Is Finaid at Cornell certain for 4 years?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
21

@jfx246 Wow, that is not what the FA office told me on three separate occasions. Your income went up $25K and EFC went up by $22K - that is is not what I was told. They said yes EFC(as calculated by CSS profile) would go up, but since education is not the only expense families have, the EFC would not go up by a $1 for every $1 increase in income, it would be a fraction of $1.

The only reason I can think of is that at $130K you are already over an income cut-off limit, beyond which they consider any additional income as “discretionary income” and not income that is required for basic living expenses. This worries me since I don’t know if next year I will be over that cut-off as well. They say there’s no such cut-off, but who really knows!

22

Run the Cornell NPC with various potential scenarios to see what it comes up with.

23

I did and it shows a gradual increase, nothing like what jfx246 is facing.

@jfx246 - Are you a freshman?

24

^^^^Save those NPC runs. Screen shot them, or is there a way to save the search?

25

@jfx246
Aside from you bank accts balance increase, did your income change? Did you work after graduating HS?

Once you past 180k at Cornell, you’re virtually full pay unless there are multiple kids in college.

26

@cheesefrom1999 No, I am a sophomore. Also, those calculators are not used in the final determination. You can’t just screenshot them and expect finaid to match.
My family ran lots of simulations with our 2015 data; in all of those, we were expected to get around $10-$14k in grants. In the end, we got around ~$2,000.

I’m not trying to scare you away from Cornell; I’m just sharing what happened to me financially. Maybe my family was an outlier. Maybe finaid saw something that the calculator didn’t ask.

They want us to file our old 2015 tax returns this year. I’m really hoping we don’t get screwed again.