<p>I wish my EFC was only 15,000. My single mom also makes ~80,000 and my EFC was 22k as well.</p>
<p>It's so stupid. My mom worked hard all her life to be able to pay off her house and get a good retirement savings, and now she's being penalized for it?</p>
<p>W/e, Cornell's financial aid policy is screwy.</p>
<p>My EFC may be on the low side....but I still got screwed royally in the loan game.</p>
<p>"Your need-based loans will be capped at $3,000 per year."</p>
<p>You see, that's what's so disingenuous about Cornell's new financial aid policy. Yes, YOUR loans will be at most $3,000. But, Cornell is free to ask your parents to take out much more than $3,000 in loans. So, the student loans will be capped at $3,000 whereas the loans for the parental contribution can be as high as Cornell desires them to be. Thus, your family, as a whole, might have to take out a lot more than $3,000 in loans. </p>
<p>I was actually pretty disappointed when I heard about this new miserly financial aid policy in the midst of all of Cornell's peer institutions announcing their new, revolutionary, sweeping changes to their financial aid programs. In my opinion, this new policy does very little to reduce the cost of a college education for students' families.</p>
<p>As for EFC, it really does vary as somebody above me already said. My EFC was 24,000 with my parents making about 80k combined. </p>
<p>RD/ED aid is different. In RD, you have aid offers from other schools that you will be able to show to Cornell. This allows you to extract extra financial aid from Cornell. For example, a peer school of Cornell's offered me more money last year, when I was deciding. I showed Cornell the offer and ended up with an extra $6,000 in grant money from Cornell. If you can get into a peer school of Cornell's in RD, trust me, it DOES make a difference.</p>
<p>"Well...my parents make $114,000 and our EFC was $15,000. Like I said...it really does vary since they count your assets."</p>
<p>Yes they do count your assets, unfortunately for me.
Family income: about 120k/yr.
EFC: $54,300 (down from about $56,000 after we appealed the original FA package)
I'm an only child and they took into account our house equity, which doesn't make sense to me, because that is implies that my parents are supposed to sell their house to access their equity...</p>
<p>the financial aid system is very flawed, twizzler is right, they do assume that a family should sell or take out a second mortgage on their house to pay off college. a family making less money with a less expensive home in a small town, living comfortably, will have a very low EFC, while a family living in somewhere like LA or miami will make more money and have a more expensive house (because of area) and be less comfortable living will have a higher EFC. </p>
<p>financial aid sucks.</p>
<p>ahh Brown man. that's so hard..because I definitely need a boost from ED to get in. and im not in the best shape, financially/ T_T</p>
<p>Just to add something, for this year if your parents income is less than 60,000 (75,000 next year) then you won't have any student loans. Under this policy i would have graduated loan free!</p>
<p>yes..but don't they make your parents get loans? which is basically the same..if you have to pay them back..</p>
<p>Yep. I live in Miami, so the cost of living here is extremely high. And they also take into account your retirement savings, and your life insurance policies.</p>
<p>So they expect your parents to retire, and then die, for you to pay.</p>
<p>^ Haha...yeah...they can be picky. They did something like that with us, and we simply called, had to send an email, and the parent EFC dropped to 0.</p>
<p>.... mine's $10,000 per year....</p>
<p>Well....our EFC was originally much higher. My parents already refinanced our home twice and went bankrupt a few months after I enrolled at Cornell.</p>
<p>So...after a lot of haggling I got them to lower the EFC and give me more grant money. Nobody in my family could (or would) co-sign a loan for me so I had to make sure I could get the amount I needed to borrow down to a "reasonable" amount.</p>
<p>"ahh Brown man. that's so hard..because I definitely need a boost from ED to get in. and im not in the best shape, financially/ T_T"</p>
<p>Remember that it will only affect your financial aid if you happen to get into another ivy, or a school such as UChicago, MIT, Stanford, etc that offers you more money. Otherwise, u will get the same amount of money that you get ED as you would in RD. It's just a matter of comparing offers in RD that gets you more money from Cornell. Also, they don't match merit scholarship offers.</p>
<p>"Just to add something, for this year if your parents income is less than 60,000 (75,000 next year) then you won't have any student loans. Under this policy i would have graduated loan free!"</p>
<p>No, you probably wouldn't have graduated loan free. Your parents would still have to take out the same loans as they had before. This is why Cornell's new financial aid policy is not all it is cracked up to be. From what I've seen, my friends on financial aid have been asked to take about 5-6k in student loans, whereas many of their parents have been asked to take out much more in loans. This policy will only save you about 2-3K; it's very substandard when compared to the aid other ivy league schools offer.</p>
<p>just a little note on the haggling....</p>
<p>columbia calculated my parent's EFC almost 4,000 lower than cornell. They also had no workstudy or loans on the package. I appealed my EFC to cornell, showed them my parents expenses (with receipts/bills) and their w2 forms and all, and showed them columbia's package. </p>
<p>cornell basically "negotiated" by lowering my EFC like $750 and removing the workstudy portion of my FA package. </p>
<p>So i dont know if cornell will match other offers from ivie schools, but i guess they do what they can. the office told me it was the best they could do under their rules and regulations :/</p>
<p>Well...like I said every situation is different. My parent's bankruptcy really screwed things up for my family (my bro had to drop out of college and my sister is having difficulty getting loans) and even though I have a lot of debt...I'm still grateful to the FA office because they made it possible for me to finance my education on my own.</p>
<p>Brown Man1987: I think i forgot to mention that i have already graduated which means that i totally understand how financial aid works at Cornell. The other thing i forgot to mention is that my parents EFC was 0...so i would have graduated loan free under the new policy!<br>
Under this new policy, students like me will save on average of $18,000 which is a lot of money!</p>
<p>Biophilic, I have an EFC of 0 but am still required to pay a student contribution of about $3,000, which I have to take out a loan to cover. (My summer earnings barely cover my books and learning expenses.) As far as I know this student contribution cannot be changed so it wouldn't have made that much of a difference for you. It's still a great deal though.</p>
<p>44100Hertz: Are you refering to the summer savings expectation, if yes then i worked more than $3,000 for the summers and didn't have to take loans to cover my summer saving expectation. My EFC and my parent EFC was 0!Besides Cornell financial aid package takes into account your personal expenses and books for a total of $2250!</p>
<p>My point was that even with EFC of 0, Cornell expected you to take out need-based student loans under the old policy.
Freshmen year 3,500
Sophomore year 3,500
Junior year 5,500
Senior year 5,500.</p>
<p>So now students do not have to take that need-based loans if your parent make less than 60,000 and will at least save that 18,000 dollars!</p>
<p>so..can I still apply ED to Cornell and RD to other schools and then compare my FA packages?</p>
<p>No...if Cornell accepts you ED you are bound to them and technically have to withdraw any other applications you submitted. You won't have a chance to compare financial aid packages.</p>