<p>And the expected family contribution is twice as much as my parents are willing/able to pay. When all's said and done I'll have ~70,000 worth of loans to pay at the end of undergrad if I end up going, and I'll still have med school to pay for. Stanford's always touted the generosity of their aid, and what I received was a bit of underwhelming :( </p>
<p>Stanford's been my dream school for 5 years now and I almost died of happiness when I got in, and now it feels like my folks really don't want me to go. Is the aid package at all negotiable? I don't want to graduate neck-deep in debt, still having medical school to pay for.</p>
<p>Stanford will likely recalculate your aid if you can show them other schools’ offers. They will only match need-based aid and will me more willing to match other top schools’ (aka ivies) packages. Hopefully you applied elsewhere. When you get numbers from your other schools, send them over to Stanford! Good luck!</p>
<p>I feel like this is a bit backward. What is Stanford tuition/fees these days approximately, and what did it grant you each year? I think you can try for more, but depending on what you actually would receive and your parents’ circumstances, it may or may not work. </p>
<p>Willingness to pay and ability to pay are 2 very different things. Your parents may not ideally WANT to pay as much as listed in the EFC but Stanford’s calculations deem that they’d be able to. </p>
<p>Generosity of aid doesn’t mean calculating what a family wants to pay. If your family has any assets
(home equity, car equity, stocks/bonds, rental property, etc.), all CSS/Profile schools take these into consideration and expect you to use them to pay for college-- and this makes it a difficult choice for parents. They expect families to dramatically change their lifestyles to pay for college. If your parents are unwilling to do so, then you will need to find a much less expensive school. Stanford (and other Profile schools) is generally considered generous to those coming from truly low SES backgrounds, not for the upper middle class and beyond. </p>
<p>Financial aid package questions come up all the time on these CC threads…Stanford and its cohorts on the east coast offer the best packages in the country differing by a few bucks here or there (it seems like they use the same algorithm program)…S, P, H etc offer only financial need packages (no merit awards)…</p>
<p>…the schools mentioned above will not match any school that offer full tuition/partial tuition MERIT awards. Period.
And if your parents really don’t want to pay for whatever reason…and if you or your parents are unwilling to take out 17,500 per year in loans…you will have to seek out possibly attending your top state flagship (honors college) or some of the other private schools that may offer merit awards…</p>
<p>…but, I hate to be blunt…there are plenty of full pay students/parents around the world who are waiting in the wings to happily take your slot.</p>
<p>Colleges expect parents to have started saving for colleges since birth. Honestly if your loans are 17,500/year , that is much less than paying full price which a lot of parents are doing. And mind you, these parents are not rolling in money either. Most have taken out home equity loans, private loans, 2nd mortgages etc.</p>
<p>Also if you are intending to major in a degree with great career prospects, then in my opinion, the investment may be worth it. But to be honest, for someone who wants to just get a basic undergrad with a potential graduate (pre-med,law etc), then the money can be saved for now by choosing a cheaper alternative. Yes, the “generous” award only applies to low income families. Make your decision after weighing all options in April.</p>
<p>Valid point on what the colleges expect parents to pay…friends who saw their daughter get into MIT <em>sold</em> their amazing 1930s restored Craftsman house and moved into a 2 bedroom condo…and they still had one kid at home…but the MIT calculator “saw” the value of their house and said, “you can pay this.” And it was right…they could…once they sold it.</p>
<p>Isn’t primary residence excluded from consideration (just like retirement accounts, such as 401K)? If not, do they look at the value of the home AND how much is still owed (for example, our house is still underwater which one would not know by “just” looking at a value on Zillow, or something). Thanks.</p>
<p>They look at home equity on primary residence-- and there is a formula where they calculate how much per year they expect you to use to pay for college. This is considered an asset to be tapped. </p>
<p>What’s kind of interesting is the <em>end</em> of this story…so the parents had to sell the house…they were pretty sad about it but determined to see their daughter go through MIT (I might have chosen a different path…but they had a clear vision on it) so they put it on the market…it sold right away…and that just happened to be August of 2008…they didn’t know it at the time, but they made <em>hundreds of thousands</em> of dollars more on their house than they would have only 3 months later…and now they feel that they put their kid through MIT for “free”…so it just goes to show…well, it goes to show that life is weird. </p>
<p>OP, for everyone’s benefit, can you please tell us if the package your received differed substantially from what the Net Price Calculator indicated?</p>
<p>Unless your parents have told you they don’t want you to go to Stanford, you’re doing them (and yourself) a big disservice jumping to that conclusion. From a parent who had to tell her child that he couldn’t attend a couple of schools that he loved due to money…it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. </p>
<p>So our house is underwater if you consider both loans on it, but would they “see” the 2nd loan (through a different bank) as it was a 2nd loan to bring our down payment up to 90% (so not a home equity loan where we went out and bought a bunch of stuff or put in a pool or anything). Long story, but due to safety and health issues, we for the first time, did not have money for a 20% deposit in crazy California. </p>
<p>When you enter the value of the equity in your home, you would subtract any home loan (mortgage and 2nd home equity loan) from the current market value of the house.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks JCCsMom and Camomof3. That will show no equity and worse, then. Where did I get the idea that primary residence did not count (I am thinking the CSS form)?</p>
<p>Apologies. The calculator was about 3000 off from the estimate, which may or may not be accurate depending on how close our estimated GDI is to the real thing. My parents have dipped their fingers in and out of a bunch of different jobs last year, so the accuracy of our own estimate is probably pretty dubious </p>
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