Got in... Can't afford it.

Colleges and Universities A-Z Dartmouth College
1

<p>Got in!</p>

<p>"Dad I got into Dartmouth!"</p>

<p>"That's nice."</p>

<p>"Can I go visit?"</p>

<p>"Why? You'll never afford to go there."</p>

<p>My financial aid report said I was getting zero aid. Last year, my parents' small business did very well. This year, our income was negative. = on FAFSA we look fine, but in reality we're barely living off of our savings. This info. was on the CSS profile, so I don't understand why it wasn't noticed by the financial aid committee. </p>

<p>What do I do?</p>

2

<p>Call in and explain the situation. You may have to send in a little more paperwork, but they’re usually pretty sensitive to that sort of thing.</p>

3

<p>While they may reconsider, in general, financial aid is based on last year’s income, not this year’s. And they also expects there are college savings and count assets.</p>

4

<p>I would definitely get in contact with the office of financial aid and explain your situation.</p>

<p>If that doesn’t work out, maybe you could defer your admission for a year? [Deferred</a> Matriculation](<a href=“Home | Dartmouth Admissions”>Home | Dartmouth Admissions)</p>

<p>Dartmouth is worth waiting for!</p>

5

<p>Nique is on the money. I would defer for a year or have them adjust EFC.</p>

6

<p>aranyra, call the financial aid office. Yes, offers are based on the previous years income, but I do know that many colleges will look at current financial distress.</p>

<p>best of luck to you!</p>

7

<p>Yeah agreed with everyone else. Call the financial aid office ASAP. I got rejected from Dartmouth but it just breaks my heart to see someone not be able to go to such an amazing school after all that hard work just because of money. The only reason someone should not be able to go to Dartmouth if that’s where they want to go is if they were denied (like me lol), not because of finances. Best of luck to you. I really do hope that everything turns out well for you and your family. And Congrats on the acceptance. :)</p>

8

<p>I appealed. They didn’t change their minds.</p>

<p>I feel so horrible. I’ve been working for this for so long, and I am so close, so close, but just too far. I feel sick. I hate Dartmouth. I hate the college process. It’s unfair and I deserve better. I just don’t know why this would happen, and why they would imply that anyone could go, that cost doesn’t matter. I just… don’t understand. There are other people who would pay full price, and they could just let these people in and acknowledge that’s what they are doing from the start, instead of getting everyone’s hopes up. If I had know that I wouldn’t be able to go to college because of my parents’ incomes, fine, I wouldn’t have put so much into it, so much work and effort and time and stress and hope and expectation. I would have relaxed, knowing that I’d go where I’d go. But no, that’s not good enough–they have to be politically correct, even if they don’t mean it. I don’t… see why this should happen. Even throughout the appeal process, I somehow still thought that this was just a mix-up, that things would sort themselves out. I always thought I’d be able to go. I never fully readied myslef for what turned out to be inevitable. How does one live in a world that lies about everything? What does that mean to a person? Others are in worse situations. But I deserved better than this.</p>

9

<p>What other schools are you considering? What careers are you interested in?</p>

<p>Depending on you’re interests, it may easily be worth it to take $50,000 in loans for the first year.<br>
I know this can sound absurd, but it’s true.</p>

10

<p>aranyria…Dartmouth DOESN’T deserve you! Dckcloud…many folks aren’t eligible for loans under any circumstances. $50,000.00 is no mere chump change! You have to look carefully at the entire situation. I’d say the best course of action is to defer a year. You could work and recharge the batteries, save beaucoup bucks to go in 2010 to Dartmouth. Try it for a year then and TRANSFER if you sacrifice AGAIN and still get no financial support after one year of college.</p>

11

<p>I think I’m too tired to just put another year into the possibility that Dartmouth will change its mind the following year. It probably won’t. And throwing in $50,000 and then transfering is not something I can afford.</p>

<p>I don’t know what I want to do. I am interested in law, I guess. Not really, but I can’t think of anything else, so sure, law. </p>

<p>Otherwise, I’m thinking of going to the University of Illinois. I’m scared I’ll hate it. A lot of people from my high school go, and I hear it has the biggest frat scene ever, and all of that put together makes me think it’s going to be like high school (which I hated). I mean, there might be fringe groups who are different, but I’m sick of being in a fringe group.</p>

<p>There is also the University of Alabama, which gave me a full ride, yay, but has all the problems of U of I plus is really far from home plus probably has even less kids like me. I’ll be alone there, I fear.</p>

<p>NYU is another possiblity. I got a scholarship there, but I’ll still have no money for grad school. Plus, one of the things I always idealized aobut college was the campus. NYU doesn’t have a campus. My perfect image of college is me sitting out on the quad with friends and stuff, and NYU doesn’t have that basic thing.</p>

12

<p>I agree with the basic plan Barristerdad has laid out, differ and then try to get the money/ finaid better for next year. I have a friend who is not going to be able to go to Cornell because his parents won’t help him pay and even though they cut his payment significantly, it still wasn’t low enough to play ball. He’s hurt right now, but I know that he’s still going to do great things no matter where he goes. I’d say the same to you. Maybe Dartmouth wasn’t meant to be; but Dartmouth isn’t perfect, nor is it what determines what you will do. That’s all you. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope to hear of great things that are to come from you, no matter where you end up.</p>

13

<p>Follow the money…</p>

14

<p>

</p>

<p>Can we say entitlement?</p>

<p>I agree with Barrister, that it is not a matter of you deserving Dartmouth, Dartmouth does not deserve you. A college acceptance is not a “reward” for all of “your hard work.”</p>

<p>First of all, your anger is directed at the wrong people. If Dartmouth did not give you any financial aid, they have determined that based on your family’s income and assets that they can afford to pay full freight for you to attend Dartmouth. </p>

<p>Your family, who is first in line when it comes to paying for your education (remember the money that you get from need based FA, is provided by other people’s parents) has made the choice not to pay full freight. </p>

<p>Where you and your family fell down is that fact that you did not do your due diligence regarding FA. If you had ran yoru #'s though Dartmouth’s FA calculator or the college board calculator using both the federal and inistitutional methodologies, you would have had an idea as to how much your family would have had to pay for you to attend Dartmouth. Then perhaps you would have added some schools where you would have been in line for merit $.</p>

<p>Your best bet, especially if you have law school or grad school on the horizon and most of the FA is given in the form of loans is to get the best education possible at the lowest cost. Even with NYU giving you 25k a year, this means that your parents will have to come up with almost 30k a year for you to attend NYU. So at graduation, you will have over 100k in debt.</p>

<p>At the end of the day, yor college experience is going to be what you make of it. If you go to Illinois or Alabama with the mind set that they are beneath you, and you deserve better, you will have a miserable 4 years. Since your parents have essentially told you that you are attending where your money
can take you you either go, defer a year, turn down everything ad reapply adding schools where you can get merit aid.</p>

15

<p>I couldn’t disagree more with Barristerdad! The college has clearly decided her family has the resources to pay. The problem is that the family does not agree that they can afford that much. Nothing is going to change unless her family’s financial position heads south which is not a good idea to bank on for many reasons.</p>

<p>Honestly, this is just one of many, many similar cases on these boards right now. Many families seem not to figure out what they can afford and use the calculators widely available so they can tell their kid’s before they apply. This is sad and hard on these kids!</p>

<p>So unfortunately the OP should move on with a school the family can afford and keep in mind the study that says she will do equally well going to school anywhere because she’s a high achiever and will remain one no matter where she goes.</p>

16

<p>Sybbie, frankly I am a little surprised at you and at the callousness in your post. Having been in high school not too long ago, I can understand the frustration that this person is feeling right now. College admissions was insane five years ago and it is even more insane now. The difficulty and sacrifices that these poor kids have to make, particular the ones that aren’t meathead jocks that can throw a football 50 yards or who don’t have parents that can buy a college a dorm or two, border on the ridiculous. I suspect that aranyria could probably have had a much more enjoyable high school experience and still have gone to U of I or Alabama. So “entitlement?” Maybe. But show me someone who wouldn’t feel entitled after doing everything asked of them and then some, only to find out the rules of the game got changed up on them without warning.</p>

<p>Furthermore, while I obviously don’t know aranyria’s situation, I can say that some of these financial aid figures can be very skewed. One of my closest friends in high school got into a number of fine schools, but realized that he wouldn’t be able to go to any of them without taking out a massive number of loans because based on his EFC he was eligible for zero need-based aid. I know how his family lived and while they were obviously relatively well off, not in poverty or anything like that, there was NO way they could afford to cover even close to full tuition. His dad was a middle school teacher and his mom was a stay-at-home mom. The problem was that the financial aid calculations included things that ultimately skewed their EFC (for example, they didn’t have a mortgage they were paying off because their family has owned their house for a while). Ultimately, he had a choice between going to an excellent school but being in massive debt by the time he graduated, or going to a less excellent school that was offering him a full merit scholarship. He vacillated between the two but ultimately chose the school offering the scholarship. The vibe I got about his four years there is that he never fully connected with the other students at the school and he never felt fully challenged and stimulated the way he would have been at the other school.</p>

<p>How is it fair to blame any of this on a person who set getting the best education possible (which is what I assume someone is doing if they are applying to a school like Dartmouth) as their ultimate goal?</p>

17

<p>Oh, and I should add that the problem with Barristerdad’s suggestion is that there’s no way she’ll be able to save enough money in a year to cover even one year’s worth of full tuition at Dartmouth.</p>

18

<p>

While I extremely ditto this, I also feel compelled to add that the main problem here is that the college financing system is skewed in favor of the really poor and really rich…if you’re really poor, qualifying for tons of financial aid is easy. If you’re really rich, Dartmouth tuition is chump change. The problem is if you’re neither, it can be hard to get enough financial aid to cover the costs – what Dartmouth and other colleges essentially say is, “Well, you’ve got a house you can sell, so you can cover most of the costs – your EFC’s going to be pretty high.”</p>

<p>Unfortunately I don’t know if there’s a solution to this. sybbie is right, though, in that if you ever have any doubt about the financial aid you qualify for (i.e. you are neither super rich nor super poor), you really should get out an EFC calculator like the one on Dartmouth’s website to get a rough idea of what the college will give you if you get in. But it’s really too late for that now. :(</p>

19

<p>Hey Xan,</p>

<p>I hope that all is going well. </p>

<p>I don’t think that anything I said was callous, maybe harsh, maybe straight with no chaser, maybe more real than the Op would like to hear or maybe I am just not a fan of a I have a really low tolerance when it comes to people throwing tantrums. However, her post is not something we have not all seen year over year. </p>

<p>One of the things that I have seen from professional standpoint when it comes to college admissions is that students do only look at schools peripherally (and I am being really generous here as many do not get past the name of the school).</p>

<p>If does demonstrate a lack of due diligence on the part of this student and others on some of the basic tennants in the college application and admissions process;</p>

<p>No matter how smart you are, or how much you don’t “need” your parents, at the end of the day college is a family decision.</p>

<p>Sit down and have a realistic talk with your parents as to how much they are willing to pay/ borrow for your education.</p>

<p>When we are talking about $200k, especially since my kid is not even remotely independently wealthy and is not in a position to write her own checks to pay her tuition, you had better beleive that she needs to talk to me, whether I have to pay all or any part of it. </p>

<p>When your parents tell you that they are only willing to pay “X” dollars, a student should believe it and not think that just because you get into dream school that the money is going to suddenly appear.</p>

<p>I totally understand and agree over the past 5 years that admissions as become more harried. However, over the past 5 years, Dartmouth has still had a FA calculator (it was our experience 5 years ago, that what they said we would have to pay was pretty on point with the information I put into the calculator). And lets be truthful, the FA has become a lot more generous than it was when you and Chicky were admitted.</p>

<p>When it comes to elite college admissions, it is unpredictable for everyone. There were over 18k applicants to Dartmouth this year. The overwhelming majority were probably just as hardworking or “deserving” as the OP. However, the OP beat the odds and was granted admissions. If to say nothing for the FA people at Dartmouth, they really bend over backwards to work with families (I have had to deal with them on a few occassions for my students).</p>

<p>I still think that a lot of the student’s frustration could have been alleviated if she had taken a bottoms-up approach to applying for college. From her post, the student did not have a “true safety” school, which if accepted, she would have been happy to attend and is also a financially feasible option for her family. It seems that neither NYU, Alabama or Illi fits that bill. Op could have also benefited from building a list from the perspective that if any school on her list was the only school she was accepted to, that she would have been happy to attend (this is the process that worked in my house).</p>

<p>If all that can be said about the student is that she has spent the past 12 working hard in hopes of being accepted to a “good” school, then her motivation is a bit flawed. What happened to being intrisically motivated and taking pride in the fact that one should do their best work whether or not there is a payoff involved? At the end of the day it is her education and she will be the primary beneficiary? What about the student expanding her own horizions and learning more about the world around her and hoping to find her place in the world?</p>

20

<p>CC posters tend to sugar coat everything, Sybbie was just talking turkey. It is a bit hard to understand how a kid smart enough to get into Dartmouth from a family that has enough to have an over $50K EFC, didn’t run the numbers and know this would happen. </p>

<p>I’m not sure if all of the families this happens to were just pipe dreaming that colleges would see their situation as special or they just didn’t bother to do the homework. Either way, lots of kids on CC end up blaming the system or the college rather that realizing that many in their situation are paying full fare and that the fact that their family will or can not speaks to the family’s priorities.</p>