<p>Sorry if this has been discussed extensively before, but how does Penn's financial aid tend to be? How does aid for most people in the 70k-90k income bracket compare to aid at, say, Harvard (I only ask because I'm familiar with their financial aid programs)?</p>
<p>I know that some people say "If you have to ask how much Georgetown costs, then you shouldn't go to Georgetown," and I was wondering if the same sort of thing applied to Penn.</p>
<p>Thanks :)</p>
<p>Harvard has more money than Upenn…so you’ll inevitably get more money at Harvard.</p>
<p>They’re not part of that 10% of whatever your income is thing. It’s gonna be more than that.</p>
<p>I’m a current Sophomore at Penn and it (by far) gave me the most aid out of all my other choices.</p>
<p>Hopkins ran out of their endownment = no money.
Brown gave me $17k
NYU gave me $19k
Penn gave me $27</p>
<p>Huge difference. My brother goes to Princeton and they apparently have great aid as well! Good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks for both of your replies! They were really helpful :)</p>
<p>I’m in the 70k-90k income bracket, and on my penn portal thing it says that i’m elligable to receive more than 44k per year, so yeah Penn is pretty much freakin awesome with aid :)</p>
<p>I receive about 40k a year and my parents make just over 100k per year, so I would say its pretty decent.</p>
<p>Wow that’s a lot of money. My parents (or parent) make slightly under 100,000 a year and I have a twin sister who is also going to Penn. We both got around 30,000 in aid each. Should we ask Penn for more? (my parents will have to pay 40,000 each year for us currently)</p>
<p>I just looked at my aid- and you are actually right. We are ‘just’ over 100k and I was factoring my 3000 in scholarships in plus a little rounding up. We are more like 33-34k</p>
<p>I’m really confused by my financial aid because I’m getting 21k which sets my family’s income 6 levels above what it really is (according to the Penn “Look at the Facts” sheet on the websit)</p>
<p>Congratulations to all of you for being accepted by Penn. I thought that the aid package would be determined by the income and the investment. Does Penn expect you to pay more than that as estimated by FAFSA? Does Penn include parents’ IRA and Pension in PFAS? </p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Penn financial aid is very strong in my experience.</p>
<p>Here’s the approximate order of financial aid packages that I received:</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford </li>
<li>Penn/Princeton</li>
<li>Wellesley</li>
<li>Brown/Dartmouth</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
</ol>
<p>etc.</p>
<p>I hope that helps</p>
<p>Oh, and whether or not you pay your EFC depends on your family’s circumstances.</p>
<p>my family is pushing bankruptcy and penn gave no aid. Talked to a fin aid officer in person and she basically said “not my problem.”</p>
<p>I guess it differs for everyone, but I got a fairly satisfying aid package. My family is at around 60-70k, but we do have very unique circumstances that actually make our income lower, so I got around 39k (including 3k FWS).</p>
<p>
How do you “push” bankruptcy? I thought you either filed for it or not. Isn’t Penn’s FA based on demonstrated need as determined by FAFSA, CSS and their own form? How much was your EFC?</p>
<p>pushing bankruptcy means all credit lines are maxed out, almost 300k owed to friends/relatives/“angel investors” (loan sharks) and such. pushing bankruptcy also means that on the drive back up to penn 3 credit cards were rejected at the gas pump so we were almost stranded in the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>EFC is based EXCLUSIVELY on income. Our negative net worth is not of any interest to sfs.</p>
<p>
How else should it be determined? If it wasn’t tied to income you’d have people with 200K incomes paying less for tuition than people making less than 40K. I’m sorry about your family’s financial issues, but they IMHO don’t reflect poorly of Penn’s FA policies. It would seem that despite receiving no FA from Penn and having all of your credit lines maxed out, you are currently enrolled in a $50K+ per year Ivy League school. Perhaps Penn was correct when they decided you didn’t need FA.</p>
<p>aglages, and you think I should have turned down joseph wharton scholar after 12 years of work towards that? The fact of the matter is, it is not my fault that my parents grossly mismanaged their finances. </p>
<p>Besides, my only alternative that was financially feasible was U of Maryland, a crummy school where no one from their business department can get a job.</p>
<p>Edit - why are we even talking about my situation? OP asked how is fin aid. I’m saying fin aid sucks.</p>
<p>
We are talking about your situation because you used it to justify your opinion that FA sucks at Penn. We obviously disagree. I am unaware of any FA program at ANY school that ties their FA to how much of their income a student’s parents have remaining after they pay their obligations. </p>
<p>Would you consider this an accurate answer to the OPs question:
“FA sucks if your parents make a lot of money but have grossly mismanaged their finances…just like it would at all colleges”?</p>
<p>aglages, I have nothing to prove to you and I am most certainly not going to detail the unfortunate circumstances regarding my situation. So if you and your ego (as those are the only two entities that could have possibly been referenced by “we”) choose to disagree, that is your choice (and a rational one at that given your bounded rationality by information asymmetries).</p>