Which Colleges Have Given You Disappointing Financial Aid Offers?

<p>sketchy, We we were asked to pay 28k for Towson last year, so don't feel too badly. Needless to say, our son is not at Towson. I really don't know how they get their OOS students. I guess enough are paying full freight there, but not this family!</p>

<p>So far, U Michigan is the worst package, WUSTL - not great, and Carnegie Mellon is good. NorthEastern is the best.</p>

<p>Just goes to show you, Northeastern was the worst for us.</p>

<p>My son was given a merit award from NEU, but nothing additional, so it didn't work for us either.</p>

<p>Can someone reply to this post "2 Different EFC's? Is this Possible?"
I really need some advice.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/490257-2-different-efc-s-possible.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/490257-2-different-efc-s-possible.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As I was expecting, here's another to add to the list: Georgetown. About as bad as UChicago.</p>

<p>Providence College. Cheap bastards.</p>

<p>
[quote]
As I was expecting, here's another to add to the list: Georgetown. About as bad as UChicago.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You must have had a high family contribution, because their aid was great for me. I'm poor though lol.</p>

<p>Previously I posted that U Michigan is the worst package, WUSTL - not great, and Carnegie Mellon is good. NorthEastern is the best.</p>

<p>After appeals, WUSTL & NorthEastern are the best, Carnegie Mellon is good, and U Michigan is still the worst.</p>

<p>I'm OOS. ASU was meh. My EFC is 0.</p>

<p>Grants-4k
Loans-7</p>

<p>That knocks the tuition from 31 to 20. Still need to find out if I can get more aid.</p>

<p>i also got pretty poor aid at georgetown (bummer!!) but i got 40k at uchicago, which is a real shocker.</p>

<p>northwestern didn't give me very good aid, though : ( i had to completely scratch it off my list</p>

<p>NYU gave me a mere 7k in free money and the rest in loans. I guess its because our EFC is over 40k, but it still pains me because money is the reason why I can't even consider the colleges of my choice...</p>

<p>NYU expects me to pay around 19k a semester in loans. -_- My EFC is only 12k.</p>

<p>Duke gave the worst aid package.</p>

<p>Thanks for the further updates. So far, which colleges look the most disappointing and the least disappointing?</p>

<p>Tlesc1: Apparently, the "problem" is that my parents have about $35k in investments, which probably also made UChicago give me a pretty bad estimate. Obviously if we have over $200k in loans, the idea of the $35k is to allow it to generate as much return as possible and then pay off more loans with it at the right time - but for Georgetown, apparently the idea is that if you have money anywhere, no matter what, you're paying.</p>

<p>Moral of the story (and this should be posted somewhere): If you have investments and loans, and are applying to college, use up all of the investments paying loans by the end of the summer before you start applying. I'm not too despondent about G-town or anything (I'd want to go there for grad school anyway), but it does kind of **** me off that they're so, as the lady at the FA office put it, "numbers-driven" and will only grant reviews if someone dies or loses a job or something.</p>

<p>Two years ago but Yale and Amherst were the worst by a wide margin with need aid. Colgate was astounding (Alumni Memorial Scholarship is quite the enhancer).</p>

<p>This year, Colgate, Lehigh not generous at all. They gapped our EFC by several thousand. Cornell, even worse!!! Just horrible. Penn was the best offer by far.</p>

<p>I was 40 years old when I made my last student loan payment, and for most of those years was a single mother. Making that payment every month all those years was a killer for me, not to mention the interest. Now, my only child is in college and I am determined that she not go through what I went through. I am doing everything I can to avoid her having to take out loans. I explain to her my reasons and she fortunately has a solid grasp of finanances (is actually a lot more conservative financially than I). Is it wrong to help her avoid loans? I know some people feel it gives them a sense of responsibility for their education. I would rather she develop that responsibility when applying for grad school.</p>

<p>I think some loans are reasonable - especially if it allows your child to go to a substantially better fitting university. Reasonable loans in my mind are no more than an aggregate $15,000 at graduation. (Obviously less is better! ;) )</p>