<p>I haven't gotten mine yet either.</p>
<p>The FA is office is pretty behind on their work but they are working very hard to get FA packages out fast....I'm sure you'll hear something by next week.</p>
<p>International Student Here
I never plugged my data into an EFC Calculator so I can't give you guys a relative number. I was expecting to pay around 25K a year though.</p>
<p>Aid:
Scholarship - $10,600
Loan - $10,900
Employment - $1,800
TOTAL - $23,3000</p>
<p>Final family contribution: 30k</p>
<p>Sounds like a very good deal to me considering only 10-15 international students are awarded aid (I have no freaking clue how I qualified, I thought I had barely made it in to Cornell in the first place)</p>
<p>Did those who received their notifications already receive an email when financial aid awards were sent out?</p>
<p>Cornell offered ZERO in grants vs. Chicago's 9k, Brandeis' 9k, and Grinnell's 10k. </p>
<p>Way to be Cornell. Looks like I wasted my time applying.</p>
<p>if you submitted a correction FAFSA, did they take that into account?</p>
<p>and why does the letter say to file FAFSA when I already did? does anyone know?</p>
<p>Letter to me today:</p>
<p>Dear XXXX</p>
<p>....Our records indicate that your financial aid materials are complete. We are currently processing your application and a financial aid notification will be sent to you as quickly as possible...</p>
<p>:(</p>
<p><em>Sigh</em></p>
<p>Cornell grant aid: $2,000/year</p>
<p>Princeton grant: $32,000/year</p>
<p>Harvard grant: $35,000/year</p>
<p>...The sad thing is, I totally would've gone to Cornell over H and P if the financial aid was in any way decent. But with this kind of difference, it's goodbye Cornell.</p>
<p>Anyone know if it'd be at all useful to call and explain the much better offers other schools gave me, and that if my Cornell aid improves I'd absolutely go? Cornell also gave me the Presidential Research thing.</p>
<p>I would definitely recommend calling the financial aid office. Explain your situation and your unending desire to attend Cornell.</p>
<p>Cornell just may be able to budge. Perhaps meet you half way. They will probably ask you to fax in copies of the Harvard and Princeton offers to prove that you are legitimate. And it would probably help if you had a really compelling hook. For instance, you could be a world class soloist in the viola. Or you could be the top rated wrestler in your state.</p>
<p>The lower-tier Ivies (e.g. non-HYP) take their ability to land common admits with HYP very seriously. Probably too seriously, in fact. But it's a fact of life. Recently, a bunch of alums are riled up over the fact that Harvard's lacrosse team seems to have more connections to Cornell than Harvard:</p>
<p>I know of a few common admits with HYP that ended up matriculating at Cornell. Some were Cornell legacies, but most of them were athletes who were partial to the coach and the team at Cornell. There's also a cadre of MIT cross-admits who don't want to be dorked out and want a real party scene. A friend of mine was accepted to Yale, but he was from working-class Upstate New York and felt he would be much more comfortable at Cornell. I can't say I blame him.</p>
<p>But, gosh, Harvard and Princeton are pretty decent schools too. Princeton even had a halfway decent hockey team this year. It's a shame that their students and alums failed to notice.</p>
<p>The really frustrating thing about the current financial aid arms race is that Cornell is doing much more than its Ivy peers just to try to keep up. But it's really a lose-lose situation for Cornell, as not only is the school increasingly losing the common admit battles, but in spending more money on financial aid for the upper-middle class, resources are being diverted from faculty hiring and important things like cancer research. Here's a good overview of the issue:</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, what attracts you to Cornell?</p>
<p>Thanks, I'll try it. I do actually have a pretty good research hook (which would immediately identify me if I were more specific).</p>
<p>"from working-class Upstate New York and felt he would be much more comfortable at Cornell"</p>
<p>that's part of it. I'm from NYC, but still working class, and Cornell felt comfortable in a way others didn't. Cornell's "any person, any study" thing did actually seem to be reflected in the students I met there, and it's an idea I like. The math department was very friendly, and after talking to several profs about math excitedly for a while I got the notion that prof interaction would, in fact, be possible as long as I seek it out. I like Ithaca and outdoors stuff, and I figure I have plenty of time to live in a city after college. The presence of the state-funded schools seems to give more academic/career goal diversity to Cornell than those other places, and it felt more down-to-earth. I want to teach after college, a career goal not so common among the many ibanker wannabes at some other Ivies (not that they don't exist at Cornell, but it's a big enough place that it's an avoidable niche, and being partly a state school it has education programs).</p>
<p>Meh, it's not like I'll be crying over being "forced" to go to Hahvahd for financial reasons =), but I will see what I can do.</p>
<p>I have a question: Cornell says things about how financial aid is different for people with different family incomes. How do they calculate family income? In my case, my dad and stepmom together (custodial parents) make ~65k/year, but my mom (noncustodial parent) makes ~85k/year. Do they just combine the two incomes to calculate the efc, or do they use the custodial parent's income but then add a little bit to the efc based on the noncustodial parent's income?</p>
<p>Hi everyone.</p>
<p>I was wondering how Cornell does Financial Aid appeals. Should i send them an email, write them a letter, call them up or send some form?</p>
<ol>
<li>Is there a financial aid appeal process?
If there is new information that affects your family's ability to meet the expected family contribution, or if you think we may have overlooked some aspect of your family's financial circumstances, you may request a reconsideration of your financial aid package. Please notify our office in writing (via email, fax, or US mail) of your request for aid reconsideration, making sure to clearly mark any correspondence "Appeal." Since we offer the best aid package we can based on the initial information we've been given, reconsideration is based on additional supporting documentation provided by your family. This includes most recent federal tax returns if they haven't already been sent.</li>
</ol>