<p>Hello everyone
Right now I'm determining which colleges I am applying to and to water down the list I need to know how good the financial aid is at each school. My family income is $50000~$65000 (I don't know exact number because my parents are reluctant). I was looking through some reviews and some people are complaining about the financial aid at lehigh being unfair, this raised some concerns because I also have another sibling in college so my parents are not able to pay for two peoples education. I was just wondering according to this information how good will my financial aid package be?
Thanks</p>
<p>Our income is very low $60’s and we were only offered $2400 in an institutional grant and a Stafford loan. This is with only one child in college. Lehigh said that we were denied getting more because we have equity built up in our house.</p>
<p>It will be hard to predict. Your parents should use the calculator at lehighs financial aid page to figure out their expected contibution. We have six kids including an older disabled daughter, applied ED 1 and we are very happy with our package. Just a heads up, lehigh gives a community service grant that was also very generous</p>
<p>In our case Lehigh’s calculator was not accurate at all. It calculated that we would get $23,000, but as you can see above we got nowhere near that amount. The financial aid department said that there are only three possible calculators available to colleges to post and they do not accurately reflect what Lehigh takes into consideration when determining financial aid. I would say that if money is an issue do not use the calculator to think it is ok to apply ED. That is the mistake we made with my daughter. Apply regular decision so you can then compare packages. Maybe with a sibling in college you will do better than we did.</p>
<p>Lehigh’s financial aid left a lot to be desired. There is basically no merit aid. My son got merit aid from other schools, but nothing form Lehigh. We got priced out as they only offered $12k need based. We would have ended up paying $45k, and with two other kids coming up behind our oldest that was completely unaffordable. I talked with both FA office and Admissions counselor, but got nowhere. Your situation would be better than ours as our income is higher and we don’t have anyone else in college, but are paying for private school which Lehigh did take into consideration.</p>
<p>In any case, its a great school academic wise, so worth applying and seeing how your situation comes out. I have a co-worker who graduated from Lehigh ~5yrs ago who was able to get scholarships (Lehigh and outside type) his jr and sr years and paid almost nothing for those 2 yrs. So you never know.</p>
<p>I will be a freshman at Lehigh next year, and Lehigh has definitely given me the best package of any school. I see that other people in this thread got no money from Lehigh, but Lehigh has been incredibly generous to me. I can’t reveal the actual numbers, but basically Lehigh after financial aid ended up being cheaper than TCNJ after financial aid and I’m a New Jersey resident. Lehigh was not my safety school, it was more of a match. The money was need based, not merit based. Most of my aid was grants with a few small loans and some work study. I live in an affluent area but my family is quite the opposite of the norm here and we definitely need the money. My parents are divorced and my dad lives in a different state so there are many complications that come along with that and I have a younger sister so this all affected my package. I applied regular decision to all my schools so that I could compare packages and I’m really glad I did not apply ED anywhere. If you really need financial aid, do not apply early decision anywhere. You will not get as much aid as you’re looking for and you’re better off comparing packages from different schools. If you don’t get into a school RD but think you could’ve gotten in ED, chances are they would give you no money if you were accepted ED so it’s a waste.</p>
<p>Not always true. We got an extremely generous package and applied ED.</p>