<p>Just a quick question. Today I recieved some type of financial aid papers and I was wondering if someone could decipher them for me. The papers have a tentaative award on them but the award has only one loan on it for 5,500 dollars. Are they saying this is all the school is willing to offer me?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it sounds like all you are being offered is an unsubsidized Stafford loan.</p>
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<p>Were there also grants and scholarships or was it just the loan? Schools often don’t “offer” parent loans or private loans as part of their awards…that doesn’t mean that you can’t apply for them if your parents are willing to take on some debt for your education. What was your EFC?</p>
<p>What school is this?</p>
<p>If it’s public, are you out of state?</p>
<p>What was your EFC?</p>
<p>Are you saying that your “tentative” package only had a loan in it…no grants, no scholarships?</p>
<p>Did you apply to schools that require CSS Profile? If so, did you submit that? And if you did, do you have a non-custodial parent that was supposed to submit info as well?</p>
<p>Was it your Student Aid Report?</p>
<p>Our EFC was somewhere around 36,000 or so. It is a private university. I was thinking the same thing but I also am apart of the Posse Scholars Program. I do not understand how a tentative award can be made up of student loans.</p>
<p>Loans ARE financial aid, and many students will find that the only financial aid for which they qualify or the only aid offered to them by the school is loans.</p>
<p>If you are in a scholars program that has a merit component that is NOT need based, you would generally see that on your tentative award letter. If there is a component of need, it is possible that you will not receive any grants even if you are in a particular program. I am not saying that this is your situation, because I am not familiar with this program … I am just saying that it is possible. The only way to know is to call the school & ask.</p>
<p>*Our EFC was somewhere around 36,000 or so. It is a private university. I was thinking the same thing but I also am apart of the Posse Scholars Program. I do not understand how a tentative award can be made up of student loans. *</p>
<p>Isnt’ Posse Scholars an outside scholarship program? If so, then it wouldn’t be listed on your FA award.</p>
<p>Were you under the belief that this school “met need”? Most schools do NOT meet need.</p>
<p>Most schools do not have much aid to give. Yes, an aid package can be only loans. Loans are aid. Loans happen to be the biggest form of aid.</p>
<p>Okay, I just looked up the Posse Scholars Program. I agree … that would not be on the award letter at this point. The financial aid office has to be notified of this scholarship, and I am sure that it doesn’t happen until you have actually committed to a school. </p>
<p>Looks like Posse pays tuition. You will have to come up with room & board. Most likely, you will end up with Posse for tuition & you will be offered unsubsidized Stafford=$5500. However, it is possible that a school may have other merit scholarships they offer to Posse Scholars to help offset the cost of room & board … but I don’t know that; it’s just a guess.</p>
<p>Congratulations, by the way! :)</p>
<p>Is this school a Posse Partner? Does a school have to be a partner to get the scholarship?</p>
<p>My daughter last week. “received” a tentative financial aid award of $43k (mostly in grants and abt 9K in loans). We were ecstatic as you can imagine. Annual tuition with room and board is $57. This weekend she checked her aid info again and to her surprise it had been revised, only giving her less than half of what was originally published. We will be calling the school financial aid office but I wonder if anyone has had this experience. Any insight on what this means and what we could do would be greatly appreciated. This is our first experience with college admissions and frankly I am frustrated and confused. She was accepted at her first choice school but they gave her nothing in financial aid. I felt mislead as we did their preliminary EFC calculations to see if there may even be a chance to get aid and it showed that we could possibly get 2/3 of the tuition in aid! But to get nothing at all after applying and getting accepted is heartbreaking.</p>
<p>Log onto the school’s financial aid web page and see your financial aid package. It is unusual for a school to mail the FA package letter to the student in surface mail.</p>
<p>It’s not unusual to get an FA award by snail mail. that said, it sounds like this student is also looking online.</p>
<p>To the OP…</p>
<p>What is now missing from the aid package?</p>
<p>Is this a CSS Profile school? Does your D have a non-custodial parent? Was the NCP info required? If so, then your computations on the school’s website wouldn’t have been accurate because those don’t often compute the aid/family contribution when there are two households responsible.</p>
<p>Have you recently filed your real tax returns (therefore a revision may have occured)? (or if there is a NCP, maybe he recently completed his tax returns.)</p>
<p>What was your FAFSA EFC? Check online to see if that got adjusted.</p>
<p>Do you have a lot of home equity (if this is a CSS school)?</p>
<p>Does your D have a college fund?</p>
<p>Basically the school grants have been taken away. The aid only consists of fed loans and grants. The NCP angle does not apply. We sent in copy of our tax forms but as we are residing overseas (American citizens however) we have until June to snail mail in the returns which hasnt been done. Does home equity really have something to do with it? You mean if you can get a loan against your home equity to pay for college they consider this ability to pay? I’m sorry if I sound naive, there just seems to be so many factors to this financial aid reward process.</p>