<p>I just received my financial aid package and it was extremely disappointing. Apparently, the Cornell Grant is reduced for every dollar you receive from the federal government (Pell, ACG, etc.) and any outside scholarship that exceeds self help.</p>
<p>My question is: Does self help only include work study and loans, or does it also include our expected summer earnings (under student contribution)?</p>
<p>Another twisted logic: Since my parents make less than 60000, I qualified for zero loans. The irony is, if I qualified for loans, I would be able to use the outside scholarships to cover the loan amount w/o reducing the Cornell grant. My dad is a school bus driver and somehow my parental contribution was calculated at $27600 and then another $2320 for summer earnings. I feel extremely frustrated.</p>
<p>dude dont sweat it i know it sucks because you wont be able to have excessive amounts of money to spend on whatever but look at it like this … your going to cornell basically for free</p>
<p>I am not going for free, my parental contribution was calculated at $27600 and then another $2320 for summer earnings! That is 29920, not even close to free!</p>
<p>Something doesn’t add up. If your parents make less than $60,000 there is no way the parental contribution would be $27600. Unless you are saying they make $60,000 each.</p>
<p>We have a sizable amount saved for retirement, but do they really expect someone who’s going to retire next year to burn through a third of their life savings to pay for college?</p>
<p>Apparently yes, which is what we are doing to send our daughter to Cornell.</p>
<p>I was under the impression retirement savings are not counted as an asset for financial aid purposes.</p>
<p>You can try to appeal the FA decision. Your package doesn’t make much sense. When I was at Cornell, my EFC was $15,000 for the first year and around $12,000 for my final 2 years. My parent’s income was $114,000, I was the only child in college, they owned a home, had 2 cars and had no savings in any form (save for a retirement fund).</p>
<p>hmmm, I wasn’t aware that they considered “retirement accounts” since you cannot take money out of those without incurring a penalty. Or are you just talking about regular savings because that is a lot different than retirement.</p>
<p>I do know they consider equity in primary residence which a lot of other schools do not.</p>
<p>You should appeal to the financial aid office; Your financial aid offer doesn’t seem normal.</p>
<p>Additionally, outside scholarships do help. I asked a financial aid counselor at Cornell if the summer expected earnings could be covered by an outside scholarship, and it can but in a roundabout way. If you don’t save enough during the summer, you can request a loan to make up for it. Coincidentally, this loan will be offset by the amount you receive in outside scholarships. So if you only save up to $1000 in the summer and they expect around $2000, they will give you a $1000 loan, but this loan will be offset by any outside scholarships you have. In the end you will receive grant aid instead of a loan. I believe this applies to other budget readjustments as well, and it applies to everyone, even people with 0k in loans.</p>
<p>My parents (unfortunately) puts all of their money in Certified Deposits not traditional IRAs, those count as regular assets so it looks like we are extremely wealthy. Home is capped at 1.2x income so that is good.</p>
<p>But does anyone know the answer to my question? Is summer earnings considered self help?</p>
<p>But any normal summer job would probably exceed the 2320 they expect you to earn? Are they encouraging people not to work just so they can get their own scholarship?</p>
<p>No…self-help consists of loans and work-study (i.e. an on campus job). Outside scholarships do not reduce your EFC.</p>
<p>All of this information is clearly explained on the financial aid website.</p>
<p>I do not think summer earnings, or I assume you mean student contribution is considered self help. I think that is part of the “family contribution”. Basically, the student contribution and parent contribution make up the self help. Or at least that is how it seems in the brochure I was just reading.</p>
<p>It’s time to educate your parents about their “retirement” savings for a variety of reasons!</p>
<p>Yeah… why not keep their CDs in a tax-deferred IRA? That would seem optimal from a tax perspective in terms of the benefits of compounding interest.</p>
<p>At any rate, maybe you could explain to Cornell the curiosities of your parent’s retirement savings.</p>
<p>I just got my Cornell Financial Aid packet too.</p>
<p>It’s official; Cornell Financial Aid is like a fan – it blows.</p>
<p>@chanfest22 lol interesting comparison</p>
<p>@dewdrop87</p>
<p>Ok, how was your EFC $12,000 while making $114,000 a year. We have practically no savings an actual sibling in college paying $16,000 a year, and we only make about $80,000 a year. Yet, my preliminary EFC (for ED) was $12,000 dollars. I don’t get it…</p>
<p>Oh ya, and FAFSA says that my EFC should be about $8,000 a year. Hmm…wait, how do they deal cars into this. B/c we have 3 cars, but one of our cars is sooo old (1995) that it’s worth next to nothing. However, we need it for back-up since both my parents work full time - one of them works 7 days a week, the other like 5.5 days a week (yes, only half day off). should I explain this to them? Oh, and when do we get our final financial aid with the FAFSA/2008 tax return info…?</p>
<p>^ My family made ~120k last year, and our EFC is 20k, which IMO is anything not covered by grants, but I’m extremely satisfied with that. 20k/yr for Cornell is definitely something I can swallow.</p>
<p>that’s great, but our income minus $16,000 for my sibling is now effectively $65,000. So, in all actuality, my EFC should be about the same as someone in that income level, not like someone in the $100k+ income level.</p>
<p>Wow. Sounds like you got shafted. I’d call and see for sure…</p>