<p>I only need the pell grant. For that matter, the tap estimate for ny is 4k and NYU is not allowed to prevent it. Of course that amount may change with NY budget, but this might work…</p>
<p>Wow. I don’t know whether Steve is right or wrong, but this thread clearly shows that I’m just a lamb headed to slaughter in 2012-2013. How does one learn to wheel and deal like that? I particularly like the idea of declaring myself a nonprofit to avoid property taxes and live for free!</p>
<p>I’m so naive … why do I just keep going to work and paying taxes decade after decade …?</p>
<p>Sorry for the side tangent.</p>
<p>OK, I went through the whole thread, and I actually think that I understand it. Very interesting.</p>
<p>Steve, your practical problem is that NYU fully understands your situation at this point. You’d like them to play “what if” games depending on how you package and present yourself, but they already know enough to look beyond the packaging. Even worse, you’re very much on their radar screen at this point; they probably see you as gaming the system.</p>
<p>It’s not simply a matter of filing certain forms and checking certain boxes to trigger automatic rules, as it would be for the tax code. Human beings are going to adjust your inputs to reflect the reality of your situation. They’re actually required to do that.</p>
<p>Thank you, kelsmom, for pointing out the consequences of gaming the system!
As you are a financial aid professional, I am sure you have seen it all!</p>
<p>based on the information Op has given, he may not be eligible for TAP even if he should have a “0” EFC on the FAFSA.</p>
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<p>I think he should run his numbers through the TAP estimator before he starts counting money that he may not have</p>
<p>[Estimate</a> Your TAP Award](<a href=“http://www.hesc.com/content.nsf/SFC/Estimate_Your_TAP_Award]Estimate”>http://www.hesc.com/content.nsf/SFC/Estimate_Your_TAP_Award)</p>
<p>The OP is basically going to see what NYU will offer and is not going to withdraw any RD apps. He is taking the chance that the other schools will not find out. And it is entirely possible this will work. NYU is not a member of colleges that definitely share this information and neither is UI. A lot of schools are not.</p>
<p>As far as NYU goes, they will offer him a package commensurate to how much they want the kid and how many others are better picks than he is. I know a number of outstanding candidates who got very little outside of loans in terms of aid. NYU does not pretend to meet full need and they sure as heck did not in those cases. It was take it or leave it. The school is big enough that they are unlikely to be able to track or give special treatment to any one applicant. This student will get the offer based on where s/he stands in the desireabliity spectrum and they aren’t going to know that until all the apps are processed. </p>
<p>There are some kids who do get generous packages from NYU. Very high test scores seem to be the thing that they like to buy, as the few kids I know who got such packages were truly up there in that respect. I’ve known many, many more who did not get much need met with grants, and many of them truly had need. Some of those kids with generous packages were really not as needy and the packages were definitely merit within need. .</p>
<p>I have a pretty good idea, I think, what the OP is doing. If this is how you are teaching a kid to operate, it is really shaky ground and in my 30 years as a parent, I have yet to see any good come of trying to game the system and not sticking to the deal even if you are highly unlikely to get caught and don’t get caught. It’s a slippery slope. I don’t do business with people like that if I can help it and certainly will not give such people a break and most folks I know feel that way. Also young people don’t have the experience to be able to be slick, sly and clever and when they operate that way, they tend to fall on their faces. There are good reasons to act with integrity. If you apply ED, you stick to those rules to which you signed your name even if you can wiggle your way out. If you have a good solid reason to back out, you do so straight out, and make it clear it is for good reason, not slip and hide, hoping and knowing you probably won’t get penalized for breaking your commitment.</p>
<p>Mister K,</p>
<p>I engage in work that is fully qualified for classification for non-profit status. Many organizations such as my own are classified as non-profit. I am not at this point for 2 reasons: (1) I don’t make any money and the primary benefit of non-profit status is to shelter income that does not exist here and (2) there are legal and regulatory costs that are significant. Any time I see a benefit in changing status, I have the option. There is a reason why non-profit organizations are not required to pay taxes. They produce benefits to the community without earning adequate income for their efforts.</p>
<p>Part of my work involves ethics training. Gaming the system implies lying. The definition of lying is any act of body or speech (or even thought) designed to convey something one knows as true to be false or vice versa. It relates to the most important aspect of the communication. Example - if you see children playing in a building that is on fire and have trouble getting their attention, telling them you have better toys outside to get them to leave the house is not a lie. The key aspect of the communication is to save their lives and not about the toys.</p>
<p>I initially approach NYU to have an honest dialogue about my actual situation. I was a financial professional with a strong understanding of the underlying mathematics. The rules of fafsa have a clear intent on how to balance assets versus income. The 50k limit for the simplified formula in opposition to the 100k limit by the irs on the 1040a indicates that to the extent someone cannot produce 50k in income from their assets suggests they need to live off those assets. Someone with an asset base of that size, if they run a typical retirement analysis, in all likelihood will not be able to retire at age 50. If they use their assets to pay for their children’s college, they will likely wind up on governmental assistance unless they die early. People on public assistance often tend to die early due to the conditions of poverty anyway. Fafsa therefore does not require the assets be used in paying for college.</p>
<p>My situation was clear in that my income was impaired and probably would be for many years. Fafsa has a category for this in dislocated worker. The only element that disallowed my using the status was that no one provided for me before and then stopped. I provided for myself and then had to stop. Fafsa explained that the the rules for dislocated worker are “generally,” and gave the school the right to use professional judgment. My circumstance falls squarely within the realm of dislocated worker when viewing the intent and ability to use pj. NYU disallowed the use of the status without even asking what the arguments were for it. Blindly manipulating and adhering to arbitrary rules and thusly avoiding the underlying intent of those rules is gaming the system. NYU gamed the system. I then attempted to follow the rules judiciously to go back to the underlying intent of the system.</p>
<p>NYU may view me as gaming the system, but it is due to their being blinded by the objective of thwarting all attempts at financial aid irrespective of circumstance. They need to start from the vantage point of understanding how to balance assets and income in retirement analysis, which I suspect they don’t. Then they need to look at the actual intent of fafsa, which IS to award grants where needed. This is where the ethics shake out…</p>
<p>As for the ed agreement, generally no agreement in NY state can be upheld if you do not give the party access to the specific aspects of the agreement in question. If you have someone sign a contract and don’t let them read the fine print, you cannot hold them to the fine print. The ed agreement says he is allowed out if he cannot afford the school. They advertise that they will provide an early decision financial aid award which is expected to be quite accurate. They told me my award would be very different if I filed a 1040a, but refused to tell me what that award would be. I called the irs; I am allowed to file a 1040a. I told them so and they refused to tell me what the award would be based upon the data I gave them. Step 1 - the agree to accept the child. Step 2 they give an accurate estimate of financial aid based upon the estimates given to them. Step 3 the family decides whether they can pay or not and validates the agreement or not. They have yet to perform step 2. They therefore are not allowed to force me to perform step 3. I asked what happens if I find out later that I cannot afford the school, and they said they would release me from the agreement at that point. I accepted on that basis because i am not certain I cannot pay now.</p>
<p>Yes, ethics and integrity are important. If someone shows me where I am being unethical, I will happily change course. My study of ethics indicates I have every right to do what I am doing with complete integrity.</p>
<p>I wonder why op is so, so, so intent on his S going to NYU. I feel like there is something else going on here. </p>
<p>Steve123, do you have some ulterior motive for wanting your S to ONLY go to NYU? </p>
<p>As stated so many time before in this thread there are plenty of other colleges out there. OP has put so much time and energy into haggling with NYU and posting here that it all makes me suspect. But I must say, it has been very interesting following this thread.</p>
<p>Many people on this thread appear to be financial aid professionals, and I imagine people don’t want parents behaving as I am towards them. You create your world. I tried to have a sincere discussion with NYU and offered to pay more than they would require. They refused and tried to use their superior sophistication with the rules to violate the intent of fafsa in awarding aid where needed. They chose this course. If you look to the intent of the rules and use common sense based upon genuine knowledge of your subject, I don’t see how you will have parents behave like this. If this was my only contact with this school and I did not know the enormous integrity of some people who teach there, there is absolutely no way I would allow my son to attend this school.</p>
<p>The benefits of NYU are significant, but replaceable. The benefits of NYC may not be. MY son would not get into Columbia, so NYU is the next best. If he goes somewhere else, I am fine with it.</p>
<p>I tried to tactfully drop off this thread some time ago. My position is to engage with people in the community in a manner that provokes thought and challenges the common wisdom. It is a discipline. The idea is to grow myself through the process of helping others with the same. I post mainly in response to others at this point. If someone, however, points out something genuinely unethical on my part, I will happily change.</p>
<p>Steve - If you stick with the NYU plan, clearly you’ll have to file a 1040A to get the Pell. If the Pell is all you get, that’s about $5500 for the maximum award. But you’ve mentioned that you will lose about $2k by choosing to file the 1040A. The value of that Pell has to be balanced against this reduction, right? Since everything is so close to the bone, it sounds like this could be a problem.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I don’t think there is any ethical problem here. You’re trying to figure out what kind of tax form to file and what deductions to take or not take so you’ll get the best overall outcome. As long as you’re completely truthful in your tax filings, this seems like a responsible approach. It’s like what people do when they decide whether to take this or that kind of educational tax deduction - when you have more than one valid choice, you run the numbers both ways and see which way comes out best for you.</p>
<p>I do think that you don’t have room to accept the ED offer and continue to hold applications open at other schools. It sounds like NYU has done a poor job of communicating with you, but now you know the situation, and you have the information you need to make a decision on time. As long as your tax situation is clear and solid, your son should get the Pell, and you will take a small tax hit. If you have the knowledge, it doesn’t matter whether it comes from NYU or the Finaid web site or the Ifap web site - you now know the rules and can act on them. I do think it is fudging to insist that NYU is the only source of information about your aid eligibility that you will take into account.</p>
<p>I think your son should look at other schools. There are lots of good schools, FAFSA-only, whose application deadlines have not passed, that may turn out to be more generous with their aid. Besides the Pell, he might even qualify for other federal grants with his EFC of zero, such as the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG). </p>
<p>If he just has to be in New York City, take a look at Wagner College. It’s an interesting school, and their application deadline is in February.</p>
<p>The Pell is 5.5 less the 2k and plus the 4k in tap according to NYS for probably 1 year. After that the aid he gets from the other relative will count as income and drop the tap funds. Yes, things are tight…welcome to my life.</p>
<p>I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with minimizing taxes based on allowable alternatives. If I maximized taxes I couldn’t eat, and who would be served by that? Everyone has a responsibility to take care of themselves. If there is no lying and the rules allow it, I don’t think there is a problem. As for only relying upon the NYU info on the aid, I was told by fafsa and saw supporting documentation that they are the only ones who can provide a correct answer. I have no choice there…wish I did.</p>
<p>Steve did you use the TAP estimator from NYS. I do not think you are going to get 4k TAP</p>
<p>I did use the tap estimator from NYS with my tax return. I don’t think I will get 4k either based upon the NYS budget, but my NYS ti was about 20k.</p>
<p>I think that by now you understand that NYU is not exactly going to bend over backwards to help you out in getting the money to pay for their costs. I think their admissions strategy includes a good margin for those who end up not being able to pay for it and do not come. </p>
<p>I think you also know that the FAFSA interpretations and examinations are pretty much done by the financial aid people at the colleges, and you know that NYU is not the most sympathetic school </p>
<p>I don’t know a single person who got a huge financial aid only package from them, though I do know people who got their most generous merit/aid package from them. So unless your student is one that they select on a merit basis, i think the pickings are going to be lean. </p>
<p>Be aware that schools have reputations in these areas and NYU’s rep for financial aid is not a good one. They did not get that rep by being generous and compassionate.</p>
<p>I know where I am with these people; my eyes are open. It is a shame because some of the teachers are absolutely wonderful. At the same time, their admissions strategy really destroys their ability to obtain donations from both alumni and wealthy individuals interested in benefiting those in need.</p>
<p>Steve, did you consider any other NYC schools? Like Fordham, for example, which has a Manhattan campus, the Rose Hill campus is beautiful, and it can often be very generous with aid. Since NYU is so well known for being terrible with financial aid, I’m just curious as to whether you had another NYC option if the presence here was such an important priority.</p>
<p>The next choice is probably Wisconsin/Madison with about 50% of the opportunities on NYC for his purposes. Then Illinois with perhaps a slightly better psych dept and weaker outside opportunities. I was trying to balance education inside & outside. He finds out in March about those/probably a 50-50 chance for each. If NYU lets him keep the grant, he goes to NYU/otherwise he may not be able to afford it.</p>
<p>Wisconsin is still $38K to attend.</p>