Why is Rutgers Giving Me No Money?:(

I got my financial award letter Saturday from Rutgers and only got 5,000 in gift aid for their business school. Their cost of attendance is 34,000. I feel as if I did something incorrect on my FAFSA because my parents and I cannot afford paying $28,000 a year when they have a combined income of S64,000. Our EFC is 005324. We did not get the Pell grant. Can someone please tell me if this adds up because I feel like something is wrong? Can I appeal to Rutgers? Will they bring it down significantly?

Please call Rutgers office of admission & financial aid.

I will. I hope they’ll reevaluate but I’m worried they won’t

Did you check there NPC?

When our son started college a couple years ago our income was just under $60k, and he only got a few hundred dollars of Pell per semester. Your parents’ income may be too high to qualify. Does NJ offer need based aid to state residents? If so, what are the income limits? Does Rutgers offer merit awards or is that what the $5k grant you received is?

Also, being a direct admit to a business school is a highly valued option so maybe they just do not need to award significant amounts of grant financial aid (which is essentially a tuition discount).

Well, what is it? Did they give you no money, or “only” $5,000? It can’t be both…

@billcshoI I did plug my information in the Net Price Calculator and I got nearly $12,000 in grants, which is why I’m confused. When I did the NPC I got a thousand from the pell,$1,500 from FSEOG,$5,000 from tag, and $4000 from the Rutgers assistance grant. Which resulted in my net price being $22,000ish.

Which is better, but going into this I estimated that I’d have to pay around $15,000ish because my friend who has a family of 5 with an income of $71,000 with 2 people entering Rutgers only has to pay $10,000 a year. All his aid was need-based. Granted I live in a family of 3 with only me going to college next year so it’s logical to think I’d pay more but I did not think I’d have to pay nearly $19,000 more which my award letter from Rutgers is asking me to do. Our families have virtually the same financials besides those differences.

@BelknapPoint only $5,000 in gift aid. Yeah, a bit misleading sorry!

This is called a “need gap”. You need more money, they are unable to provide it.
You need to make some choices now. I’d advise you to take a deep breath, and think LONG TERM - like 10 years.
Many kids have a college experience that is different from the movie version. In other words, they live at home and commute. They work while doing the live at home commute thing. And they still have fun!
Even better, when they graduate, they aren’t saddled with debt. They didn’t just ignore the advice to play it smart and instead took tons of loans (as did their parents). They now have no financial option, after 4 years of partying it up, they have to live at home, perhaps for 10 years, while they are paying everything off.

Do the math - 34 x 4= 136,000. That is LOW because I’m not including inflation, which runs at least 4% a year.
Use a loan calculator and figure out how much of a payment that is every year.
Then re-do your bedroom, find a friend to commute with, and make the best out of it.

Another option is to go to Rowan, if your scores are good enough they give nice merit and have a special program where you can graduate in 3 years. My daughter is doing that and will graduate with no debt.

Best of luck!


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estimated that I'd have to pay around $15,000ish because my friend who has a family of 5 with an income of $71,000 with 2 people entering Rutgers only has to pay $10,000 a year. All his aid was need-based. Granted I live in a family of 3 with only me going to college next year so it's logical to think I'd pay more but I did not think I'd have to pay nearly $19,000 more

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Well, his EFC is likely a lot lower than yours because of the larger family and 2 in college.

Also…his net cost of 10k may be after student loans, work study, a much larger Pell Grant and maybe some SFEOG grants. Also, you say that his awards are all need based, but if he has higher stats, he may have been given a preferential pkg

It’s a fool’s errand to rely on someone else’s FA award to calculate your own.

Rutgers does not meet full need. Your EFC is not the amount you pay.

If you think there’s been a mistake, you need to contact the FA office. And be polite.

@tripletripno stats??

According to another post:
"Here are my high school stats:
Rank:46/312
GPA:4.1356 out of a 5.00 scale (school doesn’t give unweighted GPA)
SAT:1370/1600—690 reading and writing 680 math
AP Courses: Biology, Chemistry, United States History, Statistics, and Probability, Language and Composition, Literature and Composition, Physics, Government and Politics, Computer Science Principles, Calculus AB
The rest of my academic courses are honors classes except for Spanish being advanced

Extracurriculars: Key club-Treasurer, National Honors Society, Leadership club-Public relations officer, Volunteered at the local hospital for 4 years, History club-Photographer, Academic team, volunteer at the local red cross."

I like @NJRoadie 'a suggestion of applying to Rowan for business. They got a big donation to support students who are interested in business and honors.

That doesn’t sound right. I wonder if you put $640k instead of 64k in combined income. Either way, the financial aid office can fix it. Errors happen all the time.

With an EFC of $5324, you may be eligible for a small Pell Grant $606 per year (303 per semester)

https://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/1718PellPaymentDisbursementSchedules.pdf

Did you apply for TAG (NJ’s tuition assistant grant)?

the max TAG that you can receive for state schools is $7236

http://www.hesaa.org/Documents/TAG_program.pdf you can still take the $5500 loan

you will have a $5500 student loan

@sybbie719 but I believe NJ TAG is being phased out as NJ gov’t was not funding the program.

I called the Rutgers Financial Aid office and they basically said that they create the financial package from whatever info they’re given through the FAFSA and that the only way they can reconsider my package is if I make a correction on the FAFSA(which I saw had no mistakes) and/or if I have a “change in family circumstance” financially which I don’t.Sigh… I guess I had this false sense of reality expecting I was gonna get substantial financial aid from Rutgers because my friend got such a generous package. Hopefully, the other schools I apply to accept me and give me a decent package.