<p>soo this is probably the most retarded question but im not sure how this financial aid stuff works... if any student could help me out a bit would be awesome..
my family contribution is ~3,000...thats less than my travel, books, and personal expenses together. i thought those expenses (travel, personal..) are not paid directly to the university and are just used to cover everyday life. however, my penn plan suggests i take a "monthly budget plan" to pay those ~3000 in $300 monthly payments. so how does this work? does my award get credited to an account somehow that i use to buy books and pay for tuition and stuff? and the 3000 that i assumed i would be using myself for daily expenses (to be earned from my work-study job), do I still pay them directly to Penn??</p>
<p>bump, please</p>
<p>one more question to add to my never ending list of questions :) :</p>
<p>if i received a better fin aid package from another school, would penn match this package??? in my case the difference is about $2000...do people ever let penn know about this so they can maybe give us more money??</p>
<p>regarding the first questions i asked, i already called sfs and they cleared everything up for me</p>
<p>regarding the second question, yes you should definitely do that.
it never hurts to try, and i heard from a lot of people who got significantly higher fin aid packages when they showed offers from other schools.</p>
<p>^Penn doesnt match. I went in person to show them my better offers. They said outright that they dont match.</p>
<p>Andy_g, Oh btw, what is your gross family income to get that EFC?</p>
<p>Andy can you tell me what sfs said? I need to know that stuff haha :P</p>
<p>So basically, if your family contribution is 3k, you have to pay that to Penn, and that takes care of tuition, so you don't have to pay anything else regarding tuition. However, you have to buy books and everything on your own, with your own money. What you earn from your work-study job is money you get and you don't have to pay back, and you can use to buy books or whatever you want.</p>
<p>What if everything is paid for except an efc?</p>
<p>Also if you get enough $ in scholarships to cover efc and work study, can you still take the work study job?</p>