@cptofthehouse 4 times. You don’t get a new FA package each semester only a new bill.
50 hours per week working to cover personal expenses and books seems like either a gross exaggeration or totally unnecessary.
@itsgettingreal17 My daughter works 8-10 hours a week which covers all of her personal expenses. She has a job during the summer which is as a camp counselor so is low paying. Both of these combined cover the whole year for her (including clothes) with no extra money from me. If all other expenses were covered I can’t imagine what money like that would be for.
It sounds like OP was given a full ride but he thought that meant he didn’t have to pay anything at all. If he’s covering the cost of flights, health insurance, school supplies, and personal expenses I can see how that might require a full-time job for a student from a $0 EFC family.
@austinmshauri A full ride means exactly that. It covers the full cost of attendance which includes travel, books and personal expenses. If OP’s package didn’t include that it’s wasn’t a full ride.
Regardless of whether OP got a true full ride or not, I agree with what @austinmshauri said. It sounds like OP just had their tuition and living covered, but they were left having to work to cover other expenses.
Additionally, OP may be working 50 hours a week because they have to support their below-the-poverty-line family while also being a full-time student. I want to try and give them the benefit of the doubt. (Of course, there’s always a chance OP’s not telling truth–it’s the internet.)
Honestly, some of the commenters sound a bit too contentious. It’s hard for any of us to know what it’s like to be OP. The American poverty line is low, and if OP’s family earns less than that, it’ll be tough for them. Additionally, people with low-income backgrounds often times don’t have guidance in becoming financially aware, and the whole financial aid process can be very complex for someone without support from a parent. There’s no need to berate OP or call them ungrateful.
@itsgettingreal17, OP is paying travel expenses and he may have to pay for insurance too. I book flights for students all the time. Travel and insurance is easily $5k, maybe more. Books with online codes can run over $300. That might not seem like much to you, but to some people it’s an enormous amount of money.
@collegemom9, OP’s family lives below the poverty line. I can imagine lots of things that money would be for.
OP - I’m so sorry for what you are going through!
Thank you for posting though because it can be valuable for other students to dig deeper into the financial aid package and take all costs into account.
@austinmshauri I call BS. I was a poverty level college student on a full ride (everything covered except books, travel and personal expenses). I went to school in the middle of nowhere so travel home was expensive. And I paid for travel, personal expenses, and books on just 10 hours per week of work study and summer employment. I supported a child on 20 hours per week and summer employment. Minimum wage at 50 hours per week yields almost $20k a year. Sorry, something doesn’t quite add up here. And I’m very sensitive to the financial struggle of low income college students. It’s real. But exaggerating doesn’t help.
Wash U probably gave this kid over $60,000 in need based aid. Maybe the OP can clarify this.
You know…we funded a “full ride” for our kids. But they were expected to work for all discretionary spending and books and supplies. Did this kid have a summer job? If so, that and working 10-12 hours a week would cover those personal expenses.
Re: travel…how far does this student live from Wash U? If it involves a plane ride, the number of trips home may need to be reduced to Christmas break, and summer. That’s all our kid did.
And as one noted…what was covered…was clearly spelled out in the aid award the student received.
Financial aid is rarely given as a “full ride”. That’s a term for scholarships, merit awards that specifically cover everything including specified amounts for discretionary spending and the book store bill. Financial aid is given in dollar amounts. There is almost always a required student contribution in there even if the FAFSA EFC is zero. At some schools, Work Study and/or Direct Loans are available for this. The student is usually specifically asked if they will take out loans and if they check the “no” box, the loans are not offered. Work Study is shown in funds student can earn via that program but that money isn’t guaranteed. Student has to go and find a job and earn it.
I do think Financial Aid offices need to go over these packages in person with the student so that they understand what they still owe because it’s not all that simple. But they rarely do. They dispense the funds according to formula, and it’s up to the student to manage the money. They are treated like every other student except the Bursar’s office gets an infusion of money each semester in half the amount awarded by financial aid.
I don’t know WashU ‘s policies and the way they do the awards, but usually the amount for a full need student comes down to tuition and mandatory fees, AVERAGE room and board amounts, AVERAGE books, supplies, personal items, travel, health insurance if not coverage by family not acceptable or not sent in as a waiver (a lot of kids get hit unnecessarily by this), MINUS the expected family and student contribution. Usually, for a family that is income challenged, defined by PROFILE, additional questions, perhaps by FAFSA EFC or PELL eligibility, there is no required family contribution. But the STUDENT almost always has to come up with something. There are very very few free rides in financial aid. The student nearly always is required to have “skin in the game” and the amount goes up each year. Sometimes the families do too
If a student is vigilant or there is a Mama Bear at home looking at all of this, the awards usually can be managed. There are ways to get the health care coverage taken care of (I’ve done it and it’s not easy) You can request a lesser meal plan, beg for the smallest triple or quad room. Get your books as cheaply as possible, my one son borrowed his from the library!! You have to remember that most of the time only the financial aid office knows you are on financial aid, unless you tell others,and even fewer people know how much aid you are getting. So room assignments, meal plans, special fees etc are billed just like everyone else. The student or parent has to work through the award and get it to stretch as far as possible.
If you don’t work the summer before, if your family contribution is not something you can pay, you get an above average cost room, and the average meal plan, pay the health premium, yes, you are behind the financial 8 ball from day one. If you didn’t take out loans because you were afraid to check that little box that asked because you thought you’d get free money instead, you have tat gap too. They just don’t give you the loan money and you have a bigger gap. If you don’t hurry to the WS office, there might be no jobs left you can take. If you didn’t come with a big bag of supplies and toiletries because you thought you’d buy them all there in the university’s dime, you are stuck for those and if there isn’t cheap shopping near by and you buy that stuff at the college store, you are royally screwed price wise. And if you didn’t price shop books and just bought them at the book store along with school supplies, as you do if money is no object, you’re lucky to have $50 left.
This post is waaay too long. But I want to make clear that UWash-SL is in the top 50-100 schools in the country in terms of meeting full need. They are not need blind in admissions and they also give out merit money, but they do provide full need to accepted students AS THEY DEFINE it. The way they handle things regarding financial aid is not unusual and really, if you are one of the very few students who can get accepted to such a school and get need met, you are very fortunate. Financial is not a panacea. It’s still very very tight for most families and kid on college financial aid especially kids without much family support. I do not envy those in full need situation or who have financial need. Yes, I was there and had a full ride which included financial aid, and that too needed to be managed carefully and, yes, I messed it up terribly. It took me years to figure out how that package worked and what I did wrong.
Also adding that the words “Full ride” have become over used. Financial Aid packages are rarely if ever so described. You get amounts to bring your Cost of Attendance to a certain required family and student contribution IF You can stick to standard COA numbers for the school. Not actual billed numbers for any given individual student, but, in general. .
@austinmshauri My point is that OP’s financial package would show what the cost of attendance is. So if the cost of attendance (which I’ve now said 3 times includes books, travel, and personal expenses) was 70k and grants totaled 65k, clearly there is a 5k gap that OP is expected to pay. WashU is VERY generous with FA and yet OP is trying to dissuade others from attending because he feels like WashU has somehow been deceptive with him. If he is working 50 hours a week to be able to afford the school then it’s probably not one he should have picked. If he has an EFC of 0 (and I mean from the CSS not the FAFSA) then his work study expectation would be somewhere around $2500 a year. If his family’s income is under 75k, loans are not even part of the package. If he needs to work 50 hours a week then he’s not receiving grants that cover the COA and that would not be a surprise halfway through first semester.
@itsgettingreal17 100% agree with you. And what I’m not liking is someone coming here to try to make other students believe that not only is WashU not generous but was somehow deceptive when they presented the FA package to him.
@anxious ladybug Please do your own research and run the NPC yourself and don’t base your decisions on what a stranger who has never even posted here before this, claims to be true.
If you eliminate Wash U and like schools AND schools that do not even meet near the aid that these “Full need as defined by school” from the lists, it would be a huge hit on school lists of affordable options of the highly ranked and selective schools.
This thread is particularly important because it does show how difficult it is for those on financial aid. My youngest feels that because he pays for all of his non direct billed school expenses except travel home and books, that he’s not one of the privileged ones at school. Because he has class mates and friends there who literally have Carte Blanche on any and everything. He has to earn some money and he has to budget to do what he wants to do. But he does not fully realize how much of a benefit he has with parents that do have his back. He has a safety net that many kids that are on heavy duty financial aid or scholarships, whose parents are not involved in their lives, and cannot or will not pay, do not have.
The 50 hour a week working makes no sense, and this student should be talking to the Dean of Students about what is happening. Perhaps he did not take out the Direct Loans which at this point could alleviate $7500 of his $9K deficit. I certainly hope he is not borrowing on top of all the work. Perhaps he cannot work at all in the summer–that any earnings then go to his family. I knew folks with family businesses that did not pay family members. Needed every dime to keep the family and business going. If he’s paying the expensive insurance premium because his family health policy doesn’t make the standards, there are onerous but effective ways of dealing with that. Making $9K a year and getting at least $15K in non deductible financial aid, this student is probably paying taxes on top of all of this. Clearly, in need of a financial consultation on how to manage finances.
My son has a close friend who works in a similar field as he does, but this friend makes quite a bit more. Yet he’s broke all of the time, has terrible credit, can barely make ends meet. He’s not extravagant, and it makes no sense that he’s living so close to the edge. They finally sat down and went through personal finances and my son was incredulous at how much money the young man was literally throwing away on things that he did not stay on top of and did not go through the trouble of removing, replacing, contesting. Also, sadly, he paid a huge family tax in that his family is very much in need. It’s a constant need, always desperate, of things that happen and he pays up. He has younger siblings, one in college and they always have a dire need for something. On top of that, he owes a lot in student loans, even though he had a zero EFC and his college gave him financial aid for tuition, room and board, books. Yes, he had to pay a student contribution, and he had to work, and he was still short of money all of the time. He got the full direct loans (parents denied PLUS so $5k more each year) and some other federal loan. Also the school gave him some institutional loans that some schools have in reserve for emergencies and special cases. He has to repay all of that with interest, not deductible because he is one of the lucky ones making too much for that deduction. Yet, he’s truly not making it, racking up increasing debt each month. It’s not easy having the numbers to be or have been a full need family. Yet, he is doing far better than his high school peers who did not go away to college. Few of them graduated, none of them have the type of job with the income and benefits he has. He has no regrets about the path it took, but it’s not an easy one, and though my son has far better budgeting and financial management skills, my son readily admits that dealing with his friend’s issues is a huge hit on the finances. Having supportive family makes a huge difference
Insurance is often covered in a fill ride. We don’t know for OP.
But my point was, the college FA offer shows numbers. They don’t just promise a vague “full funding.” It’s all detailed in the offer. Full COA minus grants/awards = balance.
No, the “student contribution” isn’t part of “awards.” It’s a balance the student comes up with. That’s what student contribution means.
COA should include books and personal. Many colleges include a travel amount. Work study then helps with this gap. Summer earnings are another source.
OP said tuition and RB are covered. If he has $50 after that, presumably the work study helps with personal. He would need to show us the numbers.
Actually, health insurance is often NOT covered in a full ride or in financial aid costs. It is a required purchase if the student is not covered by health insurance already. Most of the time, they are. The problem comes, most of the time, when the student is covered by a policy that does not cover out of state medical costs. State run programs like CHIP and Medicaid often do not, but that isn’t the only situation that this arises. So a kid who is covered at home, needs insurance coverage when he goes out of state. Colleges have covered that problem through their health centers that run the required insurance situation. Most of the time it’s tacked onto the bill as an after thought but the danged thing is automatically charged, the kid is automatically enrolled if he does not specifically waive out of it in time and send the required documents showing necessary coverage during a specific time period.
I’ve known some full pay, like parents pay all, kids who missed that boat. My son nearly did–his school sent all that stuff to him, and he figured I was taking care of it- he just knew he was well covered with family health care, never had to think about it, so he ignored it. I know many angry parents, still angry, who got stuck paying the premium with no recourse. It’s not an insignificant amount, either, for my son it ran a couple thousand dollars. It can run double that in some states.
Even some “full ride” scholarship awards miss that item. That’s why the phrase “full ride” which I admittedly use freely too, is not a good catch phrase. Full ride does not mean just that, most of the time.
I have a friend who paid for two kids, 8 years total, maybe more, in unnecessary health insurance premiums because she just paid the balance on each semester bill after financial aid, loans, and the student paid their share. No one caught that premium cost which her kids did not need as they were fully covered on their parents’ health insurance that was more than adequate, met the coverage standards, which most policies are these days since ACA came up with uniform standard
Wash U’s student health insurance is $1700 which is not insignificant. However, because WashU doesn’t require student’s with a family income under 75k to take out loans, if the COA doesn’t cover this the student could take out a loan to cover it.