<p>“it’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to, cry if i want to”</p>
<p>we’ve yet to receive the finaids but have already started scoring things off the list as we’ve awoken to the insanity of paying that much money…</p>
<p>as an aside my daugther rec’d an invite to fly out to an admitted students open day on the college’s dime. i know other schools do that for scholarships, recruits, etc. what if they put that money back into finaid or better still, stop printing all the fancy brochures and marketing campaigns and just reduce the tuition!! I mean it isn’t a holiday camp we’re sending our children to.</p>
<p>For us, when there is no expectation then there is no disappointment. As a full pay, we don’t even have the luxury of whining. Oh wait, my sister did whine. She didn’t understand why they weren’t eligible for any FA when their income was close to 7 figures. She didn’t think it was fair.</p>
<p>When my daughter received her financial packages…we nearly hit the floor. With three siblings in college her dream school offered very little. It almost seemed like they had reviewed a different family. To this day, even though she did attend for a year, we still don’t know how they came up with that number. She is no longer attending and in retrospect I can’t say that if the school cost us less, and did’nt require d to have large debt, than it is likely that we would have sent her back when she was ready to return…</p>
<p>FAFSA serves a great purpose. If not for the recession/depression that hit us so hard we had to use our D’s college fund to pay the mortgage and taxes, we would have the $20,000 per year each school expects us to contribute to her education. Unfortunately the last four years have not been kind for our family. So it’s instate tuition for D at a public U in Florida which is insanely cheap. $~5,000/year tuition. I am not whining for any college, I’m whining for the OOS school that was the “dream” school in her desired major.</p>
<p>collegeorburst, you are so fortunate to have a 5,000 option, and at UF. We don’t have that option in NJ. We do have community college for little more than 5000/year in tuition, but not a 4 year state school. UF is a very good school!</p>
<p>i hear you collegeorbust! same situation here. but they say we have 60+ available for college each year… actually we do…if i dont pay our staff, office rent, supplies, health insurance, equip leases, oh and if i only pay a bit of my 2nd mortage i could swing it with money left over.</p>
I would think there is a BIG selection bias in which parents who report their financial aid packages on CC … I would guess that those who are unhappy or do not know how to pay are MUCH-MUCH more likely to make an entry on CC than those who are OK with or are silently dealing with their FA package … so I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions based on what we see on CC.</p>
It’s the classic “accept/deny”. The school accepts your student, but without enough FA for him/her to attend. The school can’t afford to offer you more FA (or chooses not to) and hopes that somehow you can borrow the “gap” funds, or that grandma/great aunt/rich uncle will help you out or that you have a secret bank account in Switzerland or decide to take out a second mortgage or home equity loan… :(</p>
<p>Oh wait, my sister did whine. She didn’t understand why they weren’t eligible for any FA when their income was close to 7 figures. She didn’t think it was fair.</p>
<p>LOL…exactly who did she think should subsidize her child’s education?</p>
<p>Rec’d my S’s FA package for OOS tuition at an expensive mid-western state school (you know who you are), and was disappointed, but not surprised, when it consisted only of $5500 in loans. To be fair, I recognize the justness in the fact that the vast majority of their aid goes to in-state students. Oh well . . .</p>
<p>My 25 year old D went back to school last year and filled out the financial aid forms at an instate school and got nothing but loans. So she took them. This year she filled the FAFSA out again but now has a reduced income… Plus she was a very early bird in getting her forms in. She ended up with substantial merit aid for her stellar grades and some grant money that pretty much covers all of her tuition and a little more (maybe books, but barely). She will work to help offset her rent and gas, but she was definitely 'rewarded" for having worked less in order to attend classes and her good grades. We will help with paying off her loans, but at this point, she is well beyond the age of needing our tax returns to get financial aid. In fact, she wouldn’t probably get a dime despite our having two other tuition-laden kids. </p>
<p>I am not sure how it works for most colleges, but a lot of schools make the promise of similar aid packages going forward. As for D’s case, it actually got better over time.</p>
<p>How exactly should I read my FA package? I just received one from one of my favorite schools, unfortunately, I’m having a little trouble understanding it…</p>
<p>Bluecrayon, post as much of it as you care to and we can try and interpret for you. Probably it’s broken down into categories like:
Merit - scholarship
Grants
Loans - Stafford, sub or unsub
Loans - Perkins or Pell if you qualify
Work study
$$$ You need to pay</p>
<p>You might want to start a new thread - people will be happy to help.</p>
<p>Thanks so much. Here is what my parents and I are looking at:</p>
<p>2010-2011 COA: $47,914
NOTE: The following includes the total number’s for both fall and spring semesters (hope that makes sense):</p>
<p>Univ. Scholarship: 17,500
Pell: 2,200
School’s Need-Based Grant: 1,670
Federal Work Study: 4,000
Fed. Stafford Sub Loan: 3,500
Federal Stafford Unsub Loan: 2,200
Est. Private Loan/TuitionPay: 17,044
Total aid: 47,914</p>
<p>My EFC is around 3,300 something dollars. </p>
<p>So, my main question is: how much would my parents and I pay out-of-pocket over the next four years if I choose to go to this school (I understand that FA can change from year to year)? I like this school a lot, but I really feel like I don’t want to graduate with soo much debt, considering that my intended major is in the social sciences. Plus, I want to shoot for a good grad school, so obviously I don’t want the undergrad debt to add up.</p>
<p>I did not read the whole thread but I will join the “whine” and add some cheese. We looked at many school webpages and talked to many school reps at many college fairs and all said the same: “we will help you”. I can see how they make us believe there is hope.</p>
<p>Bluecrayon,
it appears that you will have to take 22,744 in loans-5700 in stafford loans and 17,044 in private loans. In addition, you have a 4000 workstudy. Therefore, it seems that you would have to come up with $26, 744 out of your/your parent’s pockets each year. That means 90,976 in loans over 4 years, at least, assuming you make the 4,000 in workstudy each year. If you don’t make the 4K in work each year, your loan burden would be higher. That’s a lot of loans. Do you have other options? I’m not a financial aid guru, so another parent chime in if I’ve interpreted the numbers wrong.</p>
<p>That’s what I thought as well. I really like this school, but I do like a few other schools out there that I think would give me good aid. I was accepted into another school and got 15,000k Dean’s Scholarship, so we’ll see what their FA package will be like. </p>
<p>I’m beginning to lean towards my state school (UMass) because it is my cheapest option. Plus, after hearing FA horror stories, I’m realizing more and more every day that I DON’T want to be in heavy debt.</p>
<p>It looks like they are expecting your family to come up with $17k per year (could be higher for subsequent years).</p>
<p>It looks like they are expecting you (the student) to also borrow $5700 per year…(that will go up each year.) So, they will expect YOU (the student) to borrow about $30k total.</p>
<p>They expect you to earn about $16k over 4 years.</p>
<p>They expect your family to come up with about $75k total for 4 years.</p>
As a full pay, we don’t even have the luxury of whining. Oh wait, my sister did whine. She didn’t understand why they weren’t eligible for any FA when their income was close to 7 figures. She didn’t think it was fair.</p>