Financial Aid

<p>bv123, FA offices do make mistakes so email them or call them and check it out. My D’s FA at another school seemed out of whack her Junior year, so I contacted the FA office and they looked at it, and told me they had made a calculation error and then revised her package to even better than I thought it should be. That discrepancy seems way too big - but, what is your Institutional EFC? - you need to look at that too from college board website. The Institutional EFC is often higher, sometimes lower, than the FAFSA EFC. Looks like you may have assets that the Institutional method, Tufts, counts that FAFSA doesn’t.</p>

<p>Financial stats? I have to pay about 2k a yr, a little less if I remember. I got a scholarship from the school that replaces all loans with school grants. I had about 20k in school aid, the scholarship cover the rest.</p>

<p>I got an appeal form but it’s really just for changes in income not assets. What should I do?</p>

<p>It seems that in the infinite wisdom of Admissions/FA to be need blind, they have cut aid across the board and made it impossible for anyone but the very rich or the very poor to attend.</p>

<p>Epic epic fail</p>

<p>Edit:

That’s probably a mistake. Get an appeal form.</p>

<p>@bv: Do you have extremely significant assets and a large, large amount of home equity (guesstimating 400k)?</p>

<p>Yeah, if not, it’s probably a mistake.</p>

<p>This may seem like a strange question but does anyone know if the $53900 estimated cost for 09-10 includes things like the mandatory meal plan or insurance and does has their ever been an incident where a student got less (or more) FA than Tufts originally gave them?</p>

<p>^^ Yes it covers everything, including projected personal and travel expenses.</p>

<p>If Tufts missed something in your aid or if you made a mistake when applying you can appeal, which would likely yield you something extra. I don’t know of any incidence where aid was taken away, but I’d imagine that it might happen if you lied on your application.</p>

<p>the revision process was really quick, they increased it to cover basically everything although i do have $1000 in loan, should I attempt to get this changed into a grant because in a news release from Tufts they stated that they would not include loans in the awards for students with a family income of $40,000 or less.</p>

<p><a href=“http://news.tufts.edu/releases/release.php?id=50[/url]”>http://news.tufts.edu/releases/release.php?id=50&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>More questions… ;)</p>

<ol>
<li>What are the prices for each dorm?</li>
<li>If we are able to save some of the money that is awarded to us does it ‘roll over’ into the next year?</li>
</ol>

<p>^ Wow, really?! I hope they get back to me soon then :)</p>

<ol>
<li>The cost of living on campus is the same for all dorms.</li>
<li>How do you imagine that you would be able to “save” the money? If you choose to live off campus and/or not enroll in a meal plan, Tufts will instead write you a check covering your off-campus costs.</li>
</ol>

<p>Neethus, keep us informed. </p>

<p>And to the above poster: Tufts is not needblind. It is a goal, but for now it is need aware. So perhaps there is some gaping. But truth be told, I’d rather see financial aid go to the truly poor than to those who lived well beyond their means racking up consumer debt by expensive vacations and other perks. Seems a little unfair to have struggled to save money over the years (and glad to take on the burden) only to see those who have been living high on the hog rack in tens of thousands of aid. I’m just saying…</p>

<p>They didn’t give me any more aid :(</p>

<p>I’m not sure what I’m doing yet… I will keep you posted!</p>

<p>only school so far that hasn’t given me at least a LITTLE aid.</p>

<p>doesn’t surprise me, they kinda do have a tiny endowment.</p>

<p><em>sigh</em> Paying wouldn’t be a problem for me since my mom works at Tufts Medical Center and I automatically get a 50% discount. Too bad I don’t have the grades to get in I only have a 3.6 GPA and top 29% at my school where 89% of Tufts applicants are in the top 10% at their schools. :((</p>

<p>^^ They lowered it to 50%? booooo</p>

<p>And FYI a 3.6 GPA won’t exclude you from any college. Just nail the SATs and write damn good essays.</p>

<p>@neethus</p>

<p>No…we don’t have significant assets.
But my parents work overseas so they get about 90k of “tax-free” income (they do pay foreign taxes on those though)
Do you think that might be the reason?
Our AGI is only around 12k.</p>

<p>^^ I’m no expert on aid, but if you think something is causing the large discrepancy, like the “tax-free” income which you do pay foreign tax for, then you need to make an appeal to the university.</p>

<p>Just got a suprisingly reasonable offer. There is hope for the middle class people that save!</p>