<p>G'Town has a reputation for poor financial aid.</p>
<p>I personally know someone who graduated who owes 160K</p>
<p>Is this the norm?</p>
<p>If you know some one who owes 160 k for a Georgetown education, went into this or should have gone into this with his eyes wide open. Since Georgetown meets 100% demonstrated need they believed that his parents had the income/assets to pay 49k a year for 4 years. </p>
<p>The fact that they could not or did not is no fault of the school. The student and his parents could have walked away year one when they knew that paying the first 40k was going to be a stretch. Your friend does not owe $160k by himself. Either his parents took out loans for him to attend Georgetown, or his patents or another credit worthy adult who did not mind also being on the hook for 160k co-signed the loans.</p>
<p>If you are interested in Georgetown one of the first things that you should do sit with your parents, run their numbers through the net price calculator and ask if they are ok with paying or borrowing the money you need to attend Georgetown.</p>
<p>Georgetown gives great need based aid. They don’t give merit aid. If your friend has $160,000 in debt because of a Georgetown college education, it’s because they had no financial need…or very limited financial need. At $40,000 a year of out of pocket costs, your friend’s family income is VERY high…VERY.</p>
<p>If your friend’s family had financial need, Georgetown guarantees to meet that need using THEIR formula to compute the need.</p>
<p>Old saying here…stop counting other people’s money. Worry about your own. You likely don’t know the whole story about your friend’s family finances (nor should you).</p>
<p>Georgetown has a Net Price Calculator on their website. Run your numbers through it to get an ESTIMATE of your aid. Remember, however, that if your family owns a business, owns additional real estate to your primary residence, or your parents are divorced, these NPC tend to NOT be as accurate…but it will at least give you a ballpark.</p>
<p>Another possibility is that some of the $160k results from the borrower spending more than Georgetown’s COA each year and took out loans to finance “the experience”.</p>
<p>Washington is an expensive city and I’m sure living off-campus in a nice apartment and eating in too many restaurants would rack up bills quickly. Also, Study Abroad opportunities are wonderful, but can be rather expensive. It would be easy to add tens of thousands of dollars on travel experiences that are not part of COA.</p>
<p>A third possibility is that the student took five (or more) years to graduate. I believe Georgetown is a school that only offers FA for four years. The student might have borrowed the full COA for all subsequent years.</p>
<p>My son attended Georgetown SFS. They don’t have as large of an endowments as HPY, hence their definition of “need” is very different than need definitions at these other schools. I had no idea that we would not qualify for any need given that we were a single income family with 2 younger siblings… We paid full retail! I can easily imagine how those debt could pile up to $150k. Well, we ended up going to Georgetown anyway since I had made the mistake allowing my son to only apply to those super top schools that don’t offer merit aid, so none of the schools gave him any aid (Middlebury; Tufts; Johns Hopkins, Vassar etc.) we somehow got him through and he got a good education, got accepted by 6 top 14 law schools, but I am not sure it was the $230k or so we spent borrowing from everywhere to get him through without settling him with all those debt. I would never, ever do that again. No school is worth $60-65k/ year what it now costs. You live and learn. My second child only applied to school where she would likely get significant merit aid. She got accepted by all seven schools she applied to , and all gave her merit scholarship which brought down tuition to 40%-60% of “rack rate”. I highly recommend that approach. I am very happy with the school my daughter will now attend in the fall, and will follow the same approach with my last child, who will be a rising senior in high school.</p>
<p>the big difference for schools like GU and the well-endowed Ivies and Stanford, is in the treatment of home equity. The latter group cap the amount of home equity used in the calculation of need, but most other colleges, including GU, do not.</p>
<p>Also, at Georgetown, it has been said that self employed/family owned business, home equity, and treatment of non-custodial parent income is used. In particular, self employed find that their need based aid at Georgetown is less than expected.</p>
<p>Calmomofhthreee, if you didn’t get ANY need based aid from Georgetown, your single income was likely substantial. Or if there was a non-custodial parent that I come was high, or you had significant assets (including home equity).</p>
<p>For families who are lower income with few assets, Georgetown aid can be very generous.</p>
<p>@Thumper
Substantial income is very relative by region…we live in CA…so what would be substantial everywhere in the country is not so here…also housing prices are of course higher, this was in 2008…CSS profile was based on 2007 housing bubble values and theoretical investment values …he entered school just as everything collapsed in the fall of 2008…could not have timed it any worse…oh well.
I don’t think I am alone in not understanding properly the merit/needs based issues…this was before I discovered cc… I learned a tremendous amount here and approached the college app very differently with my second child</p>
<p>Calmomof3:</p>
<p>As a native Californisn, I understand your point, even if it incorrect, housing is expensive in many areas, particularly those that attend GU. Heck, the DC area is booming, as are housing costs. Costs are also mighty high in the NE. Most colleges don’t have the endowment of the Ivies, and thus they cannot afford to cap home equity, (yes, it sux,)</p>
<p>Thank you for your excellent insight Calmomofthree. We are going to follow your advice. A million thanks.</p>