Hey I was just wondering, did you get the financial info in the mail? It says mine online but I don't believe I got financial aid info in the acceptance package.</p>

18

<p>I think they only posted FinAid packages online. If they sent anything by mail, I haven't gotten it yet.</p>

<p>And yeah, UPenn marked my EFC as $7k higher than my FAFSA said it was, so that kind of annoys me. I called today and the woman basically said that there isn't much they can do... sigh.</p>

<p>I'm appealing to Cornell now; hopefully they give me something I can work with. Though actually Penn's package is better... I'm hoping to push the schools against each other, does anyone know if that works? (i.e - "Penn, I really want to go to your school but Cornell is offering me this... can you match it?")</p>

19

<p>^^^yeah someone please explain that</p>

20

<p>To Yale this year a friend of mine literally faxed an letter from Duke stating his financial aid awards, and the next day Yale "redetermined" his fin aid to match it. So yeah I guess it works sometimes.</p>