<p>Is this accurate? </p>
<p>Wellesley</a> College - Admission & Financial Aid - Sample Financial Aid Awards</p>
<p>Also, if I live with my father and step mother but I have a single mother in another city, whos income do they use?</p>
<p>Yes, this is accurate.</p>
<p>However, they will probably use the income of your single mother, your father, and your step mother. They use the FAFSA but they also use the CSS Profile from College Board, along with some of their own questions to calculate your financial need.</p>
<p>Are you serious? That’s not fair! None of my parents are paying for college and together it’ll be like $200,000… I’ll get absolutely NO money!! =(</p>
<p>hearbr8ker124,</p>
<p>I recommend you write a detailed explanation of your particular financial and family circumstances and send it to the financial aid office a.s.a.p. Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>Why aren’t any of your parental figures paying? You may have to emancipate yourself legally to receive aid.</p>
<p>I suggest you look at schools with huge merit scholarships. There are schools where the majority of the students receive impressive financial incentives. And some are good schools. Beloit is one. I ran across one lately that I can’t recall.</p>
<p>And you should also look at schools where the sticker price is less. There are many.</p>
<p>Obviously, you can’t cover this yourself. You wouldn’t be able to take out all this loan money, and if you could, loans would bury you.</p>
<p>You need some professional financial counseling.</p>
<p>Is there a way you can approach parents or do they really have no resources? If they don’t, then your award may be fine.</p>
<p>mythmom’s question is the operative one to answer first. The FAFSA calculates an expected FAMILY contribution. Families are expected to contribute. If there are some specific circumstances that would prevent the family from doing so, the basic forms should pick them up. Otherwise, follow mythmom’s advice.</p>
<p>1) The FAFSA bases its estimates only on the income of the person(s) you live with.</p>
<p>2) The CSS Profile takes EVERYONE into account, whether you live with them or not.</p>
<p>3) The Institutional Formula is specific to each college and reflects its own particular aid policies. If you can provide a truly compelling reason which is well-enough documented to satisfy the Financial Aid office, you may have a chance of getting your award adjusted. It is very hard, but worth a try. As they say in Spain, “El ‘no’ ya lo tienes,” meaning that by doing nothing, you already have ‘no’ for an answer. </p>
<p>According to the CSS Profile, I was supposed to pay much, much more toward my daughter’s education than I am now being asked to pay. Why? Because I sent the financial aid office a five-page, single-spaced letter explaining my present and projected future financial circumstances. I told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and, in our case, it definitely made a difference.</p>
<p>My mother is a single mother of four kids and therefore will not be able to contribute to my education. She said she could offer a few hundred a month but that’s about it. As for my father and step mother, together they make about 130,000 a year (I just found this out last night. Did not know they made so much!). However, they will not contribute to my education because they grew up having to pay their own way and they believe that because it’s my education, I should be fully responsible for it. If I cannot afford to go to Wellesley, I guess I will have to fall back on my instate backup: University of Washington.</p>
<p>Hi, hearbr8cker124. I looked back at some of your other posts to better understand your situation, and I realized you are only a junior. </p>
<p>I hope things work out for you next year. For the purposes of financial at Wellesley or at any other college including U of Washington, it would be much better if you were living with your mom during college and if she were claiming you as a dependent on her tax returns. This would give more weight to your request for a lot of aid, and you could explain your dad’s unwillingness to help in a separate letter to the financial aid office sent at the same time you filed the CSS Profile and before you do the FAFSA, which doesn’t come out until January.</p>