<p>Stop dreaming and look realistically at schools you can either afford, or where you will get good aid. Otherwise you won’t be going to college at all.</p>
<p>At least you are running the NPC so just keep doing that. But remember, some adjustment will be made.</p>
<p>You are in a tough position because of good but not quite high enough stats. Expecting out of state public colleges to give you enough money isn’t realistic, excepting those on the list who are trying to attract students with those stats and have programs to pay for them --rare and valuable.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this have been gone over with you but you can’t borrow more than your student loan of 5,500 the first year without your parents talking the loan or co signing. So you are saying your parents will let you go away to school, just not in Seattle?</p>
<p>Are you applying to the school that gives your sister such great aid? That sounds like a good idea. What about Western Washington? They are a best value school (Forbes, Kiplinger) with only 23k cost before aid, Evergreen State same cost, smaller school. University of Puget Sound tries to meet need but can’t for everyone. Are you any kind of minority? They are 75% white and might be interested in diversity. A classmate of my daughter’s went there and her parent raved about it. They are a CTCL school as is Willamette. Another CTCL, Whitman seems a reach but again the diversity and they list Essay as Very Important, whereas GPA and SAT are Important, so there’s a hint of an in and they do a better job at meeting need.</p>
<p>Forum experts: what do schools that have preferential packaging show on the NPC?</p>
<p>???</p>
<p>If you disobey your parents, will they give you info so you can fill out FAFSA to even get any aid???</p>
<p>You cant take on more debt…your parents would have to cosign, and if they have all those strict rules, they would not only NEVER cosign, but with a 19K AGI, they would NOT qualify to cosign.</p>
<p>You have to deal with facts…which of the following are facts???</p>
<p>1) your parents wont allow you to dorm…they want you to commute to a state school from home.</p>
<p>2) if you try to go elsewhere, they wont cooperate.</p>
<p>3) Your sister’s COA isnt really $30k, because she commutes from home…and Pell, state aid, and fed loan covers most.</p>
<p>4) Your plan requires you to borrow a lot, but you dont have a qualified and willing cosigner.</p>
<p>5) Your current and projected stats are not high enough for huge awards at the schools on your list.</p>
<p>My sister has already told me she is willing to co-sign and her income is ~40,000 and is willing to help me pay as much as she can, she doesn’t have high expenses on account of my parents paying for her food and edu.</p>
<p>She doesn’t commute, she lived in a dorm for three years and now has her own apartment.</p>
<p>I’m focusing on lower tier schools now, I didn’t look at those schools’ NPC’s until recently.</p>
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<p>My sister has already told me she is willing to co-sign and her income is ~40,000 and is willing to help me pay as much as she can, she doesn’t have high expenses on account of my parents paying for her food and edu.</p>
<p>She doesn’t commute, she lived in a dorm for three years and now has her own apartment.
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<p>??</p>
<p>Your college-going sister has an income of $40k…AND she gets need based aid except for $1k per semester? What???</p>
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<p>I have always abided by their rules reassuring myself that it was just until I got to college, then I could start living my life but there is a problem… they have decided I am not allowed to move away from home. I pointed out that the college I want to go to is 40 minutes away (but it’s in Seattle so the traffic regularly takes over an hour in reality) and I simply cannot live with their rules for 4 years, with the stress of traffic, with the stress of a noisy study environment (home), with the stress of college. When I pointed this out they said “there are thousands of kids who live at home and do it, we know plenty, you’ll be fine,” but I just can’t.</p>
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<p>and why do your parents let your sister live in a dorm but you said that they are strict and wont let you? </p>
<p>None of this is making any sense. If your sister earns $40k per year, then her EFC would be very high and she’d get NO need based aid at a $20k per year school.</p>
<p>She isn’t in college, she graduated last June. Sorry, all the information I mentioned was from her senior year and I’m still not used to using past tense for her.</p>
<p>Right now, we live an hour from UW (her former school), but used to live in Seattle and have been planning on moving back for awhile now. They’re just waiting for me to graduate from HS. They only allowed her to go to UW because there isn’t any good schools driving distance from our current home and they knew they would eventually move back to Seattle. They’re just as strict with her, they’re expecting her to move back under their roof next year (when they’re back in Seattle) even though she is an adult, has a job, can support herself, etc.</p>
<p>An hour with no traffic, it typically takes over an hour though*</p>
<p>""“Plus, they already have one child in college, so with me, it will be two.”""</p>
<p>You really need to get your story straight. You are a rising senior in high school, your sis has already graduated from college, but along with the other misleading info, you wrote that with you there will be two in school. ??? right now, your family has zero in school, and a year from now, they will have only you in school.</p>
<p>If your sister has any sense at all, now that she is fully employed, she will sign a long lease and stay put…or better yet, save her money and buy her own home.</p>
<p>And if your sister really has good financial sense, she will NOT cosign a loan for YOU. I know she is trying to help, but this is not something she can or should do with her $40,000 a year job. That loan she consigns will need to be listed if SHE needs a loan for something…a car, a house…anything. Plus she would have to qualify for additional loans every year for you. This is NOT a financially responsible plan.</p>
<p>You claim your parents paid $1000 a semester for your sister due to need based aid. So why wouldn’t YOU apply to that same school and get the same need based aid? </p>
<p>Your posts are making no sense!</p>
<p>Please. I urge you to explore more affordable college options.</p>
<p>Can you attend a college close to where your sister lives and then live with her to save on the cost of room and board? If she’d co-sign a loan for you (not a great idea financially for her), maybe instead she’d let you live with her for free.</p>
<p>Too late to edit…but I think the OP needs to clean up this story. At this point, it makes no sense.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>OP…are your stats better than your sister? Did your sister get significant need based aid? If so, why aren’t you applying to the same school?</p></li>
<li><p>How many kids in your family will really be in college at the same time as you?</p></li>
<li><p>How much CAN your parents contribute?</p></li>
<li><p>Have you even considered looking for more affordable colleges?</p></li>
<li><p>Why is your story evolving and changing on this thread. Please set it straight.</p></li>
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<p>One more thought…you say your sister graduated with NO DEBT. Why would you want her to share YOUR undergrad debt? And why should she do so? She is college debt free…and should remain that way.</p>
<p>You need to look at schools that are within your family price point…and do as your sister did…graduate as close to debt free as possible. You should learn from her example.</p>
<p>OP, you can’t go by other people’s packages, or other people’s money. Yes, you can give it a go. There are some colleges that seem to give nice aid packages to a number of kids in our high school, so when looking for aid, they should go on the list, but don’t count on getting the same package. Things can change from year to year, and even though it may sound like A LOT of kids are getting big awards, often in the scope of things, that isn’t the case at all. Also it doesn’t matter what you get; it’s what you have left to pay that counts. </p>
<p>University of Portland is a fine school, and you certainly can put it on your list. But it’s an expensive private school and DOES NOT guarantee to meet full need, and does not do so for most of its students. Even a big award, say $30K, leaves another $30K to pay when the COA is in the $60K range. This reality hit us full in the face when one of mine got exactly such an award Frightening. And if you can’t afford the $30K yet to pay, it doesn’t matter that you got a big fat award. </p>
<p>It’s well and good that your sister was able to get such a great award from UW. Perhaps if you got the same, your parents would be amenable about letting you live there. Absolutely, put that school on your list. They may be tapped out from paying your sister’s expenses, their financial situation may have changed, they may not want to do it again. We borrowed to send our first child to a pricey private, and realized it was not such a smart decision, and could be ruinous to us if we did the same with our other kids, much as I so wanted to send our kids whereever they wanted to go and got accepted, regardless of cost Couldn’t do it. </p>
<p>There may have also been issues that arose with your sister that makes your parents unwilling to repeat the experience. For whatever the reason, if it’s their money you need, you need to go by their rules to get it. </p>
<p>By all means have some possibilities on your list that might be possible with great aid/merit money, but understand those are lottery tickets. It’s important to get those sure things on your list–affordable schools likely to take you. And Affordable means with parental assistance unless you can come up with the funds yourself, which means parental stipulations would have to be met.</p>
<p>Family owned businesses are notorious for hiding income. The AGI is how the IRS hits the family as an entity, but not how it hits the business. FAFSA tries to make sure this does not give busines owners an unfair advantage.</p>
<p>Ultimately, we are all paying for people manipulating the system in the past.</p>
<p>I agree that Sis should not be signing for OP’s loans. Something happen to you, and she’s stuck with the loan. Those co loans are not usually great deals and the terms are not so hot either. Leave her out of it.</p>
<p>FAFSA is not so tough on small businesses. It’s PROFILE that is. </p>
<p>Actually, if the student is looking for institutional aid, we don’t KNOW how tough FAFSA schools will be. They often request tax returns also, and can see where deductions were taken for IRS purposes by small businesses. It is quite possible that these schools also add back some of those deductions when calculating institutional need based aid. It’s the school’s money! They can calculate any way they choose.</p>
<p>@Torveaux </p>
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<p>Ha! NO</p>
<p>FAFSA calculations are extremely favorable to business owners…ridiculously so. That is why here on CC we will see these folks have tiny Pell-qualifying incomes…but when a CSS school gets ahold of their finances, the family contribution can be very high.</p>
<p>My bad. I lazily lump FAFSA into the same bucket with the individual schools’ systems of determining ability to pay.</p>
<p>If a school is FAFSA only and requests your tax returns for determination of institutional need based aid, I would wager they would scrutinize your business deductions. </p>
<p>But really, FAFSA only schools don’t meet full need anyway, and except for the community colleges for commuting students, the Pell Grant won’t cover much in terms of the full cost of attendance.</p>