<p>Look at the threads that list schools with generous merit scholarships. USC is not going to be affordable for you, so try to fall in like with a school that is.</p>
<p>Regarding the direct loans, will my parents have to sign off on that? My mother said that she will not sign off on me taking out any loans, even if it is in my name.</p>
<p>@DrGoogle I am confused. USC claims to meet full need. So if both USC and Harvard meet full need, why wouldnt it be the same thing? I hope this doesnt sound like a stupid question.</p>
<p>I think for what I’ve read Harvard gives some kind of aid up until $250K while it’s not necessarily the case with USC. Claiming it meets full need, but how it’s define need is another story.</p>
<p>Is part of your parent’s resistance to share more specific financial info that they don’t want you to or don’t see the need for you to travel across the country for college? Are you pushing too hard for that and dissing closer options to them? Sometimes parents will use the money argument when in fact the reluctance is just as much about other things like the distance.</p>
<p>For your last question, each school calculates your need in their own way. Harvard calculates student need more generously than other schools such as USC. Schools also expect student contributions which can include student summer employment earnings, work study and loans. Harvard is more generous in this regard.</p>
<p>Regarding having your parents sign off on the loans, they don’t have to sign off for federal loans, but I think they do need to file a FAFSA for you to get the loans. That could be a challenge (you might ask your brother if he is filing a FAFSA with them). Federal loans are pretty limited to keep students from getting in too deep and borrowing too much. $3,500 freshman year, $4,500 soph year, and $5,500 each of the last two years is all you can borrow.</p>
<p>USC and H do NOT use the same formulas for determining aid. H uses a super-generous formula. USC does NOT use a generous formula. Your family will not get much/any aid from USC.</p>
<p>Each schools that gives its own aid has the right to determine what each family’s need is by using their OWN formulas. There is no national formula for institutional aid. each school decides. And USC is not generous in how they define “need”. …</p>
<p>YOU DO NOT need your parents’ signatures for the $5500 federal student loan. ONLY you sign for that. It does sound like your parents are willing to file FAFSA since you are looking for aid.</p>
<p>Which schools are you going to apply to that will FOR SURE give you full tuition for your stats?</p>
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Don’t worry, just follow your sibling’s steps:
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<p>You can ask your parents to fill out the FAFSA at the beginning of the year as some scholarships and programs may need them and it might qualify you for some finanicial aid. GIven the numbers you have estimated, not likely, but if you have a sibling in college it may net you something. Just ask them to fill out their portion of the form and submit it for you around January, Feb next year. You can also ask them to fill out the PROFILEs of the college so that you might get aid. If they flat out refuse to fill out anything, you can request a waiver of the FAFSA for Direct Loan purposes. </p>
<p>IT’s a very common thing–refusal to release financial info. Some parents have financial situation they do not want released to anyone for a number of reasons, some just can’t bear to go through the trouble. Some know there is no aid forthcoming at their income/asset levels and don’t want to bother So you are not alone with this at all.</p>
<p>It’s also not an uncommon thing that parents do not want to pay or cannot pay what their kids want or what the colleges want. Yours are giving you a figure which is more than a lot of kids even get. Many just get the “we’ll see” and then find out at the tail end of the process that what they all see is no contribution or far less than the students are led to believe. YOu know what you have to prepare for. </p>
<p>You can certainly include USC and other high cost schools as lottery ticket chances. Just be aware what they are, that your parents are highly unlikely to pay for them and the you are highly unlikely to qualify for aid, and that your parents may balk at providing at fin aid info. You know all of this up front.</p>
<p>The Direct Loan is in your name only. However to get the Direct Loan, your family and you need to complete the FAFSA. For schools like USC, you will also need to complete,the CSS Profile which looks into your family finances in much more depth than the FAFSA. Will your parents complete these financial aid application forms?</p>
<p>Harvard, and Yale and Stanford for example meet full need, but also provide need based aid to families with incomes in the $200,000 range. They have enormous endowments and provide significant aid. However, even with their generous aid, you would still need to pay in excess of $10,000 to attend these colleges…even with a sibling in college. Your family income is simply too high for a family contribution of only $10,000. You are not a low income student.</p>
<p>Also, HYP accept less than 10% of applicants. 90% are denied admission every year. Their generous financial aid policies only matter if you are accepted. Acceptance would be your first hurdle.</p>
<p>USC does not provide need based aid to families with incomes in the $200,000 range like these others do. Your cost to attend USC is likely to be very well in excess of. $10,000 a year.</p>
<p>I don’t think what your parents are doing is at all unusual. I told my daughters how much I would pay and they worked with that budget without knowing how much I have in assets or how much I make per year. I picked a number I was comfortable with and which was about what a state school would cost for one year, living on campus (the state school closest to us requires everyone to live in dorms as freshmen, no exceptions, so I couldn’t avoid R&B), and figuring they would not get any need based financial aid. One picked a school with a COA of $55k, and came into budget by scholarships and grants. Some was state money she’s entitled to just by going to school in Florida, plus school merit money and other scholarships. None of her money is FA, and she doesn’t have to take out any loans at least this year.</p>
<p>My other daughter is slightly over the budget I set, but I can make adjustments and your parents might if you show them what schools really cost and that $10,000 is not realistic for your state schools. If you want to go to an OOS or private school, you need to show your parents how that will work, how much merit money you can get, how many scholarship. It can be done, but it takes a lot of work. You also need to factor in transportation from NY to CA, and understand that you probably won’t be traveling home much if you are paying for it. </p>
<p>Consider everything, not just that USC is a dream school. There are several threads about kids wanting to go home after just a few days at colleges which are 2000+ miles from home. My kids are going to schools 2000 miles apart so I can’t be in both places, but both have friends or family nearby. I think it is unlikely that you’ll receive any need based aid, so you need to figure out if you have other options - merit based awards, outside scholarships, loans, work earnings. It’s a long way from the $300 you have to the $65k you’ll need for USC, but you just have to start chipping away at it. You have many other options if USC doesn’t work for you.</p>
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<p>However, the 10k budget is realistic as OP’s brother attended most likely a SUNY CC and then transferred to SUNY UBuffalo while living at home. </p>
<p>Tuition and Fees for 4 year SUNY - $7582 per year</p>
<p>Tuition and Fees for 2 year SUNY - $4276</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.suny.edu/smarttrack/tuition-and-fees/”>https://www.suny.edu/smarttrack/tuition-and-fees/</a></p>
<p>The issue at hand isn’t that OP ** cannot** attend college, OP does not want to attend college within the parameters that parents have set to pay.</p>
<p>@sybbie719 It’s apparent that the sibling and the OP are very different students. CC for the sibling was probably a last resort seeing that the OP says the relative didn’t get in elsewhere. So I don’t think the $10,000 budget is realistic with the plan you present because of the sheer difference in the caliber of the OP and the sibling. </p>
<p>Annie Beats…the family finances have nothing to do with the caliber of the student. The parents have clearly stated that they will fund $10,000 a year of this student 's college education. I saw nothing that indicated a sliding scale offer because this student is “higher caliber”. </p>
<p>The student has options…they are just not the options this student originally mentioned. If this student can get a merit aid award that covers tuition, then the $10k from the parents and the Direct Loan should cover room/board.</p>
<p>And a summer job, and work during the college academic year, will pay for discretionary expenses, and books.</p>
<p>We had two very different kids. We did not offer one a lot more money than the other when it came to college costs. Maybe that is what you will do, but we didn’t.</p>
<p>I agree. I have two kids who are night and day in everything, and education choices and levels are no exception. The budget is the same for both kids. One child picked a small private school with a COA of $55k, but is under budget because of scholarships. The other chose an OOS public with a COA of about $25k and is slightly over budget, so soon she’ll need a job and a plan on how to pay for things as they come up. I think my initial budget was a little low so I’m willing to adjust it, but I think it was a good starting point in searching. If I would have set the budget higher, I think they wouldn’t have tried so hard for scholarships and grants.</p>
<p>$10,000 might be low, but my budget was $15k, and we almost made it at an OOS school. I think OP can find a few schools with merit and then if there is a gap she can ask her parents to adjust the budget when she has solid numbers.</p>
<p>Here are some merit scholarship lists:
<a href=“http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/”>http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/</a>
<a href=“Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums;
<p>A lot of this is how a family conducts its business. Yes some parents will allocate more to some children based on past performance and options that mesh well with what the parents want to pay, than to other kids. I don’t think it’s unusual or unfair for a parent to impose conditions and cost limits on a child, whose history has been shaky, saying they would pay only for CC and commuting for a year or two, and yet, willing to pay more for the sibling whose track record academically and behaviorally has been superior. I’ve known parents who will pay for a “name” school but not for a school that doesn’t strike their fancy the same way, and insist that for such schools that they don’t feel “worth” the additional cost, that the students go to a state school or lower cost alternatives. When it gets into the “unfair” category is a matter of opinion. One can do with one’s money as one pleases.</p>
<p>But in this case, the parents are saying the budget is $10K. Doesn’t matter what they make, what they have, what they can cut back on, these parents are saying that’s what they will. So that’s what the student has to work with and will have to come up with the rest of the money from other sources. Better than a lot of parents who won’t pay anything or won’t commit to anything or will give an amount and then renege when the time comes to pay. </p>
<p>Also, it’s not always possible to offer all kids in a family the same even if they are about the same in performance academically. THings can change financially and in personal needs too. We were able to pay far more for our oldest and willing to do so. Things aren’t where the were 15 years ago. My youngest brother got a lot more in terms of money spent on him than my other brothers and myself, simply because my parents had more at that time. We were happy for him, and pitched in even more so that he had even more options; we didn’t grouse over it ( well maybe a bit , since he was the “spoiled baby of the family”). </p>