<p>Northeastmom, the GPA to keep the scholarship is 2.0, and she is allowed to go under that amount for 2 semesters before losing the scholarship. The scholarship is also guarenteed to cover tuition for all 4 years, even if tuition goes up. It’s an amazing offer, and I have a feeling it will be the best one she will get (even though we are still waiting to get FA offers from 7 other schools). </p>
<p>I AM tortured by this package! The financial aid officer said that all the loan info was changing and that they would send more info in June. I don’t really want her to take on that much, but I have no disposable income that can go towards lowering her loan amount. </p>
<p>We will be going back to the school in mid-April for the admitted students day, so maybe I will sit down with someone then and talk to them about these loans…</p>
<p>missemily, I am so happy for you! The gpa to keep this level of merit aid cannot be beat. I do agree about the loans being too high. I would look into them cutting them down if at all possible and the outside awards as well. 9k for a freshmen, IMO is just way too much debt. Play out all of your other options until the end, but this may well be your best offer.</p>
<p>*I don’t really want her to take on that much, but I have no disposable income that can go towards lowering her loan amount. *</p>
<p>Others can correct me if I’m wrong, but if you could get them to increase W/S, then she could take out less loans and not increase future EFC (since W/S earnings doesn’t affect EFC). And, with a higher W/S, then her summer earnings would go towards that and not hurt EFC.</p>
<p>I’m afraid that if she took DadII’s advice and worked summers w/o increasing W/S, then your EFC will increase.</p>
<p>The becoming an RA is a good idea, if possible. Does that cover food (board) or just room. At my kids’ school it only covers room…but each school is different…</p>
<p>mom2college, yes that seems correct but 2500 is already a fair amount of w/s. W/S is a bit of an unknown because all too often the student cannot find a w/s job even though it was awarded. Often one really needs to be proactive and try to secure a job before getting on campus.</p>
<p>Well, the other issue is that she doesn’t have a job lined up for summer and she doesn’t have transportation to get a job for the summer, so we can’t count on her earnings…</p>
<p>I checked and if she is an RA it covers Room AND Board. So in the scenario I am imagining she would have to take out loans for freshman year but after that would have tuition,room and board covered for years 2,3,&4.</p>
<p>You also might want to check w/residence life re: the RA and make sure she can become one as a sophomore AND to see how many RA’s they can accomodate. At my D’s school they have way more students that WANT to be RA’s than RA jobs. It’s competitive.</p>
<p>I am reading all these posts and feeling badly for you all. I have one in college that we pay for totally but luckily it is at home and instate tuition which isn’t that bad. I have one we will be waiting for the acceptances next year. I am trying my best to find out which schools will be affordable but it is tricky. My next dd will be getting her dad’s GI bill which sort of pays instate tuition in a given state plus housing allowance at a staff sergeants rate and 1000 for books. But it is really hard to ficure out how much that is and then we have to figure out whether the yellow ribbon program (which has the school pay half and the VA pay half of a certain amount of the shortfall in tuition up to full price) is enough. The reason I am having such a difficult time with this is that the VA gives different allowances for tuition (per credit rates) and different allowances for fees. But most schools have one line item which is Tuition and fees. Also it isn’t always that easy to figure out tuition by credits when some of the schools have non standard schedules (January or May terms).Since we have one more to go, we gave the GI bill to number two and expect her to cost us nothing. That way we have a few years to save up for number three who will be full pay minus any merit aid she receives.</p>
<p>I checked and if she is an RA it covers Room AND Board. So in the scenario I am imagining she would have to take out loans for freshman year but after that would have tuition,room and board covered for years 2,3,&4.</p>
<p>I wonder if it would be somehow possible to negotiate that if she accepts the school’s offer, they can assure her of a RA job for years 2, 3, & 4. Or, at a minimum, at least guarantee her a RA job for year 2, so she can “prove herself” for the following years.</p>
<p>OK, a non whine. S was accepted today into the state flagship, into the engineering program. He likes this school, and even though he will get no financial aid (unless they give him a token merit award) this will run way less than any private. </p>
<p>So unless the last private we are waiting to hear from accepts him <em>and</em> throws buckets of money at him, we are finished. I am happy because if he wasn’t accepted here, he would have been very sad at not going to one of the privates we could not afford (the dream schools)</p>
<p>So thanks for letting me whine, I’ll be back in a few when older D is in the running. Next time I’ll bring the cheesecake.</p>
<p>-sigh- I got a decent package, but I need to get some 1-3k scholarships to bring down my loans a little. </p>
<p>I got 9k in grants and 8k in loans…that’s a little much. If I can scrape 2-4k in loans by getting a few small scholarships, I’ll be much better off.</p>
<p>There’s just a lot of work to do for them. Most of the ones I’ve found are essay contests.</p>
<p>Does anybody have a good link or example of subsidized loans and nonsubsidized (where I think interest and payment start on day1). It seems like subsidized would be waaaaay better, but I’d like to be able to show that to my son and husband using real numbers.</p>
<p>Go Martina! Congratulations to your son. My husband earned his BSEE from our state’s top public engineering school decades ago. The classes were huge (even then) the first year but then decreased dramatically in size as kids left the program and moved to other majors. What was left was a group of great students who really wanted to be engineers and good faculty attention. Since your son has been on an upward trend this last year, I imagine he will have a positive experience. He is also likely to not be as burned out as some of his higher achieving HS peers. According to my daughter, a lot of the boys at her LAC who worked their tails off in HS were completely burned out when they got to college and have not done well. Some of the late bloomers are just taking off.</p>
<p>I’m not military but I want to whine about the treatment of our military with college benefits. Anyone who puts his/her life on the line for our country should have a paid college education for themselves and better benefits for their children than what MilitaryMom has shared with us.</p>
<p>Dad II-all aid packages are not the same in terms of meeting EFC. I have talked with several of the aid folks at the schools where my son was accepted. When I shared that we paid less for child one as an only child in college than what was being offered for child two with two children in college, the aid officers were quick to mention the large endowment of our older child’s school (Grinnell). All of the schools were polite and skated around the preferential packaging (another issue that can make aid packages for families with the same EFC look very different in terms of loan/grant ratios).</p>
<p>EFC: 7500
COA: 22,505
Direct Subsidized Loan: 3500
Direct Unsubsidized Loan: 2000
Perkins Loan (Subsidized): 3050
Grant: 4481</p>
<p>Whine: 8550 is too much for a student to take out in loans!! School’s average grant package is around 13000. Lesson Learned: When a student applies to one school Early Decision, you have NO BARGAINING POWER!!</p>
<p>However, this is a Whine thread and I’m whining because I don’t like the financial aid package. I wouldn’t compain otherwise. We’re grateful that she was accepted into the only school she wanted to go to and knew that we’d make it work one way or the other. Just hoping for more grant, that’s all.</p>
<p>You knew the school will use loans as part of the FA package, you knew that ED aceptence is binding, and you are so happy that DD got in. Yet you are whining about the loan is too much. Yes, I got it. I think most of you knew before hand what you were getting yourself into. But still want to whine afterwards. </p>
<p>I also got it the purpose of this thread. What else could you do? It definitely beats drinking yourself to silly. So go ahead, keeping whining if that makes you feel better. </p>
<p>You probably need to get some cheesecake ready. Because in most of the cases, those loan amount will go up each and every year. The upper limit of the subsidized Stafford, I think, will be at least $7K a year at senior year. </p>
<p>BTW, I am not trying to be mean or anything. From 10,000 ft point of view, I am whining too. Just from a different point of view. Unless we are really, really, Mega lotto lucky, we will be facing a lot of loans for DS too. Wouldn’t it be nice that every one could go to their dream school for free?</p>
<p>BBTW, this number you cited
does not sound right. I don’t know what school this is but it appears to meet 100% of the need and use loans as part of FA. </p>
<p>The COA is 22505 - 13000 - 9000 (loan) = average student goes there for free. May the average FA package of 13000 includes these loans?</p>