<p>^^ money is also a major issue for me. i applied ED, cmu is my first choice and the "full need" thing sounded great.</p>
<p>however the word shafted pretty much explains it for me. i got 17k in grants, 8k in loans and 2500 in workstudy. which means i'm going to end up paying for 33k a year. sigh.</p>
<p>^^ where i come from people will say, "that's a b----"</p>
<p>"...the word shafted pretty much explains it for me..."</p>
<p>You want something you can't afford to buy, you ask someone else to pay for it, they look at your finances and agree to pay part of the cost of the thing you want but can't afford to buy, and you consider them to be shafting you?</p>
<p>lhdistcass---Was this the estimate you rec'd info on? Because they don't give the actual financial aid packages until April I thought..... what's going on.</p>
<p>Yeah, it was the estimate. I should have clarified.</p>
<p>And why does everyone on here so ready to jump down everyone else's throat? FAFSA put my need at about 5k lower than CMU, then CMU sticks 8k of loans into the mix.</p>
<p>i don't want loans.. def not a possibility?</p>
<p>Go somewhere cheaper or find richer parents if you don't want any loans.</p>
<p>I graduated with around $15k in loans, and it's really not that bad. I paid off one of the $5000 ones as a lump sum with all the money I had saved up during summer jobs and what I earned prior to entering grad school. The rest I'm deferring payment on until I finish grad school since they're subsidized (one I paid off wasn't).</p>
<p>do i put an ad in the penny saver if i want richer parents (reference to juno, lol)</p>
<p>is there interest in your loans? is it easy to find interest free ones? what does subsudized mean?</p>
<p>Subsidized loans are offered through the school to you. They won't build interest while you're in school, but once you graduate they will. It's usually at a pretty low rate (mine's 6.5%) and if you don't have too many loans, you can often pay them down early and get rid of a lot of interest.</p>