I'm freaking out. Help me.

Paying for College
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<p>USD has a whole staff of enrollment managers. This would suggest that the college is need aware for admissions possibly, or at the very least does preferential need based aid packaging. In other words, USD could very well NOT award this student the aid that the NPC suggests (remember, these NPCs give the average aid for someone inputting this information).</p>

<p>My guess is there are admit/deny students every year…admitted but not given sufficient aid to attend.</p>

<p>And just FYI…USD does NOT negotiate with students on financial aid offers. In fact, the financial aid officer actually refused to talk to our daughter about this at all. Our daughter dropped the school from consideration (and it wasn’t because of our costs…it was because the finaid officer was exceedingly rude).</p>

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<p>So far from reading around online I have seen that USD is quite generous with their financial aid. I don’t think I have read one instance where a student was denied the amount of financial aid in which they expected to receive or was given admit/deny status.</p>

<p>But as I said, I am thinking of some ways where I would be able to bring in extra money somewhere if and only if it was necessary.</p>

<p>Not to mention scholarship opportunities. </p>

<p>And as far as my current private school tuition? We receive aid from the state’s private education fund.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.sandiego.edu/documents/facts/CDS/CDS_2012-13.pdf[/url]”>http://www.sandiego.edu/documents/facts/CDS/CDS_2012-13.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Look at section H. USD only met 73% of need on average. The average package was <$30K which means you would have another $20K+ to pay.</p>

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<p>Carotid, schools that have enrollment management departments have them for a reason. These folks help figure out the balance between how much student families pay, and how much aid they can give to students. Their job is to crunch the numbers so that the school will have enough revenue to pay the bills. </p>

<p>Preferential packaging means you could get more loans (e.g. The Perkins could be added to your package which will already include a Direct loan). Then you will likely get work study. But even those awards will NOT cover the about $50,000 cost of attending USD.</p>

<p>You might hit the USD grant jackpot, but even that isn’t likely going to fully fund your schooling there.</p>

<p>YES…apply…and apply for financial aid there too. It can be ONE school on your list. Actually, apply wherever you would like (assuming you have the money to pay the application fees…you get a limited number of fee waivers). BUT be prepared to walk away of the money isn’t there.</p>