<p>Has anyone who has been accepted tried using this yet. </p>
<p><a href="https://elion.psu.edu/%5B/url%5D">https://elion.psu.edu/</a></p>
<p>You click on prospective students and then type in the PSU ID number you received with your acceptance letter. </p>
<p>Ours was very disheartening. They showed expected aid to be a $34,000 loan. yikes..... (OOS student)</p>
<p>We're in the same position - a $34,000 loan.</p>
<p>What's surprised me even more was when I re-ran the FA estimator using an income of $60,000 per year and guess what? Another $34,000 loan was the result.</p>
<p>i received the same response. i suspect that it's not working.</p>
<p>Well, it does change when you plug in very low incomes.</p>
<p>For example using an income of $35,000:</p>
<p>Essential charges : $33,648<br>
Estimated student financial aid </p>
<p>Loan: $28,467 </p>
<p>Grant: $5,181 </p>
<p>Work: $0 </p>
<p>Scholarship: $0<br>
Total : $33,648</p>
<p>nothing came up for me when i logged in...</p>
<p>wow - such high loan amounts. Just curious - are these "typical" financial aid packages for PSU?. Maybe I am being really naive but for an average middle class family, should one expect 25-35K per year in loans? (assuming that there are not merit scholarships)</p>
<p>How do you get to that??</p>
<p>As per website: PSU meets need primarily with loans. 23% of UG students end up with a merit scholarship. 20% incoming freshman are awarded merit scholarships. These come out March/April timeframe.</p>
<p>I believe the original post involved an out-of-state student, so the costs would be somewhat lower for in-state. However, we were a bit disappointed to hear that PSU seems to really push loans as part of the student aid package. We had hoped that merit-based aid would be more plentiful. </p>
<p>Honestly, we'd probably make out better (moneywise) if our S went to a smaller private school. The tuition is higher, but they'd give him more scholarship money. But he is really excited about Penn State, and so are we, so we'll deal with the financial issues. Right now, we're determined for him to get through school without any loans, so hopefully we can stick to that.</p>
<p>S received no academic merit money freshman year. However, he did get some sophomore year.</p>