<p>Hey. I'm currently in 2nd semester of community college so I have 1 more full year after this one.</p>
<p>Once I'm done I wish to go to a 4 year school. I have a few in mind. However, financial aid is a huge factor on where I can go. My family is dirt poor. My father is disabled and my mother takes care of him. Our EFC is 0. My parents Adjusted Gross Income is literally 0. (Yes, it's true) Every penny of their income is social security. I need to know how I can find out how much financial aid I'd receive at the 4 year schools I'm thinking about.</p>
<p>I already submitted my Fafsa for 09-10 for my community college. I will almost definitely get the Pell grant as I did last year which will take care of all my expenses. But I want to know how much financial aid I can get at a 4 year school.</p>
<p>How do I do this? I haven't been accepted anywhere yet by the way. Nor have I applied. What do you suggest I do?</p>
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<p>Also. For my personal taxes for 08 (not my parents), if I received financial aid I cannot deduct that $1,800 of college tuition, correct? Or can I? Thanks!</p>
<p>Bill, you need a school that says it meets the full demonstrated need of all admitted students for four years (even if you will be there for only two); there are many. There may be a manageable amount of work-study and/or loans involved; you may be required to accept both. Such schools will say something about meeting full need on their FA pages; look for phrases like “meet the full demonstrated need of those students offered institutional aid.” If you are admitted, you should get essentially a full ride.</p>
<p>Okay thanks. I’ll look for that. It would be pointless to add the schools to my submitted FAFSA, correct? That’s what someone suggested. But what good would it do since I haven’t even applied? Any other suggestions? Anyone?</p>
<p>If you didn’t pay for tuition, you can’t take the hope or lifetime learning credit. However, I believe if you used a loan to pay for it, then you can. But if you didn’t pay that much in taxes, it won’t do you any good anyway (I don’t believe it is a refundable credit for 2008, but it will be for 2009 and 2010)
<a href=“http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/[/url]”>http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/</a></p>
<p>No, don’t put schools on your FAFSA if you aren’t applying there yet.
Research NOW what schools your are considering and find out what type of aid they will have to offer you BEFORE you get your hopes up. If you can live at home and go to state U, the Pell and other grants you may qualify for and Stafford and perkins loans may cover tuition for a cheap instate. Best of luck to you and GREAT that you are thinking about this NOW</p>
<p>All colleges have some kind of financial aid explanation on their web site (often hidden in the Admissions section). The web site for each college should also have a phone number you can use to call that college’s Financial Aid Office or Admissions Office and ask about what kind of financial aid their school offers.</p>
<p>It’s perfectly okay to call a school and explain that you haven’t applied yet but that you’d like to know what kinds of financial aid they offer and what the maximum available amount is. They won’t be able to tell you how much you, specifically, will be able to get (since they haven’t seen any of your documents yet) but they will tell you, for example, whether their school offers need-based aid and/or merit aid, what the average amount for merit aid is, and how much of a typical student’s financial aid package includes loans.</p>
<p>If you ask those questions at a number of schools, and look at the different answers, you’ll start to get a picture of what might be feasible for you. Best of luck!</p>
<p>Research your schools carefully. Some schools do not give financial aid or give reduced aid to transfers. If you are counting on your FAFSA EFC for Pell money and other funds related to that, you may want to look at schools that are close to what you can get that way. My hairdresser has two kids in community college with one going to a four year school next year. They just can’t afford to pay any more for college than they are. They are above Pell thresholds, and just above the financial aid qualification line. So her daughter made sure she appled to local state 4 year colleges, so her tuition cost remained about the same, and she could continue to commute. She did apply to a couple of schools where she could board, that do give transfers consideration for financial aid, but she made sure she had those financial safeties on her list. She’ll find out soon what is workable for her.</p>
<p>I like the federal site ([Student</a> Aid on the Web](<a href=“http://www.studentaid2.ed.gov/gotocollege/campustour/default.asp]Student”>http://www.studentaid2.ed.gov/gotocollege/campustour/default.asp)), as it gives a good breakdown of types of aid available, tells you if the school is need blind or not, etc. I believe you can put in criteria and have a list of matching schools come up. The College Board site gives quite a bit of info as well. Check the links at the top of the page for leads on schools with good merit aid - some of them might give to transfer students too.</p>
<p>Here’s a list of colleges that promise to meet 100% of the demonstrated need of all their students. (Other schools will meet 100% of the need of some of their students, but in that case you don’t know if you’ll be one of the lucky ones until you have your offer in hand.)</p>
<p>Some of these schools are very selective, but some are accessible to a wide range of students. Maybe you can do some research and figure out which schools might be good matches for you.</p>
<p>Adrian College<br>
Amherst College<br>
Barnard College<br>
Bates College<br>
Boston College<br>
Bowdoin College<br>
Brown University<br>
Bryn Mawr College<br>
California Institute of Technology<br>
Carleton College<br>
Carroll University (Wisconsin)<br>
Chapman University<br>
University of Chicago<br>
Claremont McKenna College<br>
Colby College<br>
Colgate University<br>
Columbia University<br>
Connecticut College<br>
Cornell University<br>
Dartmouth College<br>
Davidson College<br>
Duke University<br>
Emory University<br>
Franklin and Marshall College<br>
Georgetown University<br>
Gettysburg College<br>
Grinnell College<br>
Hamilton College - NY<br>
Harvard University<br>
Harvey Mudd College<br>
Haverford College<br>
College of the Holy Cross<br>
Lafayette College<br>
Lake Forest College<br>
Macalester College<br>
Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
Middlebury College<br>
Mount Holyoke College<br>
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill<br>
Northwestern University<br>
University of Notre Dame<br>
Oberlin College<br>
University of Pennsylvania<br>
Pitzer College<br>
Pomona College<br>
Princeton University<br>
Reed College<br>
Rice University<br>
University of Richmond<br>
University of Rochester<br>
Scripps College<br>
Smith College<br>
St. Olaf College<br>
Stanford University<br>
Swarthmore College<br>
Trinity College<br>
Tufts University<br>
Vanderbilt University<br>
Vassar College<br>
University of Virginia<br>
Wabash College<br>
Washington University in St. Louis<br>
Wellesley College<br>
Wesleyan University<br>
Williams College<br>
Yale University</p>
<p>^ but most of these schools will determine what your demonstrated need is going to be. Even if you have a “0” EFC as the OP does they can, and probably will, compute your contribution to be thousands of dollars, perhaps 10’s of thousands higher based on their own formulas in using CSS profile. </p>
<p>The one thing it takes a while to understand is that your EFC means next to nothing at the schools that use the profile to determine your “expected contribution”. (EFC is used by them to see if you qualify for certain federal grants or loans not what they expect you to pay.)</p>