<p>The maximum amount of Stafford loans is really the most you should take for undergrad school…try to keep your loans to a minimum. Staffords are loans taken in the STUDENT’S name, no cosigner needed. Lower income students are sometimes offered Perkins Loans and those are also only in the student’s name. Any other loans you take will require a cosigner.</p>
<p>How much money would be too much for a student to take out in loans?</p>
<p>The federal student loan limits are set for a reason…because that is about the most a student can pay back after graduation. Most new grads don’t want to live at home so they can pay back big loans.</p>
<p>Total - $27,000 The monthly payments will be about $310 per month for ten LONG years! About the cost of an extra car payment on top of all of your living expenses…rent, utilities,food, clothing, car expenses,etc. Paying back student loans gets old REAL FAST.</p>
<p>*I also have been working for the past couple summers so I should be coming into college with 20k that I earned. *</p>
<p>did you include that you would have $20k in savings when you did your EFC estimates? If not, that will increase your EFC.</p>
<p>The CSS Profile is an financial aid application form. It does NOT give an expected family contribution at all. The schools that use the Profile take the information from it and they use that information to determine a family contribution, your need based on their calculations, and also awarding of institutional need based aid.</p>
<p>So…no…the Profile doesn’t consider the location of your family. It simply is an financial information gathering tool.</p>
<p>The CSS Profile does NOT ask about the location where a family lives. Nor does it try to adjust the the so-called institutional method EFC found on the college board site’s FA Estimators to reflect different costs of living in different regions.</p>
<p>The CSS Profile does give more insight into a family’s financial situation in the sense that it asks a * lot more * questions about such things as equity in your primary residence and more detaild information about certain kinds of investments and retirement stuff. * For many people, the typical institutional method used by colleges that use both the FAFSA (for federal aid) and the CSS Profile (for institutional grant aid) comes up with an EFC that is ** higher ** than the FAFSA EFC.*</p>
<p>There’s no one-size-fits-all CSS estimated family contribution. The CSS merely collects the information requested by the specific college so that the college can calculate its own EFC. Some colleges use the CSS to ask for home equity, value of family cars, worth of retirement accounts, etc. Other colleges don’t ask for these numbers on their version of the CSS. How the colleges use the data they collect via CSS is up to the individual college.</p>
<p>If a college has its own EFC calculator on its website, or gives other details about how a family’s financial data feeds into its formula, then that’s the best source of CSS information, much better than a generic CSS EFC calculator you might find online.</p>
<p>edited: sorry, redundant but maybe useful ;)</p>
<p>If it is gathering financial information, would it be able to show a school that uses it why a student’s family might need more aid than the FAFSA shows?</p>
<p>Yes, actually. Some philosophers might even argue that this is the point of using both forms. The only problem with that kind of thinking is that some people might assume that the CSS Profile will be kinder to them to the FAFSA, or that the CSS Profile colleges will provide them with more aid even if the school decides that their need is higher. Often times, you and the school will both agree that you need X amount of aid, but they’ll give you some federal loans and then mutely point you towards the Sallie Mae website to figure out how to get the rest.</p>
<p>*If it is gathering financial information, would it be able to show a school that uses it why a student’s family might need more aid than the FAFSA shows? *</p>
<p>I think you’re being unrealistically hopeful. While LI is expensive, there are many, many similarly expensive areas in this country. </p>
<p>You need to accept that you’ll likely have an unaffordable expected family contribution and choose schools that will work for you. </p>
<p>You can apply to a couple of “hopeful” schools, but don’t waste your time with a long list of schools that will be unlikely because of money. </p>
<p>Protect yourself and apply to some schools that will be affordable because of either big merit scholarships or because of lowish COAs.</p>
<p>Not likely. I agree, you are hoping for something that is unlikely to happen. We live in CT…which has the highest per capita income in the U.S. Sorry, our family contribution was NOT adjusted because of that. BUT we do benefit from better than average salaries in this area as well. While housing costs CAN BE higher, there are less expensive residences in this state as well. It’s a choice where you live, how much you spend on your house, how much you spend on cars and other consumer debt. It’s a choice where you choose to reside. </p>
<p>I’m sorry, but the location of your family in a higher cost of living area is NOT going to help you garner more financial aid. Need based financial aid is based on income and assets of the family, not on the location of their residence.</p>
<p>As noted above the SUNY system is a true bargain for college students. For instate, very inexpensive relatively speaking, and even for OOS a deal relatively speaking.</p>