<p>Schools will treat outside merit differently but they are often applied to unmet need first (it doesn’t sound like he has any) and then to reduce loans/work-study before reducing school grants. Outside scholarships do not usually reduce school merit scholarships unless the total awards exceed the cost of attendance.</p>
<p>my son is going to see AU and Denver over spring break (in a couple of weeks). not sure which he will like better - Berkeley is in the mix too.
I think all colleges are in the Fed financial aid pool - lots of students go to usc with fed aid. I still think usc has some explaining to do…but I am most definitely becoming less and less interested in their explanation…</p>
<p>Federal aid is determined by your FAFSA EFC, and you are eligible for the same federal aid at all schools that participate in distributing federal aid. You are eligible for the same *Federal aid *at USC as other schools.</p>
<p>Federal aid includes Pell Grant (distributed on a sliding scale only for EFCs below $5,274), Stafford subsidized loans, and some smaller grants. In all, federal aid for “0” EFCs rarely adds up to more than about $11,500 - and 1/2 of that is loans. Private schools such as USC have COAs of over $50,000, so the federal aid does not make a very big dent in that. The remainder of the package comes from USC grants - USC’s OWN money - and they may use any calculation they choose to determine how to distribute their own money.</p>
<p>As another poster pointed out, UC Berkeley is a PUBLIC school subsidized by the taxpayers of California. Out of state students at Berkeley without the state subsidy pay a COA similar to USC.</p>
<p>Another note: You are eligible to apply for Federal Parent PLUS loans (though parents must qualify for these loans) at any school to which you submitted the FAFSA up to the cost of attendance minus any aid/scholarships, including USC. USC does not include them in the package because USC does not consider them “need-based” aid. If you are interested in them you certainly can apply for them at USC (though I am not encouraging you to do so).</p>
<p>These misconceptions can be greatly reduced if parents were to fully investigate how financial aid works long before their children apply - reading the book “Paying for College Without Going Broke” is a great place to start.</p>
<p>thanks for the feedback.
final thought - yes parents, do your research - way more to look into than your student can handle their senior year. Financial aid is the parents realm - and it is complicated.
My point about USC is - they speak very loudly about the amount of money they have to give to students…for our student, it was not true. Several private schools came through for my son with institutional aid that brought the price (comprable to USC) down to about the same as UC (in state cost). Additionaly, those private schools send the fin aid award info WITH the congrats packet -We knew right up front what they were offering. For parents considering USC…if your child wants to go there, I will tell you this is the ONLY private school we dealt with (we spoke with Dartmouth, Tufts, GW, American, Stanford and Georgetown) who considers home equity and retirement in the same way USC does. Have a face to face meeting with a fin aid rep and discuss your situation. Do this before you go on the tour…</p>
<p>update! USC did have our numbers wrong! WAY miscalculated our home equity and “nontaxable income”. We are in the process of appealing…who knows what will come of it, but adds to the message for parents about the financial aid process - do not be shy about questioning the numbers! 2 different FA staff at USC were completely different to deal with. If you don’t feel right about your first interaction with the office, keep trying. We are sending our appeal to the FA Dean.</p>
<p>Good luck…let us know how it all works out…</p>
<p>lots of students go to usc with fed aid.</p>
<p>I don’t think you understand federal aid. Fed aid is VERY small. Free fed aid is only for low income students and is for very small amounts…certainly not enough to make a dent in the cost of USC or many colleges.</p>
<p>fed aid is well understood - yes, very small amounts. But there are students at USC who recieve it, therefore (in my crazy logic) USC does get a small subsidy by fed aid ie, they are not out of the fed aid pool? 
I wish I would have checked out comments on CC before making any assumptions about how fin aid REALLY works. We did a little homework (actually learned a lot about fed aid), but not enough. Hopefully parents looking through this site will benefit from all these comments and not hesistate to ask questions of fin aid offices - especially if they get a questionable response from a school their student really wants to attend!</p>
<p>My son is a sophomore at USC on financial aid. We just applied for his next year’s (junior years) financial aid. I checked the USC financial aid website for him and it had two messages.</p>
<ol>
<li> “Financial aid eligibility under review”</li>
</ol>
<p>and</p>
<ol>
<li> “Financial aid application being reviewed”.</li>
</ol>
<p>The decisions for continuing students are made in June, so the second message seems reasonable. Is there something unusual about the first ? Our financial situation has not improved and has in fact slightly worsened this year over the previous two years. Why would it say, “financial aid eligibility under review” ? Does anyone else see this message as well ?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I wrote a post to the parent who is upset that their student’s first choice school Rice, did not give as much as Carlton and Williams, when Rice is perceived to be more generous. Not to their student. One of the things I added was to definitely appeal and go through the calculations with the school that has the numbers that don’t match the others. A mistake is always possible, and if not, you learn what things can be perceived in different ways in this process. I’m glad that the OP’s son has his first choice back in the running again. I wish him luck.</p>
<p>but even without the USC option, OP’s son has some great choices. I think both AU and DU are wonderful schools, and I personally prefer then in most areas of study over USC. I am truly impressed with DU, and tried to get my current college bound son to apply there, but he did not want to go that far. I’ll make the push again when my last one is doing his apps. There are some great schools out there that are not well known outside of their areas. I think a lot of the Jesuit colleges fall in that category as well as a lot of schools outside of the North East corridor.</p>
<p>
It is just terminology. “Reviewing eligibility” simply refers to calculating to see if COA > Expected contribution, and they will calculate it independently each year. They don’t even start on returning students until all the freshman packages, then freshman appeals, then transfer packages, then transfer appeals are done, so the status will stay that way probably until well into May. I just checked my returning-USC-student-daughter’s OASIS and indeed it says exactly what yours says. And we are broker than ever this year 
, so I expect that she will indeed receive some aid.</p>
<p>well, sadly for my wantabe trojan, they recalculated and instead of $52k it is now $42k. Still about $20k over the other schools, still looking at our #'s in a way we can’t get a clear explanation of - i’m thinking we will be moving on from USC (someone/mgr. was supposed to call to discuss, but hasn’t happend yet). Fortunately, my son has other choices, but it is disappointing to say the least, as he was really excited about USC. cptofthehouse:my husband really like Denver - my son said “the thought is growing on me”…down to earth, friendly, NICE campus, good program for IR, GREAT abroad program…snowboarding a plus…:)</p>