<p>I got my first financial aid letter today(from Pitt). It has about 25000 in merit, 4300 in need based, and 7500 in loans per year. 3500 subsidized, 2500 unsubsidized, and 2000 Perkins. The cost for a year with personal expenses is about 36000, so this seems pretty good to me. However, this is my first letter and no one one in my family has ever went to college so I don't really know what "good" is. Can anyone offer advice? Like should I be happy, or upset right now?</p>
<p>The thing that’s confusing me is that my EFC is about 4500, but if I accepted the total package, loans and all, that wouldn’t even be needed. Not that I’m complaining but I thought schools always accounted for EFC before adding aid.</p>
<p>I’d be happy. If it’s affordable and where you want to go - be very happy.
As apossibility: if you can afford your EFC consider taking the subsidized loan and turning down the unsubsidized portion if you dont need it.</p>
<p>Congratulations</p>
<p>I have the same amount of loans offered to me, as well (although from a different school), so I’ll just tell you the conclusion I came to.
Basically, this means that we’ll be about 28k dollars in debt when we graduate, if we accept the package “as-is”. Personally, I was a little worried about that, so I looked for different options. I’ve since discovered that just by taking a seasonal job in the Summer, I could cut down my debt to about 14k. If I work during the Winter and do some work-study, (which will probably only cover transportation/books and personal expenses, anyway) I could potentially graduate with about 10k-12k in debt, which doesn’t seem so bad.
I used this calculator to then determine how long it would take to pay off my debt, which ended up being about 3-5 years. ([Student</a> Loan Calculator - CNNMoney](<a href=“http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/studentloan/studentloan.html]Student”>http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/studentloan/studentloan.html))
I would also advise you to take a look at your major’s average starting salary, and compare your debt to that.
Don’t worry too much though. If you’re willing to work a little, you’ll be fine.
EDIT: Oh, I didn’t see your second post about the EFC thing. I’m going to leave the rest of this post, just in case it comes in handy, even though I feel a little dumb now. :P</p>
<p>*I got my first financial aid letter today(from Pitt). It has about 25000 in merit, 4300 in need based, and 7500 in loans per year. 3500 subsidized, 2500 unsubsidized, and 2000 Perkins. </p>
<p>The cost for a year with personal expenses is about 36000, so this seems pretty good to me.
*</p>
<p>The OOS COA of UPitt is actually about $41k-47k. It can vary by major. What is your major?</p>
<p>What was your need based aid? How much Pell and what else?</p>
<p>Looks like you got a great offer from an OOS public. That merit made the difference!</p>
<p>Score! You’re a big winner! Congrats!</p>
<p>Yeah, I think your $36K COA estimate is a little low. I figured around that much just for tuition and room/board depending on the campus. That’s probably where your EFC would come in to pay for books/travel/personal expenses. A work study job could probably cover that and you possibly could work enough in the summer to cover the unsubsidized loan but you will definitely need the other two to cover the shortfall on tuition/room/board. Still not a bad deal if you can graduate with $20-$25K of debt.</p>
<p>Yes…I think that the aid will cover tuition, room, board, fees and maybe books, but EFC will cover personal expenses and travel. If parents can’t pay their EFC, then maybe a summer job can. </p>
<p>If the student will have loans of about $7500 each year, the student will graduate with about $30k in debt.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. I have one more question. Would paying $25k-$30k worth of loans be possible without a huge hardship? I plan to major in Astronomy and go to grad school so I obviously won’t be raking $ in right after undergrad.</p>
<p>It will pinch, but will probably be okay. Phd programs in astronomy should be "funded.’</p>
<p>I suspect that if you worked summers and saved, and your family contributed the rest of the EFC, that you could get away with even less in loans, which would be a very good thing. </p>
<p>Congratulations!</p>