<p>I got my aid report and am not happy with it. My family's EFC was such that I didn't expect to get much aid, but we can't really pay all that they said we could on the EFC. On top of that, my parents will have me take out loans to cover everything they can't cover so that I will help pay for my education. I have applied to cheaper universities and gotten scholarships to other expensive schools. At this point, it will be hard to attend Penn financially. What can I do to try to get more financial aid? Any advice? If a letter could do something, who should I send it to?</p>
<p>I was accepted ED, and I sent a letter explaining my family's financial situation, but they never bothered to call back or anything. When my package was updated a week ago, the expense budget raised 2K but they upped my grant 2K, so my family contribution didn't change much. My next step is to schedule a phone interview. I would suggest that you ^^^ skip the letter (if you choose to, send it to Penn SFS) and schedule a phone interview.</p>
<p>are you able to apply for financial aid in your sophomore year? (cuz i didn't do my fin aid things when i was applying :/)</p>
<p>Yeah - you have to submit the FAFSA every year pretty much in february or march.</p>
<p>yeah... im not too happy with my aid either. i applied for a re-evaluation and i haven't heard as yet. i expected aid of about $30 000 but i only got $18 400 from penn! compared to the $30k plus packages i got from places like brown, wellesley, barnard etc and $40414 from cmc. its getting kinda late so i think its gonna be brown.</p>
<p>I'm not happy either. But, then again, I applied ED, and UPenn is not known for giving out good aid packets. All these schools just want to suck your money. I'm especially angry that scholarships don't really help much.</p>
<p>On thing everyone needs to keep in mind is that while penn has need blind admissions, financial aid is still used to target the most desireable accepted students. For example, I come from a very small town in southern AZ, and Penn has a certain quota of students from every state that it tries to fill. My finaid package as a freshman was over 38K worth of grants and institutional scholarships, and they included a guarantee that I would never have to take out a loan over 4 years. Now, other comparable schools such as cornell and duke offered me exponentially less. For some of the people in this thread, the opposite is the case; ie the person with a great dartmouth or brown offer. So basically, my point is that if you have much better offers from other schools, it's because that particular school is putting more effort into having you accept their offer of admission (the formulas used to calculate EFC at most of the top schools are essentially the same). It seems to me that if money is an issue, it is better to be pragmatic and go to a comparable school if the offer is better.</p>
<p>I love my aid package: 40k grant, 2,3k loan, 3k work, 1.5k family cont.
And Im an International student!!! not need-blind :)</p>
<p>Um, I'm definitely calling them.....</p>
<p>My mom makes less than 45k a year but they want her to pay 8,000, me to pay 2000 in the summer then 2000 work-study and then we have 2000 loans...that doesn't even make sense with the rest of the posts on here.</p>
<p>Does anyone know when the whole 'no loans if you make less than 50k' thing kicks in?</p>
<p>There needs to be an article explaining that Penn promotion that had... because it really doesn't seem to be in effect right now</p>