Harvard or Princeton???

@RoundGenius
I would try calling the FA office. Just so happens I had to call them yesterday about something for my son and they really are the nicest and most helpful folks! I’d also double check all your figures submitted for FA pre-read. Let them know $$$ is effecting your decision AND how Yale is your first choice. AND…I found Cambridge less than attractive…actually was surprised how dirty and run down it was. Yes Boston is a great city but Cambridge? Nah!
New Haven is not filled with “serious crime”. Like any middle sized city, one must be aware of surroundings and be an informed resident. My son has had no issues.
Good luck with your quest!

@MassDaD68
Well my family makes about 150k and we are having to pay about 36k, about half of my parents’ take home pay. So every little bit counts. This isn’t us trying to squeeze more money out of Yale because we’re greedy; this is to avoid taking out tens of thousands of dollars in loans.

@carachel2
My family and I’s EFC without loans is 36k.

I was just going form memory. Obviously I was wrong. Yes 36K is a big chunk of change. Its all good, I never thought your were being greedy. I was thinking on the college end about them looking at you paying 15K and them thinking I cannot lower it much more. Since my 15K thought was flawed, all my resulting thoughts are flawed.

Good luck to you. And Congrats on your achievement from all your hard work.

@RoundGenius --is that affordable for your family and is it consistent with what you knew it would be before you applied? Were there any surprises?

Something doesn’t sound right.

Does your family own a business?

Do they have a lot of savings or assets

There’s got to be a reason that Yale is charging you that much. If your Yale EFC is matching your FAFSA EFC, then Yale sees some source of money that FAFSA does not.

@carachel2
We could do it by taking out thousands of dollars in loans. We thought we would get a bit more, but the aid is still decent.

@RoundGenius Maybe you could also check out the NPC of Stanford in case there is a difference in the estimated award, but I doubt it would be considerably higher than Princeton or Harvard, if at all.

@RoundGenius …ok, but what does “thousands of dollars in loans” mean to you and your family?

5,000/year?
20,000/year?

@carachel2 Probably 10k a year.

If another application fee is too much, how can your family pay so much in tuition? (Given that this is Yale, an immensely wealthy school that meets need.) I strongly agree with those who suggested calling the financial aid office.

If your AGI is $150k, your EFC should be around $35k (1 child), 33k (2 children), 31k (3 children). So your package may be something like $34k EFC and $2k your own contribution (work study or something like that), summing up to $36k. Based on last year my S’s experience was that the EFC numbers (say $34k) are almost the same across most Ivy schools, except for Brown which is much higher. The difference for us is that some schools do not ask for student’s own contribution ($2k) whereas Yale asked for it. We used Columbia’s offer and get $2k more from Yale. On the revised offer, the EFC remained the same, but Yale dropped the $2k student contribution. In other words, a better offer to get slightly more $$$ does not need to come from H or P; all the other Ivy schools and SM are peers as well.