yes if you look at the email that the FAFSA filing generates, it spits out a number in the format that this student reported.
No. If your EFC just for you was $14,000 or so, you did NOT receive a Pell Grant. The Pell is based solely on the fafsa EFC, and it needs to be in the $5300 or less range for an individual,to,get any even small portion of the Pell.
If your EFC per fafsa…JUST FOR YOU was $13,000, you did NOT receive a Pell Grant.
@profdad2021 please explain. What was YOUR FAFSA EFC?
This student has a fafsa EFC of $14,000 which is WAY out of range to receive any Pell grant money…at all.
Reconsider ASU and UofA. Solid schools and a lot of CA students GO and pay oos to attend them. Don’t go into that much debt just for lifestyle preferences. My parents are funding my college and my siblings and being debt free will allow me to be flexible with grad school or finding a job I want.
I really hope you follow the advice of Choatiemom and others and apply. As I told my own kids, applying doesn’t mean you have to attend. Choices are nice. I don’t see what you possibly have to lose adding this application, assuming you still can.
@thumper1 See my correction - it was a perkins not a pell. (Hey, they both start with the same letter. Close but no cigar. )
For our family, for that one child who at the time was the only child in college, we could have borrowed about $6500 a year.
If you accept a merit scholarship, rather than need based aid, you may be able to stack merit money. A very few students in your situation manage to make money beyond their Cost of Attendance, instead of taking out loans.
This would be another reason to at least apply to the Barrett Honors college.
You are not obligating yourself to anything at this point.
adding: okay think about this: AZ gives you free tuition. Then you become an RA, which could pay for your room and board. Virtually no college costs.
At least add to the possibilities.
YES!! At this point, the very best suggestions are: (1) create options for yourself; and (2) get really good advice from someone who knows you and your financial options.
@profdad2021 in most cases…the Perkins is a loan. There is a Perkins grant program, but it’s not very often seen in awards. It seems to be grant money given to states who allocate it for vocational purposes.
I could be misunderstanding it…but that seems to be the case.
Wyoming DOES limit WUE, and quite severely. However, it also has increase the Rocky Mtn Scholars and with a high enough gpa/score, the student can get the same deal of 150% of tuition. RMS has a 3.0 gpa requirement to keep the scholarship and must be used in 8 consecutive semesters, so WUE is still a better bet.
NAU - Flagstaff can get a LOT of snow! I was there some years back in March and there was a few feet of snow on the ground.
For affordable options, you should investigate WUE schools, although some of these limit the amount of scholarships awarded and/or have priority deadlines. I imagine that Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and some areas of Washington state would have enough snow. Please apply to some financial safeties while there is still time.
@project21 What really concerns me at this point is that it is January of your senior year. Many application deadlines have passed. Many schools that have rolling admissions will have already given out most of their financial aid money.
This is a conversation you should have had last year. I’m worried that you will not get into any schools that you have any realistic chance of paying for. And some of the things you’ve said–that you would work up to 30 hrs per week while going to school full time–just aren’t realistic. If your goal is to graduate in 4 years with a CS (using the term broadly) degree that will enable you to make at least $80K per year, I think you will need to concentrate on your classes and internship/research opportunities and it would preclude such a large outside workload. Something like a 10-15 hrs per week on campus job is more feasible. And they don’t pay terribly well.
You mentioned that at some point that you have had some kind of internship opportunities in high school. That’s great. Have you taken them? Have they paid you, and if so how much? Is there any likelihood of working for these companies next year, and making significant $$?
What I am driving at is the possibility that, depending on your admissions and FA results, you might consider taking a gap year, working to make $$, maybe even bringing your ACT up if possible, and reapplying to a financially realistic list of schools next year. If admissions does not go as you hope, I urge you to step back and consider this rather than plunging in a direction that might ultimately limit you options.
I certainly hope that you get into a school that offers you the money you need. But if not, I think a Plan B is in order.
I’ve already taken up to Calculus 3(This next semester I will finish it). I went and checked the course load for the first two years of most of these colleges for an Electrical & Computer Engineering degree. According to their website, I won’t be learning Calc 3 & Ordinary DiffEq until my Sophmore year.
I have been programming in C++ for 3 years, and I have made fully featured games, physics engines, and various math calculators. I have a friend who was an EECE major at UofA. 2 years ago, I was able to help him with his assignment for his programming class. I’ve learned a lot more since then.
I have a cousin who is a mechanical engineering major, and I was at his house while he was taking his Calculus 3 midterm. I didn’t understand everything on the test, but I was actually able to help for a few problems. In fact, I was able to correct a mistake he and his friend made on one of the problems. I was chilling on the couch afterward and noticed his friend looking through his textbook. The font looked familiar, so I asked him to turn it over. Lo and behold, it’s the same exact textbook that I am being taught from.
My point is that I am very prepared for the major I will be seeking. I’m no genius…it’s just that the courses I have taken in the last few years are of the same rigor and scope of what I will be taught in most colleges.
I think at least for part of my freshman year, I will be able to handle a part-time job. I’ve made $100/hr working for a school to fix their website before, and made similar wages fixing other people’s computers. I’m confident that I will be able to find a high-paying computer related job that will help pay off my loans.
As for the internships, they were offers from Raytheon and UmbraCV, but they said I had to wait till I was 18 and over.
I’m going to try and make money, starting this next week. My course load for this semester isn’t that bad, so I’m thinking of developing an iPhone app and hoping I get lucky. If not, I’ll go to a summer job.
@profdad2021 - the Perkins loan program has been discontinued – so while it might have once been a source of additional loan money for students that is no longer the case. (There are still loans being disbursed for continuing students who are grandfathered in, but no new loans available) – See http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/student-loan-ranger/articles/2016-01-06/explore-what-perkins-loan-program-extension-means-for-students
I am assuming you have confused the Perkins loan with a Pell grant because you also state that for your child you “could have borrowed” $6500 a year – suggesting that you were then offered a Perkins on top of the maximum Stafford. (Which could have been as small as $2750 for the first year depending on when it was offered – $2750 was the Stafford limit for the first year when my kids started college).
And I am also assuming that you are equally unaware of changes made to the law with the advent of the federal Direct Loan system – which is perfectly understandable as I don’t try to keep up with every change these days either, as my kids have long since graduated.
It’s just that the OP has already has managed to accumulate plenty of wrong information… that’s why I provided the link to the official .gov web site in my post #122. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to find wrong and outdated information on the internet, in a addition to well-meaning but potentially misleading anecdotal information. (Such as the odd idea that financial aid is determined by subtracting EFC from $15,000 and — most likely picked up from an anecdote or example of a college with a $15K COA).
@project21 , have you run the net price calculator on all of your colleges, and UA, ASU, and NAU?
@Consolation – the OP may end up with no choice but to do what you suggest - take a gap year to earn money – but in general that is NOT a good idea for a young student who needs financial aid, because it will push up EFC based on the student earnings and whatever he manages to save. The FAFSA system “taxes” student earnings at a rather high rate, and double-counts whatever earned money is retained in savings at the time that the FAFSA is filed.
So when my son returned to college after working, the impact of his earnings and salary at time when he was still too young to be considered independent for FAFSA purposes (despite living on his own and supporting himself in a different city for several years) - meant that his FAFSA EFC was considerably higher than his sister’s, and rendered him entirely ineligible for aid at a public college.
With the changes in the FAFSA to look back essentially two years for income, that problem might be alleviated slightly, but I think FAFSA still asks for current assets. So I think that if the OP took a gap year then whatever he saved would drive up his EFC for the 2018-2019 school year, and his earnings from 2017-2018 would drive up EFC for the ensuing 2019-2020 school year. If his only option is to take loans (no grant aid), then that may still make sense – but at any college that offers grant money, student earnings can be counterproductive.
I don’t like or agree with that system – it goes against my personal work ethic – but reality bites. There is still time for the OP to get apps into Arizona public colleges and he may qualify for merit aid at some. I agree that it is late in the season and he has already missed some deadlines… but I think right now the best advice is to focus on what he can do to remedy that situation. The hard money choices will come in April when he’s got acceptances and awards in hand.
@project21 - you do realize that even IF you get a job right out of school that pays $80k… you don’t actually GET $80k, right?
@Calmom, your post was quite excellent. Every student should read it.
2017 income will be used on the 2019-2020 fafsa.
2016 income will be used on the 2018-2019 fafsa.
2015 income is being used for the 2017-2018 fafsa.
Assets are reported as of the date of filing the forms.
The OP needs to keep,this in mind. For example…let’s just say he gets accepted someplace and receives need based aid for the 2017-2018 school year. IF he earns enough income, that aid will be reduced for subsequent years potentially. He could earn money in 2017…and use it to pay for 2017-2018 school year costs. BUT that 2017 income will reduce his need based aid for the 2019-2020 school year…and he might already have spent all,the money.
Not to mention, the aid gotten for any given year is going to affect the parents’s taxes a bit, right? At least, it did ours.
Debt is not self reliance.
If your parents can’t pay their EFC - a situation that is, alas, common - having them take on debt on your behalf that you promise to pay back during there years that follow graduation isn’t self reliance. It relies on your parents ’ willingness and ability to take debt for you, something not available to all.
If you really want to be self reliant, you’ll take the sat till you score 1450 or 1500 unless you already did or are NMSF, and go to a university with one of the full ride scholarships that you earned through your score (and your parents’ help for a stable environment with decent nutrition and support.)
Have you run the NPC and shown results to your parents? In our days, it was difficult, but possible, to pay for college on a part time job + federal loans + summer job + frugal living + help from parents here and there. Nowadays, those days are gone. Costs have skyrocketed to a point that such an endeavor had become impossible. You may be able to commute to a community college, living at home and saving all your wages from working part-time+banking your federal loans toward the cost of the last two years, but that’s if you’re lucky enough to live within drivable, commutable distance of a cc offering the pre-reqs you need.