@SuburbMom Wow, that’s really unfortunate. I thought they didn’t expect families to contribute more than 10% of their income.
@SuburbMom that is very true. and i agree with you no school is worth going into significant debt. out of curiosity did you attempt to talk to the fin aid office o see if they could reconsider the award?
@apocalypsedreams I think very few families contribute only 10% of their income (or less). Most people have to be paying more. I’m guessing that if you’re at $200K, you’re full pay, and the $73K COA amounts to nearly 37% of your income. We feel we’re getting especially screwed because 1) We live debt free and own our modest home. They know we can use the equity in our home to get a loan. (A FA officer at CMU actually said this to me.) 2) Having kids under age 30 means that you won’t get much of an income exclusion when they go to college because you’ll still be considered young enough to save for retirement. In other words, we’re expected to contribute to our children’s education and not save towards retirement. 3) No one seems to care what your medical expenses are. I’m guessing that’s because so many people have high expenses these days.
@Penn95 We considered appealing - especially for the difference between NPC and actual award. In the end, we figured even with that extra $3300/year, it still wasn’t worth it. Especially since she has her heart set on study abroad and it would have meant even more debt at Penn.
@mjrube94 “2) I wonder how many of the kids on the editorial board got in to Penn through the ED process?”
Most of them.