<p>I just needed some feedback on whether this is a good package and options I have in paying back the difference. Thank you! *This is from a school who promises to meet full need without loans (Vanderbilt)</p>
<p>COA: $57,702</p>
<p>AID( annual):
F.Work-study: 2,200
Need-based Grant: 39,279.00
Total aid: $41,479</p>
<p>EFC: around 16,000</p>
<p>My parents and I are looking for some options. We though about loans but the only one I am eligible for seems to be Stafford-and my parents don't want to undertake that.
After deciding on form of payment, we are probably going to use a tenth-month payment plan from the school.
What other grants/merit/loans, etc should I be looking at? Thanks!</p>
<p>Considering your EFC and the COA of Vanderbilt, I consider it a GREAT FA package.</p>
<p>As to whether you can afford your EFC…welcome to the crowd. If your parents don’t want you to take a Stafford Loan, what did they have in mind? Do they have the ability to pay the $16K EFC completely without any debt to you? If not obviously someone is going to need to get at least one loan and generally the only loan a college freshman will be eligible for is a Stafford. Depending on your parents credit worthiness they can take out any number of different types of loans including Parents Plus or home equity.</p>
<p>Congrats in getting accepted by Vandy and good luck!</p>
<p>Great package…seriously!</p>
<p>Don’t forget that some of the COA is in things that you don’t pay for right away or don’t pay to the school…such as travel, books, personal expenses… So, your parents’ outright EFC will be less.</p>
<p>Also, if you work in the summer, you can further reduce their COA. Your W/S will be for pocket money during the school year. (BTW…get cracking on finding that W/S job!) </p>
<p>Post the breakdown of the COA for Vandy…it’s probably padded.</p>
<p>Here’s the current year’s COA (which is less than next year’s)</p>
<p>Cost of Attendance</p>
<p>The estimated average costs for full–time undergraduate students attending Vanderbilt University for academic year 2009–10 are:
Tuition $37,632
Activities/Rec Center Fee $946
Housing $8,200
Meals $4,450
Transcript Fee (one-time payment) $30
Books and Supplies $1,292
Personal Expenses $2,198
First-Year Experience Fee $620
Travel Allowance Varies
TOTAL
$55,368 (plus travel)</p>
<p>Your grant essentially pays for your tuition. Your parents will have to pay for room, board, etc. You’ll pay for your personal expenses from work/study. You can save on books by buying used when you can and selling back books when you’re done.</p>
<p>You can probably cut the COA a little bit by being more economical, and I assume that you can work this summer to earn some or all of your personal expense money. If you take the $5500 in Stafford student loans, earn $2000 this summer towards your personal expenses, that leaves your family to cover $8,300 a year – is that doable?</p>
<p>(This seems like a really, really good package – congratulations.)</p>
<p>Agree that it’s a nice package. Congrats! As arabrab says perhaps you can “split” the annual difference in cost with your parents. You would use the Staffords and summer job earnings and your parents would shoulder the rest. As a parent I would be thrilled if we only had to pay about half the EFC. Hopefully your parents will be happy, too.</p>
<p>You can probably cut the COA a little bit by being more economical, and I assume that you can work this summer to earn some or all of your personal expense money.</p>
<p>Actually, he needs to work during the summer to lessen the EFC (summer money could pay for books, Rec fee, etc). His W/S during the school year will be the personal expense money.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the feedback! I’m an only child, so neither my parents nor I have any experience with this stuff! I have two questions, though.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How does the Federal Stafford loan work? And what is the difference between subsidized and unsubsidized?</p></li>
<li><p>Is it better to use work-study toward room, board, books or personal expenses? If it doesn’t go toward that, I would have to find another way to pay the $2,200 annually, right?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>Generally colleges expect that you’ll probably use the work study towards your books and personal expenses (though you need to have enough to buy fall books because you won’t have earnings from work study until you find a job and get paid.) However, you can certainly save up some of your work study earnings and apply them (and summer earnings) towards room and board too.</p>
<p>Sub loans means that the gov’t pays the interest while you’re in school.</p>
<p>Unsub loans means that interest accumulates while you’re in school, so the amount that you borrow grows during the 4 years. </p>
<p>You really can’t use W/S for room and board because you won’t have a big lump sum available in August when you need to pay. W/S is for pocket money, because you’ll get paid bi-weekly or monthly.</p>
<p>Plus, your w/s is only for a couple grand. R&B is like $13k!</p>
<p>If you’re trying to reduce your parents’ contribution then…you’ll need to work as much as you can over the summer to put towards your R&B. I think you can earn up to about $4500 (not counting the school year W/S) without it hurting your EFC. So, you should be able to earn about $2k over the summer to help reduce parents’ EFC. </p>
<p>So, since your Grant pays for your tuition (divided in half for each semester), your family will have to come up with half of the $13k for room/board plus other required fees before school starts in August.</p>
<p>Okay, I think I understand. It seems I was confused on how work-study was implemented:Work-study is generally only used for personal expenses.
I hope to get a job in early May and save as much as I can. </p>
<p>I guess my game plan would be:
-save money over the summer to contribute toward costs of books, room, board, etc.
(mom2college-where can I find more info on the max amount i can raise without hurting EFC? Are they W-2s I have to fill out for a summer job? I’ve never worked at an actual job before-mostly paid tutoring and the like. </p>
<p>-consider Stafford Loan (if I use the ten-month payment plan, and manage to pay off most of the loan back before graduating, does the interest on the unsubsidized loan still acrue significantly?</p>
<ul>
<li>find a work-study job. Vandy has job-fair in August. I don’t think incoming freshman are allowed to apply for FWS jobs on campus yet :(</li>
</ul>
<p>Everyone is being very helpful! :)</p>
<p>I just looked it up for you…for 2010, it’s $4500…</p>
<p>that doesn’t include the W/S money.</p>
<p>however, it’s hard to find a summer job that will pay that much unless you can get a full-time paid internship or something at a big company over the summer. </p>
<p>If you have any big aerospace/high-tech companies around your home, see if any are hiring summer interns…they usually pay well $15-25 per hour and usually the people are pretty nice to the kids. :)</p>
<p>Make a resume and give it to adults that you know that work for such companies to have them look for you (if they’re willing). If you’re a NMF, be sure to put that on your resume. My son’s internship immediately bumped his salary by $4 a hour right after they learned he had been a NMF…bizarre. The HR did it. Weird</p>
<p>The town where I live doesn’t really have any internships/company positions. It’s more local businesses, restaurants, and grocery stores…
I was looking at some tips on how to find a summer job and it suggested a resume.
Resumes for internships (like your son)are understandable and are probably encouraged, but are they required for restaurants or clothing stores? That seems kind of unnecessary.I don’t see how they would care what my grades are, and I wouldn’t really have any official references for past work experience either.</p>
<p>No, resumes are not needed to apply for a summer job at a restaurant or clothing store…</p>
<p>you’ll just fill out their apps and submit. </p>
<p>I don’t see how they would care what my grades are,</p>
<p>Actually, potential employers for restaurants, local businesses, etc will infer that a student with good grades is a potential employee that will be dependable, won’t be lazy, and will show up on time.</p>
<p>True-I spoke to hastily. </p>
<p>I talked about the financial aid situation with my parents, and they thought it was a good idea.
Hopefully the Stafford loan will cover around $5500 total and we can pay off the unsubsidized loan while i’m still in college. This will likely leave around $9000 for my parents to cover after paying for books from my summer job and using work-study.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone-especially mom2collegekids-for your help!!</p>
<p>I find your financial aid to be excellent for an EFC of $16,000</p>
<p>many schools would have replaced $5,500 of the Scholarship/Grant with Stafford loans…and others would have a gap…</p>
<p>so, yes, excellent financial aid package and a great college</p>
<p>congratulations!</p>