<p>I am the oldest in single income family of less than 60K. My father is unemployed due to being disabled and is on social security benefits…but those benefits are included in the “less than 60k”. Can I really expect them to wave the parent contribution as the university has advertised in their brochures and such?</p>
<p>I think that untaxed income is also included in income calculations.</p>
<p>asha.papillon @ #13: If your family income is 200K, you will probably get something like $5500 in unsubsidized Stafford loans (unsubsidized means interest starts accruing the day you take the loan, and is not deferred until after graduation) and maybe $1000 in work study. So essentially, you will pay for all of it out of pocket. But it’s not the horror show you think. It sounds crazy, but if you do the math your parents will need to come up with a few thousand dollars a month, either through home equity loans or parnet PLUS loans or out of their monthly income. You can go to the Financial Aid forum here on CC and there is a lot of discussion and arguments over whther this is fair (my opinion below **), etc, but for our purposes here, the answer is: If you plan to go to any Ivy besides H or Y, you will pay probably well over $40-45K per year. If you decide to attend any other elite school you will pay similarly. Tell your folks they messed up: They spawned a smart child. :-)</p>
<p>** The real inequity as I see it is that for some reason the system is set up to only require the middle-income students to take out Stafford loans. Lower income students who should ostensibly wield identical earning power upon graduation from Columbia are not expected to incur that total of $25K in loans over the course of their four years. The rest of the process is pretty balanced in terms of making proper allowances for income levels.</p>