no financial aid?

Paying for College
1

<p>My dad recently lost his job and now we're relying on my mom's income (60,000). We applied for financial aid at Wash U (which is 50,000), and didn't get any financial aid, no work study, no nothing.</p>

<p>How closely do colleges look at assets? We have 200,000 in assets and 60,000 in my college account, but do colleges really expect us to deplete the 200,000 my parents have saved? Are those assets going to make me ineligible for aid?</p>

<p>What are the chances of me getting aid elsewhere (duke, johns hopkins, case western, ohio state university, northwestern, carnegie mellon, cornell)?</p>

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<p>"do colleges really expect us to deplete the 200,000 my parents have saved?"</p>

<p>They expect the family to use some of that, and some current income, and most of the $60K in your college account. Student assets get assessed pretty severely, and there's no asset protection allowance for students.</p>

<p>The parents do get a modest asset protection allowance, typically about 45K, before their assets get assessed, but they get assessed at a lower rate than student assets.</p>

3

<p>Student assets are assessed at 20% for FAFSA and 25% for CSS Profile. <a href="http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/FM%20&%20IM%20Differences.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/FM%20&%20IM%20Differences.pdf&lt;/a>
Assuming Wash U uses the standard Profile assessment, then $60,000x0.25=$15K from a college fund in your name would be expected (I don't believe there is any student asset protection in FAFSA or Profile). Colleges mostly use the income from 2008. Do the colleges know your dad has lost his job? If not, read the threads from other posters with this problem to get some ideas of what you might do.</p>

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<p>If these "assets" are in savings/checking/cash/CD types of accounts and NOT retirement accounts..then YES the colleges expect them to be used. Your $60K college savings is for COLLEGE and yes, the colleges expect THAT to be used too.</p>

<p>There are MANY colleges out there that would NOT deplete your parent's savings. In fact there are some where your $60K college fund would cover most of the cost of attendance (add in the Stafford loans and you would be close to funding the four years at a public university).</p>