<p>Go for it. They ignored my scholarship to Emory, but each case is different.</p>
<p>Try to talk to them about it!
At first, I didn’t get any financial assistance… AT ALL.
Then, my mom and I visited WUSTL and talked to a counselor in Student Financial Services. It really helped because we have some assets that affected my financial aid package, but she was able to ignore after we explained our specific situation.
In the end, I got $17.5k in scholarships, loans, and work study. We’re probably only going to use $12k, the part without the loans.
It is possible to get some money!</p>
<p>Hmmm…sounds good. I will try my best.</p>
<p>Here are some tips to try (if possible)!!</p>
<p>[How</a> to Get Most Financial Aid for College - The Early Show - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/04/earlyshow/contributors/raymartin/main6266291.shtml]How”>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/04/earlyshow/contributors/raymartin/main6266291.shtml)</p>
<p>WUSTL actually linked to this article, which is how I found out about it.</p>
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<p>Some of these things might not be possible, but it might be worth a try.</p>
<p>This whole process is so complicated and seems so tricky. It’s a lot for a 17 year old kid to deal with on his own.</p>
<p>Yeah, and if his/her parents make $100,000 combined income, they are probably stuck, no aid and it’ll probably be hard for them to come up with $52k + a year. Middle class folks get squeezed and get no grant money. It’s certainly supply and demand and right now, the demand is huge with a long waiting list of folks willing to pay list price so they don’t have to negotiate much at all. These “tricks” may help someone already getting some aid to get more or right on the edge of getting aid but there is no magic for middle class folks.</p>
<p>^ My dad was told by a FA person that they knew there was a problem, but that they couldn’t do much about it since many of their benefactors put “strings” on their money which limits who can be helped. I received an Eliot for only 13K, … that’s not even close. The whole process stinks, … why do they even bother accepting us? There should be a disclaimer on the app that states “only the rich or poor have a realistic chance of actually matriculating” …</p>
<p>I received an $11k Eliot and was told it might be added to later in the month. Just waiting for news and more opportunity to try to figure this whole thing out.</p>
<p>Just got bumped up to a $25k/year Eliot. I’m ecstatic. Going to Wash U!</p>
<p>Congratulations, gunther!</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>was it a merit or need based award?</p>
<p>All need-based.</p>
<p>Gunther: Good job! Did you use the Brandeis 25k merit scholarship to negotiate? How did you talk to the financial aid officer? email or phone call?</p>
<p>Actually I didn’t need to pull the Brandeis card at all. Originally I received nothing in grants. A few loans and work study. I called, spoke to my financial aid officer and gave him my circumstances, and he said that they would go into committee about the matter on Friday and he got back to me and he said they added more loans and an 11k need-based Eliot scholarship. I thanked him kindly and explained I would need more than that and could he please see what he could do. So he responded he would get back to me around April 19th to see if further funds would be available. I called yesterday to schedule an appointment with for when I visit next Friday and left a message. He called me back today, we made our appointment, and then he asked if he told me April 19th to get back to me. I said yes, and he said, actually, we already convened and I completed it this morning. You were awarded an additional $14k. I was skeptical and asked raised to 14k or by 14k. He repeated by 14k for total Eliot scholarship of $25k/year. I was ecstatic. That is all.</p>
<p>Congratulations, gunther! Very happy for you!</p>
<p>We asked Wash U to reconsider our need-based aid, and they increased it from $10,700/year to $20,350/year. Probably still too expensive for our son to attend, though. :(</p>
<p>Do you mind if I ask what your efc is? Also, did you have a change in circumstance that caused them to reconsider?</p>
<p>boomie, our EFC based on 2009 was about $35k. But my husband and I have our own consulting engineering firm, and our business is down a good bit this year. Wash U asked for our projected income for 2010 and 2011, so we took our best guess! It’s just hard for us to justify paying over $30k/year (even with the extra help) since we don’t know what our future holds.</p>
<p>To educate myself on the EFC, I downloaded the actual worksheet (“EFCFormulaGuide20102011.pdf”) and crunched the numbers. It seems that my family’s non-protected savings is not the cause of our 40K+ EFC (I thought it was). It is the fact that the formula expects you to contribute about HALF of your computed AI (available income) over 26K!! So for most, this means every other $ you make over about 80K is allocated to EFC!! It’s CRAZY, this must change. It’s this income formula that’s filtering out qualified students from the socioeconomic middle. …
I think I’ve found my non-academic raison d’</p>