<p>bclintonk-I agree with you wholeheartedly. It is the people in the "middle" who make too much to qualify for financial aid but not enough to be wealthy who are in a very squeezed situation. We chose to go the merit aid route with my eldest. We compared merit at a private with academically "equivalent" state options and the private was less expensive. The privates that don't give merit aid would have just been too expensive to consider especially given that we have several children to plan for.</p>
<p>I insisted that we submit a financial aid application for this year (junior year) at son's Ivy due to the changes that were supposedly made in the Ivy aid levels. My husband said all along it was a waste of time (and we are not Bill Gates) but we did it anyway. The envelope that finally came back might as well have been one of those Hallmark cards that laugh loudly when you open it. </p>
<p>There are actually a number of off-campus jobs available for Penn students and the public transportation is good to get to them.</p>
<p>Sorry, my post was indeed a bit overstated. What I meant was, although it can, of course!, be very hard for families to come up with the tuition-money, it's never utterly IMPOSSIBLE, like in a sense of, asking people to pay 50 grand a year when they make 60.000, or lowering your changes of getting in by only offering limited merit scholarships and such, to attend.
I'm not sure how understanding the finaid offices are (bclintonk's equity point/ or difficulties in families that cost a lot of money (medical treatment blabla) etc.) when it comes to individual cases though. I am only a junior in high school right now (yes, yes, I am talking about things I don't know anything about; I'm not even from the US (explaining my horrid grammar!), so I am sorry for my blatantly wrong post (and no, that wasn't meant sarcastic!). </p>
<p>I'm from Western Europe btw, in my country the best universities only cost appr. 1500 euros (pretty much 2000 dollars) a year, so everyone has a change to go. That has some downsides as well, of course, because research-opportunities and such are slim, because
they are underfunded, and the overall level of academics is lower (best university ranked around 50 I guess).</p>