<p>xiggi, I believe the one-time poster may have been referring to getting refunds of need based aid in excess of what the school’s direct charges were. For a fully Pell eligible student at a CC or other lower cost school, this may be possible because the school can award up to the full COA. If the student chooses to spend less on the “soft” expenses, they are indeed banking the difference.</p>
<p>I think you’re getting a little upset over what may have just been a poor choice of words. Certainly no one gets paid to go to college but I can see how a student who receives some spending money sees it as getting paid to go to college. I agree it isn’t really getting paid to go to college. I thought jomacinrow brought up an excellent point that this LAC doesn’t seem to meet full demonstrated financial need and I’d like to hear anything else she or he has to say.</p>
<p>The information that room and board is considered taxable income was very interesting, I did not know that. The best threads are like this one, where I learn something.</p>
<p>Yes, Room and Board is taxable. sk8rmom is correct in describing my case. So technically, I’m not getting paid to go to college. Any excess funds including scholarships are indeed taxable. </p>
<p>I was just trying to make a point that for the College (based on expenses) that the OP was considering, if her EFC was 0, she is not getting a very good value for her situation of having a EFC of 0 compared to a finanical aid package she could get at another LAC cc near by. Unless this school is in the Top 3 of her state, I doubt the extra debt is worth going to this school, because of other aid packages probably available to her with an EFC of 0.</p>
<p>P.S. when I said “getting paid”, I was referring to excess refund that is also used for educational expenses like Computer and Gas (transportation). Some students wouldn’t have the excess for Computers, Gas, Etc.</p>
<p>Thank you very much Pea/sk8rmom for taking up for me. I didn’t expect the hostility.</p>
<p>Some ways to help the shortage:
- Buy used books, borrow books
- Use a less expensive dorm plan
- Skip traveling during breaks
- Work during breaks
- Use a less expensive meal plan. Cook, prepare meals by yourself.
- Apply for emergency relief</p>
<p>^^ When OP states the EFC is zero, I have to think he/she is referring to the Fafsa EFC. The college in question may use the Profile, review assets and come up with a different family contribution. I dont think we know if her parents are employed or have assets- only that the credit history got their Plus Loan app rejected.</p>
<p>So, not sure you can say, with an “EFC” of 0, she should have gotten better - “compared to a finanical aid package she could get at another LAC cc near by.”
She got 44k. For all we know, she was wise, applied to several, checked locally- and this was the amazing offer.</p>
<p>Again, I agree with lookingforward. A $44K grant package against a $55K/year school is a fabulous package. I have worked with plenty of students who were good, strong students with EFCs under $1000 who didn’t end up with offers anything like that. Many go to CC. Our CC quotes a COA for a student living at home as $12,310. And other than a Pell grant, those students are not likely to get a dime in additional grant funds. When they finish an AA degree (often after more than 2 years given the need to work 20-30 hours a week) then they’re faced with a COA at a state college (not the flagship) of $20K per year. A zero EFC student is likely to get a financial package that includes the full amount of Stafford Loans, work-study, a couple thousand dollars in grant aid, and a gap of at least six or seven thousand dollars, sometimes closer to ten thousand dollars. In the end, I am not seeing packages except for the most well qualified students that do much better in terms of net costs than the one offered the OP, and many that are far, far worse.</p>
<p>OP - do you have the option at this point to move into a triple or quad instead of a double, or downgrade to a cheaper meal plan, or both?</p>
<p>That right there could save $1500 on your fall bill.</p>
<p>And I think getting a part time job is feasible if you are organized, plenty of kids have worked their way through school while carrying a full credit load.</p>
<p>If you work hard at jobs and keeping your expenses down, I think you can make this work and come out with far less than $45K in loan balances.</p>
<p>Do you have any wealthier relatives or friends who would front you the $1500? That might be another option.</p>
<p>ETA: didn’t see coolweather’s post, sorry for the duplication.</p>
<p>I think it would be extremely helpful if people didn’t use terminology that treats an interest bearing loan as if its a gift, scholarship or grant. Students are already having difficulty appreciating compound interest so this sure does not help.</p>
<p>They need to be comparing apples to apples - debt to debt- not packages to packages- if those packages vary in terms of how much debt one will carry. </p>
<p>Please understand I’m not questioning whether the OP has a good deal or not relative to other options- others know more than I do on that- but the terminology here is really ridiculously misleading. I know colleges play that game, but there is no need for us to reinforce it.</p>
<p>I’m in total agreement with starbright. Son just graduated from college, and guess what arrived in the mail? An invoice from Sallie Mae for a small student loan that my DH set up for son freshman year, and which son has no recollection of even agreeing to [let alone understanding ] at age 17.
Student Loans are NOT gifts. They MUST be paid back, with interest!</p>
<p>Snoozealarm: I haven’t read the whole thread, so this might be redundant. I wish you the best. </p>
<p>This might not be an option for your freshman year, but there are several ways to make extra money:</p>
<p>1) Talk to your professors. I teach at a university, and I am always happy to hire students as research assistants. Also, my grammar is not great, so I usually have someone edit my work, and pay for that.</p>
<p>2) Not only can you save a lot of money by buying used books, you can also sell them. When I was a grad student, professors were always getting rid of books. Even when they were not in my field, I would take them and sell them in Amazon. A friend of mine made 500 one summer doing this.</p>
<p>3) Thrift stores are your friends. I have found designer clothes there, never worn (with tags), and I paid 5-10 bucks for them. Target is also a good place to get clothes. I am always amazed at how much money some undergrads spend on clothes. I guess this applies to girls more than boys.</p>
<p>4) If you want to be more likely to get a job in the food court or the bookstore at school offer to cover the “bad” shifts (weekends, nights). They usually find it hard to fill those shifts, so you might be more likely to get the job.</p>
<p>5) If your school has computer labs, figure out if they need someone to supervise the lab, put paper in the printer, etc. I did that as a grad student and it was great because I could do my school work while I was working. Double win!</p>
<p>6) If you don’t have to buy a food plan, don’t. You can make some delicious healthy meals for very little money.</p>
<p>I hope this helps. Good luck!</p>
<p>Thank you for all your responses. I appreciate all the encouragement and will be taking note of all the advice. I’ll try to respond to as much as I can. I’ll be contacting the FA office tomorrow morning, though I feel guilty bugging them again because I contacted them in April to appeal and they gave me an additional 2K grant. :(</p>
<p>nysmile and sybbie, $55770 is the total COA. According to my school’s financial aid notes, that figures in tuition, room and board, fees, personal, and books and supplies. Travel is included as “variable,” so I think that is the only cost I will have to consider. I think my parents will pay for me to come home on the holidays—it won’t be that expensive, and I’m sure they’ll be happy for me to babysit, if nothing else. (Also, I won’t be babysitting summers anymore. They are figuring something out with their schedules for the school year—mom is getting a more flexible job–and that will just have to carry on into summer.)</p>
<p>Is working 20 hours a week really too much? Most college students (on CC at least) seem to think it’s doable. :/</p>
<p>0 is our FAFSA calculated EFC. The school also required a Profile, so I don’t know what it ended up being with that. My parents are employed but make very, very little. I think the only assets they have would be cars. Also, to Nester-- it’s not necessarily that I’m overly committed to my family, it’s just that at the time if there was no one to watch the kids and if my parents don’t work… yeah.</p>
<p>An unlimited meal plan is required for freshmen. It’s a bit silly. There aren’t any triple or quads except for the on-campus apartments, which are for upperclassmen. So unfortunately, no savings there.</p>
<p>I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and researching. For a good part of yesterday I was convinced that community college would be the easiest option, but I was filled with this overwhelmingly sad feeling. Maybe that was melodrama, but I had to reconsider. I ran the loan repayment calculator on College Board. Assuming maxed out Stafford loans every year (but NOT the Parent Plus loan rejection money), I’ll be borrowing 30K total, with about 40K to be repaid. So payments would be $334 a month. I plan to be an occupational therapist (and a journalist/novelist…but you know how that goes…), which will be a decent salary, so I think this is doable. The downside, yes, is grad school—but I plan to work really hard for undergrad and with grants, service scholarships, a job, taking time off between to earn money, etc., I hopefully will not have to take out too many loans for grad.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how “prestigious” my college is, but the top five schools graduates get into include Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and NYU, so it’s well-regarded where it matters. They win lots of local and national fellowships and competitions too. My merit scholarship is probably their best, $10000 a year and renewable all four years, and named after the very motto of the school, so they seem to think I’m be a good fit and will do well. I’m not really worried about any of that. It’s just the money.</p>
<p>Thank you again. I will see what FA says and report back.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to be difficult but I have a few questions for you because the above didn’t quite make sense for me (so I want to make sure you are not making a lot of light assumptions in order to make this seem realistic). </p>
<p>So the loan won’t be $45k but rather 30k? Or 40k? I’m sorry but I didn’t follow what you meant by taking out 30k but repaying 40k. </p>
<p>You want to be an OT, but that requires a graduate degree. When you finish your undergrad, you have to start paying back your first loan, so it would be from work that is not a OT salary, but something entirely unknown. So you will be trying to pay off that loan and earn money for graduate school from a job whose salary you can not guess. But at least know how much will graduate school cost you in total. I think the programs are 2-3 years of full time course work and clinical training. What is the tuition? How long are you planning to work in this non-OT job before graduate school? </p>
<p>Regardless of your intention to work first and save, I’m strongly guessing that you will likely have to take out a loan for your Masters on top of the existing loan, and while you are doing your Masters, you will still be having to pay the first loan or incur even more debt because of the interest. Can you work during graduate school? Is that realistic for the normal workload? Will that just cover expenses or will you actually have enough to keep paying your first loan? </p>
<p>Please understand I’m not trying to discourage you, but your plan as described sounds pretty ‘light’ on the most important details and sorta sounds good if you turn it sideways and squint, but you need to do a lot more analysis to call this realistic.</p>
<p>snoozealarm, it might be worth your time to consider a combined BS/MSOT program so that you can get through in 5 years at a single school, rather than having to do 4 years of undergrad, then the sometimes pricey application/interview process and hope to get a spot in a grad program. My D is in such a program and, while it does involve some summer course/fieldwork at her school, it’s still a cost and time saver. You can find schools that offer combined programs here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.aota.org/Educate/Schools/EntryLevelOT/38119.aspx[/url]”>http://www.aota.org/Educate/Schools/EntryLevelOT/38119.aspx</a></p>
<p>I realize it’s a bit late to consider for this year but they often do accept transfers into the professional portion of the program (years 3-5). Good luck!</p>
<p>Staffords can be deferred while the OP’s in grad school. If she is in deferment, interest does not accrue on the SUBSIDIZED part of the Stafford loans. It DOES accrue during deferment on the unsubsidized parts. [Student</a> Aid on the Web](<a href=“http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/difficulty.jsp]Student”>http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/difficulty.jsp)</p>
<p>OP, aren’t you going to have to take out the extra Stafford (because your parents didn’t qualify for PLUS) to pay for expenses this year? I think we’re getting confused on what your FA package is offering re: loans. Can you give us a breakdown of what your package looks like – i.e., $xx,xxx in grants, and merit award (and what kind of GPA do you have to maintain to keep it), $yyyy in subsidized Stafford, $zzzz in non-subsidized Stafford, work-study award, Perkins Loan, etc.? That might enable us to offer more effective advice.</p>
<p>At our house, I had a zero EFC and the private school’s FA didn’t get me close enough to be able to attend. Went to the flagship. DH was also a zero EFC, and his private school turned out to be cheaper than his in-state public. I totally understand why you looked at the private schools for FA. Sometimes it pays off.</p>
<p>OTOH, being an OT requires grad school, so I’d be concerned about maxing out loans just to get through UG. It is also a very tough program, which will make working 20 hrs./week difficult.</p>
<p>snoozealarm - Is your annual shortfall $9.500 (loans) + $1500 (school bill) + WorkStudy + expenses? </p>
<p>Or were expense estimates (travel, books, spend money, etc) etc factored in already?</p>
<p>You’re taking out $9500 in loans for your first year. You mention that you’ll be borrowing around $30,000 to attend this school. I have a feeling you’re going to find yourself having to borrow more than that to stay at this school for 4 years. </p>
<p>Costs increase every year (tuition, room, and board) and financial aid varies from year to year. Next year, you may end up receiving less financial aid even though the total costs are guaranteed to be more than this year.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many students fail to see the entire 4 year picture of costs. </p>
<p>One more thing to consider: Is your merit scholarship renewable under the condition that you maintain a certain GPA? If so, what happens if you dip below the mandatory GPA? Do they pull your scholarship right away or do they give you a one semester grace period to bring your grades up?</p>
<p>No, you aren’t being difficult. It’s better if my reasoning is examined because I’m really depressed right now.</p>
<p>
I will be taking out 30K, but the interest will be 10K. So 40K. I will run the calculator again just to make sure I didn’t make a mistake… I got slightly different numbers this time, but I think I didn’t change the graduating year last time: 31K borrowing, 41.4K with interest, 345 monthly payment.</p>
<p>The cheapest OT program I’ve seen is 6K a semester for tuition-- can’t seem to find estimates for the other costs. This is in-state and I would have residency. I think I would be able to afford this without many loans if more expensive options don’t work out. I was under the impression that it’s normal to work through grad school. I know that would likely only cover current expenses, but that’s why I plan to take 1-2 years off between to save money.</p>
<p>Stressing about grad school when I haven’t started college. :(</p>
<p>That is a very useful link, sk8rmom. Thank you.</p>
<p>CountingDown, this is my package:
Work study: 2100
Fed sub loan: 3500
Fed unsub loan: 6000
Fed pell grant: 5550
Fed SEOG grant: 4000
Merit scholarship: 10000
College grant: 23000</p>
<p>colorado_mom, other expenses have been factored in.</p>
<p>nysmile, everything’s maxed out, so I’m not sure what else I could borrow. I’m not going to do the Parent Plus again-- I can make that money during the summer. My school has also said they’re increasing grant aid in the coming years. I don’t think it will get too bad. If it does, I’ll just transfer to a cheaper school. At least I’ll have had the experience, instead of transferring now and not getting it at all. For my merit scholarship, it says I have to maintain “good academic standing” – but there are no grades at this school, only written evaluations, which works much better for the type of student/learner I am, so I don’t think it’s something to worry about. (Obviously I’ll still have to work hard…)</p>
<p>Your total package ($54150) is very decent. Your workstudy load is low. Some people has $3000-$4000 workstudy. You can work more and fasten your belt to cover $1570. And by some magic, your mom, dad, or someone who loves you may send you money during the year. I think you are safe.</p>
<p>Based on Op’s current package s/he is going to have a minimum of $43,000 in student loan debt. Keep in mind that the loans are going up each year because Op will be able to borrow more; 6500 sophomore year, 7500 junior and senior year. If her parent’s financial situation does not prove, Op will have 16k in just unsub stafford loans due to parents not being eligible for a PLUS loan. </p>
<p>S/he is not guaranteed 4,000 each year in FEOG funds. It is based on how much the school will have to disburse. I think she will get cut on this area kist because she will be able to borrow more. </p>
<p>She should deduct tuition, room, board and mandatory fees and work study (because she hasn’t earned it yet) from her package. If her basics ate covered then she can use some of the other suggestions to work out her situation. </p>
<p>But she also needs to go onto this with his/her eyes wide open</p>