<p>My parents’ income (lower than $60,000) is probably low enough to get some need-based aid, but there are some confounding factors like a small business. And they’ve told me about all this, but they haven’t been willing to help me run the net price calculators, which I assume is mostly because they’d have to go looking for their tax forms. It’s more of a “we’re not doing it now” than a “we’ll never do it” kind of thing, but I don’t know when they will get around to it and I’m trying to get an idea of what to do now. That, and I don’t necessary know what I’d do with their financial information if I had it anyway, and they know that.
I assume I’d get at least some need-based aid, enough to make some colleges with high sticker prices affordable if I were very frugal (I wouldn’t go to a college I absolutely couldn’t afford), but there would probably be debt and at OSU there wouldn’t be nearly as much. I just assumed that a $40,000/yr (tuition) school would always be more expensive than a $10,000/yr school (and remember I’d get merit aid at OSU too, so it wouldn’t even be that much). People always portray state schools as inherently more affordable.</p>