<p>I didn't apply for need based financial aid at any of my reaches. There are a variety of reasons I didn't do so, some of them rational and some merely idiotic but I'd rather not dwell on my stupidity now that the time is past.</p>
<p>Now I'm not so sure about what to do, because although I got rejected by the four other top-ranked schools I applied to I just got my acceptance email from Cornell.</p>
<p>The other school I would go to is the University of Nebraska @ Lincoln's Raikes School of Computer Science & Business which pays for room & board (I got tuition covered by nat. merit).</p>
<p>I guess now I'm having a crisis because I honestly don't know how much I'd have to pay to go to Cornell if I somehow got them to look at an extremely late financial aid application. I have divorced parents and my mother made around 30-40k last year and my father made around 80k and I was going to put my mother as the custodial parent, but I don't know how they calculate it all. I probably already messed this up completely and lost a chance to go to Cornell. I feel like slamming my head against the wall. Unfortunately, I have no one to blame but myself.</p>
<p>Does anyone think it'd be a good idea to contact Cornell and try to apply for financial aid now?</p>
<p>Sigh. Go on ahead and contact Cornell for financial aid. Both parents’ income will be taken into consideration for the PROFILE that Cornell requires completed for aid, but FAFSA will just take your mother’s financial situation into account, and you may get some government money based on her income level. Cornell requires both FAFSA and PROFILE. My guess is that you will get some government money and Stafford loans offered. Your family EFC is in the range that you won’t get a whole lot from Cornell unless there are some special situations in the works, but you can give it a try.</p>
<p>If you want to feel better, it is highly unlikely you would have gotten anything more from Cornell even if you had applied earlier as your toatal family income is over $100K and they do look at both parents’ situations. However, you might have gotten some grants that may all be given out by now and have to take loans instead. Get rolling now, however, so you can get some sort of offer. It isn’t likely to be as generous as Nebraska’s, however.</p>
<p>I thought that if your parents made below 120,000 they gave you some sort of financial aid benefit. That’s what this Cornell Chronicle article made me think anyway:</p>
<p>It appears to me that Cornell will assess your family need via PROFILE and come up with an institutional need figure. They will meet 100% of that need with no more than $3000 of it with loans. But the big question is what that need figure is going to be base on your mother AND father’s financials. You may end up wanting get some more loans to meet Cornell’s expected contribution from your family.</p>