USC meeting your full financial need- a lie?

Indeed… everyone’s situation is different & in reality, most families only get to compare between a set # of offers from college’s accepting students and then offering aid packages. In my D’s case, she was not accepted to any of the other colleges that she applied to which profess to meed 100% of demonstrated financial need. That form of comparison was not possible for us.

USC ended up offering sufficient aid in our opinion, with the total net cost to our family being only $3K-$6K in total more per year than colleges like U. Tampa (private), FSU (public), UF (public) and NCF (public). We are FL residents, so attending a FL college would also have advantages via in-state tuition related to those public colleges. UMiami (private), by comparison, would have cost us $24K more though than my D attending USC. So, in our case, USC seemed generous enough, & the choice to attend USC was obvious. We were content with the financial aid package offered and then renewed thereafter.

My advice is to give yourself choices & options… apply to more colleges than you might deem necessary. My D faced 12 unexpected rejections & thus had far fewer financial aid offers to compare. In our case, we were very thankful for what USC offered.

Good luck to those hoping for similar outcomes in the future…

Cornell and ND are amazing schools too - congrats on some great choices that hopefully meet your financial criteria!

Yes, I have had the same problem. I’m a transfer student, and I recently found out that I got into USC, except I have not received any financial aid WHATSOEVER. All I have to help me is the Cal Grant, which is about $9,000. I emailed the USC Financial Aid office, and they told me that I am ineligible to receive any more financial aid. I am livid. I am utterly aghast at this. When I filled out the FAFSA, my EFC was $7,240. But USC expects me to pay $49,000?! It’s disgusting. My family’s net income is about $59,000 a year. This is ridiculous. I can’t believe how much USC has screwed us over.

It is more than income, there are likely assets that are being included (home, etc), there must be data that you are unaware of. No one is entitled to a free education from a private university, so I don’t think you are being screwed over. Decide now to work for your future.

For every student that complains about financial aid and does their absolute best to smear the school out of bitterness, there’s (statistically) two and a half others that will never be motivated enough to come onto a online forum just to express their gratefulness.

I got so much money from USC that it’s not even fair. Out of the schools I got into, my net cost of attendance was consistent with UCLA and UC Berkeley, it was significantly better than Cornell, and on par with Georgetown and Northwestern. The only schools that are likely to have better aid than USC are Harvard, Stanford, and U Penn. I never grew up feeling poor, but I’ll be graduating with very manageable debt from a school that felt every bit like a $70k/yr university other than the food.

Half a billion dollars gets spread around for financial aid at USC, there’s only a set amount to go around. If you divided that by the total number of undergraduate students, it would be $27k each student, but some kids obviously need it more than others. If every student at USC got exactly $27k a year, the poorest 1/3 would have never been able to attend and the wealthier 1/3 would attend regardless.

Your parents make way above the median household income and you think it’s disgusting that you aren’t entitled to more free stuff. If you’re going to make an account just to make 1 post about how much money you think you deserve to be gifted to you, then the only thing that’s disgusting is your attitude. You make it sound like USC stole money from you the second you got accepted.

You are not poor. There are a significant number of students at USC who are. 25% of kids are on Pell Grants, which infers family incomes of under $30,000. They need grant money to attend any college at all. You don’t. I’m sure you would like to get that $27k/yr average aid, but you aren’t even close to being in the poorest 1/3 at USC. Every kid likes to imagine how disadvantaged they are when they went to a public high school and “only” live in a 2 bedroom house and their parents “only” have 1 car. They have no idea. They’ve never even looked up the numbers.

You don’t have to go to USC just because you got accepted. If you don’t like the offer USC has made you, then that’s just too bad. Go attend a UC. Next man up. There will be someone who will take your place that would be so happy to get $36,000 off their tuition over 4 years.