<p>My parents make 80k a year...</p>
<p>Thats too much for scholarships based on financial need, but too little for it not to be an issue.</p>
<p>Will people with lower family income have an advantage in winning scholarships?</p>
<p>Possibly. But at many schools the "cutoff" for need-based aid is much higher than 80k. At Harvard (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), if your parents make 180k or less, you have to pay ~10% of what they make. So if you were to go to Harvard (just using it as an example), you/your parents would pay around 8k a year.</p>
<p>Apply and see what happens. You're still better off than poor students are. </p>
<p>actually ihope- what is more important is your EFC.
If your EFC is still lower than costs of your school- you will be eligible for aid.
Additionally, schools that use the PROFILE &/0r their own forms, may consider additional expenses ( and assets) other than # of dependents & income.</p>
<p>It is true that families in your income range often end up with loans and work study only. That's not necessarily always the case, though, and you need to look at your own family's EFC to have a better idea of what will be your personal situation. Looking for schools that meet 100% of need is wise, because you can often get an amazing education at the same price as a public (sometimes less). Looking for schools where you might get merit aid is also a good idea. Of course, it is a necessity to have at least one financial safety school - a school you like, can get into, and can afford without scholarships. That way, your bases are covered.</p>
<p>how do you find your EFC? is it when you fill out the FAFSA form at the end of the year?</p>
<p>Oh, good ... another chance to plug my new favorite website! Go to FAFSA4caster</a> - U.S. Department of Education. You can put last year's tax info in & get an estimated EFC. The cool part is, when your family's taxes are done - hopefully in January! - you will be able to just go back to the website, update the form with your income & asset info, enter school codes where you want the FAFSA sent, and you'll be good to go.</p>
<p>thanks for the replies!</p>
<p>I'm kind of worried that I won't receive any, despite the hard work i put in :(</p>
<p>80k a year, eh? Wow. I make less than 18k a year and most of the time I don't qualify for anything but a loan.</p>
<p>The hard work you put in may be the most powerful part of the financial equation. The more competitive the school on admissions, the more likely it is to have strong need based packages. And then there are schools which offer merit scholarships to academically attractive students.
Keep doing what you are doing.</p>
<p>Some middle class kids get the short end of the stick. Most low income kids get the short end of the stick. Few high income kids get the short end of the stick. </p>
<p>The low income kids who get enough goodies to make one drool are most often from households that are very, very low in the financials. In addition, those kids are the cream of the crop in some area that the colleges really desire, and are only a tiny portion of the population, but much ballyhoo is made of them so it appears as though there are more such cases than there are. Most very low income kids struggle to go local colleges, if they go to college at all. Going full time is a huge luxury. </p>
<p>Middle income kids are in the situation where there are many of them with desire, vision, goals of going to college, often away to college without a good understanding of what it costs and how little in free money is out there. It comes as a terrible shock when the discovery of how little money there is out occurs. IT is a hard road to pay for a college education for middle class families especially if college includes going away to school, private school, full time school. We have made it seem like those options are givens in this country when they really are not. The average college student is 24-25 years old and working as he goes to college parttime and does not live on campus. At one time we all understood that going away for college or going to private college were luxurious options that are very expensive. Now they have become a rite of passage for many families who cannot easily pay for them. </p>
<p>Most middle class families can easily afford a community or local college, especially if the kid works to help out part time. It's when the options are opened to going away to school, the student not working, going to a private college, that the financial bear appears. We don't expect to send our kids away to boarding schools in high school, nor do we expect private high schools to be necessarily cheap, but suddenly at the college level we feel that kids are entitled to all of these options when the college system is clearly designed so that the parents are ultimately what the family can and is willing to pay for an undergraduate education. There are many, many more options for college kids than there are for high school kids that make it possible for them to go away to college or go to a school that is not a local public school. It's just that all the spin is such that many of tend to believe that there is some right for kids to get to go to whatever school they are accepted and want to attend regardless of cost.</p>
<p>Middle class gets the middle end of the stick...</p>
<p>It's only going to get worse with this economy...</p>