We got our financial aid package on Friday and it wasn’t as much as we had hoped. Has anybody ever petitioned for more money? I don’t know if graduating with more than 100K in debt is worth it.
Not worth it. What are your other choices for schools?
All the other schools were the same. The only affordabler school would be our state school, University of Florida.
Then that is a fine choice. The best gift you can give to yourself is as close to debt-free undergrad as possible. When you are in your 20s, you will be so thankful you are not chained to massive monthly payments. You will be able to afford your future.
It wouldn’t hurt to appeal for more financial aid; many are successful with it.
Is your award consistent with the financial aid calculator on Cornell web site: http://finaid.cornell.edu/cost-attend/financial-aid-estimator ? If it is, this cost and amount of aid should be no surprise to you and your family. If it is not, then there may have been an error in FAFSA, or CSS and you can contact FA to inquire on difference.
Paying for college is a family’s personal decision. These conversations should have taken place prior to applications. I am always saddened to hear these stories as all schools offer websites with cost of attendance and estimated FA that are very accurate. Ivy league schools have never offered any merit aid. If parents are unwilling to or unable to pay for private school education, please save you child disappointment and save your money on the application fee. I am very sorry for your situation.
^ agree wholly with 3rdsontocollege
My aid last year wasn’t as much as we were expecting from the financial aid calculator. My dad went to the financial aid office and showed them the aid and scholarships I was getting from other schools, but since none of those schools were Cornell’s competition (other Ivy Leagues, MIT, Stanford), the financial aid office did nothing and basically told us to deal with it. My family is making it work currently, but it definitely isn’t easy and sort of sucks. It’s the classic “too rich for financial aid, too poor to pay full price” problem.
We knew it would cost a lot but i don’t work and i have 3 other children and i thought they would have factored that in. I just know how bad she wants this and how hard she worked. She is willing to go into debt to attend and wants absolutely nothing to do with our state school. And @3rdsontocollege, of course we had these discussions before she applied. Our finances changed these past 2 years. I see that your comments never change so Im assuming your children are all attend ivys.
Try an appeal. It can’t hurt.
@lisaol , your FA package will change if you have more then one child at college at the same time. If you are comparing packages, Vandy is a NO LOAN school, This will possibly decrease the amount of debt approx 20K (or more) over the 4 years.
Is the “over $100k” in loans to cover the majority of your EFC? Have you set a budget to know how much your family can comfortably afford? Will you have kids in college at the same time? My own kids are spaced at a very unfortunate (or fortunate?) 4 years apart. How about yours? How will this change your EFC?
Our FAFSA EFC is high but the CSS number is worse. I have already taken certain schools off the table because of our EFC and told my son he has to seek out schools that award some merit aid.
Have you rechecked your financial aid forms for any errors?
Is your home equity the problem? Why is your EFC so unaffordable that you have to take out over $100,000?
What % of your EFC can you actually pay versus the % you are taking in loans?
I don’t think you recieve a large break on your EFC for 4 vs 2 children.
@txstella yes, our EFC is 38,000 a year. We know that we can give her what our state school would charge about
18K a year. We have 4 children but they are all 3 years apart in school. So, we will always have a senior and a freshman. We have Florida prepay for the other 3 , so we make payments monthly for them and they will be paid off by the time they start college. I’m assuming the middle 2 will go to UF.
I have rechecked our forms, I have called and asked about more aid.
We have several investment properties but they not worth anything right now. We couldn’t sell them if we tried. So, we have 2 days to figure out what to do.
So you are short about $25,000 per year (your EFC - what you really can pay plus loans your daughter received)?
Did you try to explain the investment property problem? This is really tough.
It’s hard to see how HER borrowing $100K a year to go to Cornell is better than her going to University of Florida.
I think you can both appeal Cornell and deposit at Florida. If Cornell comes back with a better package, I think you can legitimately take it, kind of like you got off the waitlist. I don’t think that this is unethical.