I'm really upset.

<p>Sorry, but it’s very difficult to feel bad for you. I will be graduating with about 60 thousand in loans that I’ll be paying off myself… You got an amazing financial aid package to a great institution whose education and preparation for the workforce will more than help you pay off that minuscule debt in the future… come on</p>

<p>College is a privilege, not an entitlement. OP should be able to get a loan or get a summer job to make up the difference. OP - how your family spends money (sending money back home) is not Cornell’s concern. There are families with large medical bills, elderly parents to take of.</p>

<p>DarkIce - 20K is a very nice price to pay for a Cornell education. Just because a family is not qualified for FA it doesn’t mean that family could afford full fare. There are many middle class families who are in between eligible for FA and have enough money to afford full fare. You are lucky that you only have 20K loans. I know of many students with 60k+ loans. They are living modestly after graduation in order to pay back their loans as soon as possible. I bet you Cornell was cheaper than your state school.</p>

<p>darkice: Nobody is arguing that her parents should be able to find 5k to pay for her education… the point is that SHE should take on the responsibility of payment on herself (just like hundreds of thousands of other students do) by either working part time or taking out a loan and paying it off in the future.</p>

<p>Caillebotte, I thought callieboy was your screen name - it wasn’t an attempt at a nickname. Your attempts to try to entice me by continuing to say “someone who scraped into Cornell” are not going to work. Everyone who got in, got in. There is no scraping in, and I honestly don’t care about your opinion.</p>

<p>That’s the last I have to respond to you. This website is such an interesting look into the true nature of humans beings - petty, hateful, backstabbing *******s.</p>

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<p>Dear OP:</p>

<p>I second oldfort’s comments. Cornell, and most institutions of higher learning, doesn’t care that your family is sending a huge amount money overseas to your native country. How a family spends their money (aside from college expenses and housing expenses) is <em>not</em> their concern. </p>

<p>That said, I think you can easily work over the summer to earn the $3500 if needed. And congratulations on getting into Cornell! It is a fine school.</p>

<p>you guys are kinda rude. you are assuming a lot about the OP’s financial situation. maybe there are some economic stresses that we don’t know about.
either way, don’t be obnoxious. maybe your financial aid is less, but that doesn’t make the OP’s any less difficult for them.</p>

<p>

That was really inappropriate. You should apologize to the OP. There’s nothing to suggest she is “barely qualified”. </p>

<p>To the OP, I come from a family that struggled financially as well when I was admitted to Cornell. I’ve learned that certain cultures (often blue collar families in my experience) avoid debt at all costs and make decisions based on the notion that: “If we can’t afford it now, then we shouldn’t do it,” </p>

<p>That’s a very dangerous perspective and is why a lot of people don’t break out of such socioeconomic dynamics. I have no idea what your family’s about, but that little amount of debt is worth the investment. </p>

<p>I took out student loans for what wasn’t covered (which was a lot more), worked over the summers to cover my personal expenses and incidentals / fees, consolidated all of my student loans into one payment after I graduated, and simply started an automatic withdrawal from my paycheck every month once I started working after graduation.</p>

<p>Remember that most lawyers can’t afford the $100k or $200k of debt they incur due to law school either, but they take it on for the larger payoff over the long run. </p>

<p>Best of luck to you and congratulations!</p>

<p>No one is assuming OP’s family financial situation other than what the OP has presented. No matter what the situation is, a student should be willing to pay for something toward his/her education. We are full pay, but I make my kid pay for 10K of it a year. She is paying for it with summer and on campus earnings, and rest of it she is taking out a loan from me.</p>

<p>Are you complaining about 3500? I’m taking out a 15k loan to pay for my dream school. I’m actually shocked you posted this. NO ONE is entitled to any money and you should be happy you got ANYTHING. </p>

<p>Guess what, my parents make enough so that I will NOT GET A CENT from a school. My parents are not willing to pay my entire tuition and I don’t expect them to. You’re lucky your parents are willing to pay anything. </p>

<p>Go thank them…</p>

<p>Just so you know, oldfort, taking a loan from you is nothing like taking one out from a bank. Will you be charging your daughter interest? Will you turn her account over to collections if she doesn’t pay? Will you hound her for payments even if she doesn’t have a job yet?</p>

<p>I think it’s great you’re teaching her responsibility, and I’m not trying to attack you or your methods at all, but a loan from your parents is nothing like a loan from a bank.</p>

<p>Applejack - calliebotte’s rude comment, I believe, was directed at me. Yes, he’s inappropriate and rude.</p>

<p>This thread makes my stomach turn.</p>

<p>Remember, you are not entitled to ANYTHING in life.</p>

<p>DarkIce - We can’t always afford everything we want. If Cornell was out of your price tag then you didn’t have to go. But if you couldn’t see Cornell was a good investment for $20K then you clearly made a wrong choice.</p>

<p>maybe it just a poor person thing that richer people dont have the capacity to understand. some people just CANNOT have it economically feasible to come out of college in loads of debt.
you’re making it sound like poorer people unwilling to take on a lot of debt show that they don’t want to take the investment of college.
maybe a couple of thousand doesn’t sound like a lot to you, but when you come from a family that needs to value every twenty dollar bill that can be used for rent, it’s a lot.
I don’t know if that’s the case for the OP, but the way some people on this thread are talking is really upsetting.</p>

<p>I was a poor student many years ago. I had 10K of students loans when I graduated. Even as a poor student, I knew the value of my education. Just because someone is poor, it doesn’t mean he/she is ill informed.</p>

<p>drinksuited I think we all understand, I think we are having a hard time understanding that after graduating from Cornell you are unable to pay off 20k or less in loans.</p>

<p>drinksuited - I’m not begrudging a family for feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of coming up with $3,500. My family would have struggled with that too. But, banks want interest payments from you, so what we’re talking about is a loan that won’t have its first payment due until 6 months after she graduates probably around 5 years from now. </p>

<p>At that point, her family’s ability to contribute or not won’t really matter as the loans will be her responsibility.</p>

<p>jadore317,
I was accepted to ILR, which is also a statutory college like CALS. My parent’s income is $57,000 (which is more than what we actually have for various reasons), and my EFC as determined by Cornell is $2,440 a year. My parents and I rejoiced when we saw how little we would have to pay for a solid education. The rest of my schools cost me at least $7000 a year.</p>

<p>You may have a completely different financial situation, but I think you’re not looking at the Financial Aid Package Information closely enough.</p>

<p>The tuition ($25,401 for NY kids) + housing ($7,800 for a double room) + dining plan ($5,354) + books ($800 as estimated by Cornell) + the money they award you for personal expenses ($1,630) = $40,985</p>

<p>The estimated cost of attendance, which I assume (possibly incorrectly) is the same for you as it is for me because we’ve been accepted to statutory colleges is $41,145. That’s VERY CLOSE to what we need to spend. This means your Estimated Cost of Attendance INCLUDES housing, meals, </p>

<p>We must also consider:

  1. You can buy books on sale. Look around.
  2. You can spend less than $7800 on housing by living in a triple.
  3. You don’t HAVE to spend that much on personal expenses. Freshmen get free bus rides, fitness center isn’t the only way to exercise, etc.</p>

<p>Also, the H/EOP kids have a MUCH lower income. Of course they get full rides. You may think they don’t deserve it because they are not “as academically talented” as you say. Then apply for outside scholarships! You’re more “academically talented”, aren’t you?</p>

<p>Finally, don’t be deterred by that amount. Through loans, you won’t have to put any immediate financial burden on your family. And trust me, with the job you can get after working hard and getting connections at Cornell, repaying the loan won’t take long at all.</p>

<p>applejack, Even if the responsibility shifts, the loans are still going to be there. and coming out of college won’t automatically guarantee her bucket loads of money to begin paying off those loans. (I’m sure we all know how hard it is to get a good paying job these days.)</p>

<p>ceresma, the reason I doubt that everyone understands is because I had to sit through a conversation my classmates had about how we can’t be helping poor people because some people are meant to and deserve to be poor, and we have to keep the class structure intact.
hearing the top students in my AP class arguing this really makes me lose faith.</p>

<p>Good education to the poor will ensure there is mobility. Unlike other society, education could be a ticket for the poor to move out of that class structure. It is why a school like Cornell offers 50k+ FA to deserving students.</p>