No Financial Aid

<p>Has anyone had success appealing Cornell's decision regarding financial aid? Time is running out and I have to make a decision!!!</p>

<p>I talked with someone there and discussed her “offer” which consisted only of unsubsidized loans. Because she was accepted at another Ivy w a slightly different offer, they said to send an appeal and send in that documentation. they had no interest in discussing FA offers from non ivies. I was just hoping we could get some subsidized loans that other schools did provide but which Cornell did not. Not sure what will happen but they were willing to discuss it. Sounded to me like its very formula driven so you have to explain what has changed. For us nothing has changed, but I still can’t afford 56K/yr out of pocket!</p>

<p>Thanks, that was what I was afraid of! NYU is giving her $10,000.00 in merit money but the cost of living is higher!</p>

<p>the worst that can happen is that they will say no, so it doesn’t hurt to try. Congrads on the merit money. Its tough to make these choices.</p>

<p>Good luck to you! My daughter is really leaning towards NYU, but I think she would get more bang for her buck at Cornell!</p>

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<p>Unless your daughter abhors the thought of nature, mothers tend to know best. But if she already knows she is not going to be happy at Cornell, what’s the point?</p>

<p>Cornell will not match merit money from any school, even places like Georgetown, Duke, WashU, or Northwestern.</p>

<p>I have a friend who did Cornell ED and had to pay ~27k. He appealed and now he only has to pay ~5k, so he was successful in appealing.</p>

<p>Thank you, any extra cash at this point would help. As of today, she said she is leaning towards Cornell due to the programs they have in place. Yeah!!</p>

<p>I recently appealed my S’s FA package and he was awarded another $4400 in grants - so it does work sometimes. I had several other offers that had our parent contribution much lower and spoke to them at accepted students day. When we reviewed the numbers we found that the 2008 data they used was worse for his FA than the real 2009 data, so I sent in our 2009 taxes and a supporting document with the financial aid appeal form. I was pleasantly surprised!</p>

<p>Nobody’s financial aid offer is final until they get your 2009 taxes. It can work both ways.</p>

<p>If you made less in 2009 than you did in 2008, you can easily get your award adjusted. But if you made more in 2009 than in 2008. Plan on having your award cut when they get your 2009 taxes and review them. Of course, it depends on how much difference there is and what level of income is indicated. A jump from say $45,000 to $55,000 won’t change the offer, but a change from $75,000 to $85,000 will drastically change the offer.</p>

<p>In the end, I found the folks in Financial Aid to be very much willing to try and do everything they could to get us as much aid as possible within their guidelines.</p>

<p>My D’s FA package from Cornell was way better than anywhere else. In fact, when I brought this up with a FA officer at Rice, they said that Cornell was moving away from the “568 group” guidelines and was moving to a program more similar to Harvard/Yale, where they go after thier top picks with an agressive aid package. Interestingly, none of her FA shows as Merit based, it’s all need based, but substantially different than anywhere else.</p>

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<p>It’s all ‘need-based’, but students are being given different levels of grants/loans based on their qualifications in an attempt to compete with the likes of Harvard and Princeton for students. </p>

<p>So your family’s EFC will be the same, you just may end up getting a different level of grants/loans to make up the difference.</p>

<p>It’s actually caused a huge problem within the Ivy League, as other schools have called Cornell’s practice a backdoor way to offer athletic scholarship. Cornell actually had to stop the policy for athletes at Harvard and Princeton’s protest, even though those two schools are still providing a lot more grant aid than Cornell is for students of similar financial backgrounds.</p>

<p>Thanks everyone. I will try the appeal process and submit 2009 taxes. Our income dropped substantiallyin 2009 but we were forced to sell some stock which was a capital gain and viewed as income! We have three more kids to put through college!</p>

<p>Your capital gains should be a lot less than your regular income.</p>

<p>yes, unfortunately they look at all income. They even count untaxed income. We had some current year capital gains that were offset by capital loss carryovers, so there was no taxable income. However, they didn’t really care about the capital loss carryover. They counted the entire amount of the current year gains.</p>

<p>no. they denied my appeal. im getting $0, even though my EFC was under 2k. so i probably wont be attending though i really want to :/</p>

<p>I’m not an international student but was still not happy with their aid. University of Rochester’s aid was much more generous but I still can’t believe I’m letting my dream school slip out of my hand like that =[ Is it possible to get more aid as a transfer student or something?</p>

<p>Not unless your financial situation or the University’s financial situation changes. Rochester is being much more generous because they are giving you merit money. Cornell doesn’t give merit aid.</p>