<p>Once more…do you have a cosigner? Will that cosigner do so and qualify to do so for FOUR years? If not, you very much could find yourself transferring after the first year. </p>
<p>You know…you sound like the banking industry. That industry got into a LOT of fiscal trouble by overextending.</p>
<p>And at the end of the day, your life WILL be run by the money…and when you are repaying it, it might “make you happy”.</p>
<p>I hope we don’t see you back here in six months wondering where you can transfer AND receive some financial aid…because the answer won’t make you happy.</p>
<p>I understand that when your family is struggling, you want to do something for yourself. You want to help them too; I can see that by the way you spent some of your college grants. I don’t know how many of them are renewable and how many are one time only (or if anyone has mentioned there’s a difference), but using money intended for one purpose on something else is what my parents used to call “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” After you’ve graduated and are working, you’re still going to want to help your family. You’re not going to do yourself any favors if you start your adult life by racking up debt, or getting in the habit of taking money you saved for one thing (your college loans, for example) and using it to help your family because you think the money will turn up elsewhere. I’ve seen people with that sort of thinking lose cars they could no longer make the payments on; others had their house of cards built so high, they lost their homes. Please consider taking a deferral year. You can tell this college you want to work for a year and enroll next year. If you feel the same way next fall, you can still attend this school. If you save what you earn, you won’t have as much debt wherever you do go.</p>
<p>My parents grew up during the depression, so they were taught to save for what they needed, then buy it; they didn’t buy on credit or take loans. When my dad started to lose his vision, he lost his primary job, but he was still able to run his dairy farm. I remember him selling off cows to make ends meet rather than going into debt. For a few years after we lost the farm we lived in a rental. The only running water came from a creek my parents chipped the ice off of so they could haul water. The toilet was flushed with a bucket, and heat came from a wood stove. My dad was what we’d now call a handyman and he worked as much as he could. We did get food stamps when there wasn’t enough work. I remember people offering to let my parents buy a better vehicle on a payment plan so my dad wouldn’t have to fix ours outside in the dead of winter. My parents said no, when they’d saved the money, they’d buy something more reliable. We didn’t do rent to own appliances and most of our clothes were hand me downs, but we made do.</p>
<p>By the time my dad was considered legally blind, my mother was able to find a job. We moved, first to an apartment with full utilities, then to a large fixer upper my parents bought with the money they’d saved by paying themselves first, not paying off debt for things they’d already used. My parents weren’t able to save enough to pay for room and board for me or my siblings (our tuition was paid by Pell and a state grant), so they bought a home within commuting distance of a college.</p>
<p>My point in telling you all of this is that it’s important to keep your options open. Debt limits you. Right now, you’re (presumably) healthy, certainly a hard worker. My father was too. When my parents got married, they set up their lives (# of kids, work arrangements, etc) based on their current conditions. But things change. They could have decided that the girls still deserved new Easter dresses (with matching shoes and purses) and the boys deserved little sailor suits (and shiny dress shoes) and tried to go into debt to get them. They didn’t. What they decided they deserved was to not live in debt and to work toward financial freedom which would free us children as well. We may not have been able to afford private sleep away colleges right away, although most of us worked and paid out-of-pocket for a year or two of the experience on our own, but we all attended college. Your next move is going to set the tone for a huge chunk of your life, and is likely to affect what you’re able to do for your parents as well as your children. Please give yourself that year to gain some perspective and maturity before you take that leap. You deserve that.</p>
<p>As for the transfer stuff, I actually know people (personally) who transferred from one college to another and is getting a great financial aid package. And yes, the cosigner knows that they are responsible as well. At the end of the day, I know what I want and I’m going to go for it. I appreciate the anecdote, but I’m not willing to take a gap year. I know what my options are (or were, at least) and I’ve made a decision. I can’t postpone my future. My gut is telling me that now is the right time and I always listen to my gut. It’s a huge risk, I know, but what’s life without risks? I don’t want to look back when I’m old and gray and wish that I had listened to my gut. There are a TON of financial aid/scholarship opportunities out there for undergrads (I know because I’ve come across plenty of them while I was looking for some) and so I have hope. With all due respect, whether or not any of you believe I can make this work by starting college now isn’t quite frankly my biggest concern because I know that I can make it work and I will. So please, don’t waste anymore time trying to convince me because I’m not going to take a year off or go to another college. I’ve made up my mind and I’m pursing it full force in the fall.</p>
<p>What ever you decide to do just make sure you have those numbers straight in terms of semester and full year, as well as the loan amounts, payment terms, interest rates when you have to start repyaing, as well as the schedule of payments. If you learned nothing else from positing here, hopefully you did find out that reading these bills and award letters is not that easy. They are not straightforward at all, and when you enter into any contracts or go into any deals make sure you are solid with the terms as a mistakes in that regard can be very painful and expensive.</p>
<p>@collegecrisis96 you sign on name is going to stick with you I am afraid. You are going to stay in crisis IMHO. I thought maybe you discussed with FA officer, but just reading your FA offer on-line doesn’t cut it.</p>
<p>“There are a TON of financial aid/scholarship opportunities out there for undergrads (I know because I’ve come across plenty of them while I was looking for some) and so I have hope.”</p>
<p>The saying ‘a bird in hand vs two in the bush’ kind of applies here. You are hoping for financial awards that are not in hand. </p>
<p>Perhaps you have a relative lined up to sign off on loan, maybe not yet… - is someone really willing to sign up for four years of your college loan debt? College loans are not bankrupt-able - they follow through until death on the signers; they continue to accrue interest over time - horrible amounts.</p>
<p>You want encouragement going down the road you are going - but many of us see financial shortfall and therefore financial disaster.</p>
<p>Seek out a minister that can help guide you - you keep looking for encouragement - let a minister help give you some direction. Gosh, maybe there is a minister near your ‘dream school’ or one in your community that can help advise you.</p>
<p>Sorry to see “I’ve made up my mind” when you clearly are in a financial shortfall. Please talk to FA officer at your college - if you can financially get through the first year and be able to continue, and what has to happen for you to continue after first semester. You ask for advice, but clearly you want to hang on to a thread of false hope.</p>
<p>Tons of financial aid opportunities, but she doesn’t take them and ends up at this unaffordable college with its crappy aid and going deeply into debt instead of finding one she likes that gives great aid. Oh the irony.</p>
<p>I will post again at the end of both semesters to update!</p>
<p>But here’s something I’ve come across recently and decided to share it with you all.</p>
<p>On my FA forms, I accidentally included an extra 0 on a number somewhere, and along the way it ended up translating to a $150k yearly income, which is why the college expected me to pay so much out of pocket. I appealed for more aid again on those grounds since my actual family income is far, far, far less than that. It’s actually a small fraction of that. So now with my actual income being reported, as well as the public assistance my mother receives, I believe that I will get more aid from the school since it’s a very. very valid reason.</p>
<p>I’ll update you all once more when I hear back from the FA office about my appeal. I’m praying that they have money leftover to give me since it’s so late in the game to be appealing for aid (even though I actually appealed once before earlier in the year which is when the aforementioned mistake was made). Pray for me!</p>
<p>Well that would make a huge differenced in aid 150k income vs on assistance. Sometimes people here do remind students to double check their numbers when they are out of whack, but you didn’t seem to think so, just said that the school is not known for good aid. I wonder if you ran the Net Price Calculator and saw that your estimate for aid would be different from the actual. Even though you are waiting to hear back, since you have all your paperwork there you might run the NPC and see what it tell you for reference.</p>
<p>It is so late and you appealed once, but on no basis I guess and now you do have a basis that you made a material error. I wonder if things didn’t look very strange to be on assistance but to also have a 150k income. But hopefully they can and will give you more aid. Remember that some schools don’t ‘meet need’ so a gap can be a given.
And if your school does meet need for some and not others they could be out for the year. Hopefully you will get a positive result. Good luck and thanks for update.</p>
<p>That is odd. You should have linked your FAFSA with the IRS retrieval tool which would have verified your income…and that mistake would have been flagged, I think.</p>
<p>Update: I got a call from the FA office today about the appeal and they’re giving me almost $20k more per year! And to think I almost gave up on the appeal because it was a lot of work. Thank you all for your help, support and advice!</p>
<p>Thumper, I’ve known a number of schools that will not flag additional money that is not on the tax form when linked for verification. They just go with the higher income, maybe figuring that was additional unreported income. They are scrupulous about any MORE money reported on the tax returns, that I can tell you. </p>
<p>@collegecrisis96: Hallelujiah! Thank you for the update</p>
<p>Suggestion for your next FAFSA - try to use the direct data transfer method</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that you could owe income taxes for 2014 when you file your tax return in 2015 if the non-loan aid exceeded the tuition and books. Hold onto any financial aid refund and don’t share it with your family. </p>
<p>YAY! @collegecrisis96, This is the most wonderful news!!! I’m so happy for you! You really did a great job with calling the Financial Aid department and working through all of this.</p>
<p>Your determination and perseverance when faced with a difficulty is really what carried you through! This is a trait that will help you with your studies and your future career. If you look over the course of this thread, many times you were advised to change your plans, but you stuck with it and kept talking to the Financial Aid office and kept working through the situation. You started early in the summer to try to understand everything and you were proactive about resolving it. Great job!!!</p>
<p>I imagine that you also learned so much from this experience, about how financial aid works, but maybe more importantly, that talking to the staff at the college and being proactive about things really is a important and very helpful. Remember that in college (and in life) you need to be your own advocate. Don’t forget to talk to your professors, your academic advisor and other people at the college. </p>
<p>Best wishes in college! Good luck with your studies!!</p>