I have an EFC of 0, but I’ve only heard great things about USC’s fin aid from current freshman. However, I’ve heard of many stories about people getting great aid in freshman year, but receiving less aid as the years went by. Is this true?
I really can’t afford to attend USC without amazing fin aid, so this worries me. I need consistent aid for all 4 years, not just my freshman and sophomore years. Can anyone fill me in on how the aid is throughout the 4 years at USC?
Edit: My family has no assets or anything like that (my tax forms are full of “0’s” lmao. Income was 27k in 2015, but 0 dollars in 2016, and, as said before, EFC was 0 on FAFSA.
You should be fine then. Your FA package may not allow you to attend completely free, as you may hope, but it should be very aggressive. They expect students to work at least over the summer and contribute… and it will likely include an offer of federal work study (work on campus during the year) and loans. But what they expect you to come up with in terms of pure casf from your family could be very low. Good Luck…
I didn’t start attending as a freshmen (I was a transfer), but I found USC’s financial aid calculator to be quite accurate. They offered me the same exact aid the following year, so they appear to be consistent. Your tuition should pretty much be entirely covered. The calculator estimated that I’d need to pay ~7K per semester, but with about ~5K of that being estimated housing costs, USC has been incredibly generous to basically foot the bill as far as tuition is concerned. It just seems that you’re on your own as far as housing is concerned 