<p>My father made 32,000 this year and I only got a 4,900 grant and 7,500 in loans to go to a paticular university ( I need about 18,000 a year for this school ). My sister won't be going to college till fall of 2012, do you think I might get more financial aid next year? Or will it generally stay about the same? I really want to to attend this university, but Its smarter for me to stay home and just drive to the nearest university (a university that I've never wanted to attend).</p>
<p>Unless the university you are contemplating promises to meet 100% of need, you really can’t know. The best thing to do would be to ask their financial aid department what to expect. With your dad’s income, it doesn’t sound like the college is meeting need – unless there are other factors driving up your family EFC that you did’t mention.</p>
<p>Your school does not appear to meet need so a drop in EFC probably will not help much. Assuming the grant is a Pell grant, with a Pell grant of $4900 your EFC is probably in the 700-800 range. Even with your sister going to school next year, the most that will happen is your EFC will probably be reduced to about half (assuming the same income and assets as this year). So say your EFC drops to 400 - that will give you an additional $400 in Pell grant money. </p>
<p>It sounds like the school is unaffordable for you.</p>
<p>*My father made 32,000 this year and I only got a 4,900 grant and 7,500 in loans to go to a paticular university ( I need about 18,000 a year for this school ). *</p>
<p>This school doesn’t seem to have any institutional grants to give. It seems to only have fed aid. So, when your sister goes to college, you may only see the grant increase from $4900 to maybe a few hundred more…so not much.</p>
<p>Since you can’t borrow more to go to this school, and it’s doubtful (and unwise) that your dad would co-sign for more loans, you won’t get the money to go to this school.</p>
<p>Go to the school that you can commute to. I’m sorry that it’s not a school that you ever saw yourself going to, but either you weren’t advised well or there isn’t any other financial safety that you could have applied to. If your stats were strong, then there may have been other schools that would have given you merit scholarships or other aid.</p>
<p>In your case, likely not. As the others have noted, and apparent in your information, your college does not meet 100% of need, certainly not using EFC, otherwise you would not have your gap this year. As a rule, financial aid is the most generous freshman year. Though your parental EFC will be half, that doesn’t mean the school is going to give you more. What is your EFC this year, anyways? Did you get PELL monies? The loans look like they are $5500 in Stafford which doesn’t come from the college. Where is the other $2k in loans comeing from and what kind of grant did you get? The maximum PELL is about $5K, so it doesn’t leave you with a lot more to get. The college isn’t dipping much into its own coffers for you from what I can see here, and you have the need, so more need isn’t going to do it. </p>
<p>And it will depend on your sister’s choice of schools as to what will be provided to her. Your family EFC is likely to be low enough that you each get PELL, but that isn’t much if you are looking at going away to school. Your best bet is really to commute to college where PELL and subsidized Staffords will pay for most if not all of your expenses, unless you can find a college that will pay for your college experience.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your suggestions. I have no idea what a EFC is or how I would go about figuring it out. I got 4,900 in pell, 6,500 unsubsized loan, and 1000 subsized. I’m a transfer student.</p>
<p>If you filed FAFSA, which you or your parents had to have done, you received something called the SAR which would give you your EFC, your Expected Family Contribution. I would expect that your family EFC is very low, under $1000, maybe, because of the amount of PELL money you got. That’s an awfully big gap there in terms of what the college gave you. They gave you nothing. All you got is from Federal monies that any school would have given you, as long as the COA was over that amount. </p>
<p>When your sister goes to college, even if this college gives you double what they are giving you now, it would still be zero since 0 X 2 = 0. You are close to the maximum of federal allowances, so that amount is not going to double. If your sister were going to college right now, say if she were a twin, you would get a few hundred more in PELL and that 's it. I thin you might be able to get more of that loan subsidized, but I think the subsidy should be available even now–you should check on that.</p>
<p>With such a low family EFC, really, I would not take out those loans and I would go to school locally. I don’t know how you are planning to even make up the difference in cost this year. It is not likely to be a one year thing with the money increasing next year, in my opinion. There would have to be a really strikingly good reason to do this even if you can somehow squeeze out the $5K or so you need to afford this school on top of the loans.</p>