<p>I realize that Stanford claims to have a great financial aid packages with no loans for low income students.</p>
<p>Quote from website: "Stanford's need-based financial aid program for undergraduates is designed to ensure that a family's economic circumstances will not prevent a student from attending Stanford. Parents making less than $60,000 a year are not expected to pay tuition or contribute to the costs of room and board and other expenses. Families making less than $100,000 a year do not pay tuition. Students still are expected to contribute their earnings from work during the summer and academic year. The program, which was established in 2008, also eliminated the need for student loans."</p>
<p>BUT they only claim to cover full tuition/room/board if your family has low income and "average" assets for the income bracket. I am currently in a situation where my parents have close to no income, yet higher than average assets for the less than $60,000 bracket.... After using the financial aid calculator on the Stanford website, I was estimated to have to pay over $30,000 a year. How does that work if my parents literally have NO income?! Is this accurate? I was thinking about applying EA to Stanford, but since it is restrictive, I would lose my chances of applying to other top schools with way better aid. Stanford would be my first choice... but unless I can get guaranteed full aid, there is absolutely no way I could attend. Help?</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure if you have no income you can get full financial aid… That’s why they have people look at applications, rather than programs :)</p>
<p>skittlescutie, if a family has a substantial amount of assets and little income, they can still reasonably be expected in many cases to sell some assets to raise cash to help pay their students’ education costs (unless there is no market at all for those assets and they couldn’t be sold). If the only asset is the family residence, the family normally wouldn’t be expected to sell it to come up with cash, but for other kinds of property, they would. Not sure why that doesn’t seem appropriate to at least some extent. The families of most students seeking major financial aid have neither much income nor much in the way of assets.</p>
<p>The thing is, we don’t have nearly enough assets to be considered “rich”, not nearly. Using a purely unbiased judgement, I cannot see how in anyway, even if our assets were all sold, that my parents would be able to pay $30,000 x 4, simply put, with absolutely no income, everything is being drained out and not replaced. This is very frustrating that I might have to give up my dream school due to monetary issues.</p>
<p>The financial aid assessment is done every year, so if your parents remained umemployed, then your EFC would go down each year, because their amount of assets would be going down and not being replaced. So they wouldn’t wind up paying anything like $30K x 4 in that scenario. Also, those calculators on college websites are meant to provide just quick, rough estimates, so if Stanford is your dream school, you should still apply and see what actual package is offered, after you’ve had the chance to explain the details of your situation. Good luck!</p>
<p>The issue is, although Stanford is my dream school, if they can’t guaranteed full aid, I don’t want to risk losing full aid at another prestigious school’s ED… It’s just such a big risk.</p>
<p>I understand your concern. The thing is, Stanford has one of the most comprehensive and generous need-based financial aid programs anywhere, so their package is likely to be as good as those offered by other top schools, if not superior. Did you enter your data into other colleges’ aid calculators and compare the preliminary results?</p>
<p>Although Stanford’s financial aid package was very generous, it was less than other top schools my S was accepted to. We are paying $20K per year for him… CalTech’s offer was just under $10K and Cornell’s offer was slightly over $12K per year (our EFC). My S chose Stanford and agreed to work during the year to help offset the costs for my wife and I.</p>
<p>Just trying to give you some real numbers to work with… hope it helps. Good luck.</p>
<p>Tripletime, that was super duper helpful! And wow, getting into Stanford and Caltech? Your son must be quite a smartie. :)</p>
<p>I’m not very familiar with aid at Caltech or Cornell, but I do know many students at Stanford who were cross-admits at one or more of HYP, and the aid from Stanford was usually pretty equivalent, according to them. There may be some minor difference in how each school does the calculations, but since these students all chose Stanford, the aid was sufficient for them to attend (and none of HYPS use loans in their packages, AFAIK).</p>
<p>I’m going to agree with Tripletime: my financial aid package for Stanford was not as good as MIT’s or Harvard’s, but the difference between all 3 was only a few hundred each. They also factor in how much it costs to travel to/from campus throughout the school year, so that might affect the cost (though I don’t think it’s something they have on the calculator).</p>
<p>I have a somewhat similar situation as you (one retired parent + already paid off the house-mortgage) and I must say that I received more aid than what was calculated when I first used that calculator. The CSS profile and FAFSA forms just provide so much more info than the numbers you plug into the generator.</p>
<p>One more bit of information… the Stanford package was about $8K more than the FA calculator figured. I called the FA office and asked them please review the award since it was significantly higher than the calculator and the other schools… they did but nothing changed. It didn’t hurt making sure everything was in order and in the end, Stanford was always going to be my son’s choice. Once again, good luck and I wish you the best.</p>