<p>I've been hearing about something called financial packages.</p>
<p>So if i apply to x number of schools will they all offer me these packages or what?</p>
<p>What determines how much I'm offered?</p>
<p>You have to fill out a form called the [url=<a href=“http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/]FAFSA[/url”>http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/]FAFSA[/url</a>], using your tax return information (or your parents’, as the case may be). </p>
<p>Using your financial information, they will give you something called an EFC, which is a number that the Department of Education will send to the colleges you applied to. Depending on the EFC, you will receive financial aid packages including Pell Grants, Perkins loans, Federal Work Study, and unsubsidized and subsidized Stafford loans as well as any state grants that your state might sponsor. The EFC is called your Expected Family Contribution (how much your family is expected to pay for your college) but in real life it’s usually not met and even when it is it usually through massive loans. </p>
<p>Colleges may also offer you institutional grants, which are financial aid initiatives funded directly by the college and not by the state or federal government.</p>
<p>When do i do FASFA? The Jan after I apply to schools right?
What if my mom doesn’t file taxes?
She usually doesn’t work so someone else claims us. What do I do in a case like this?</p>
<p>You’re right; you should file the FAFSA as quickly as possible after January 1 of the year you want to start school. So if you were planning to go to college in September of 2011 you would fill it as soon as possible after January 1 of 2011. </p>
<p>Is your mother your legal guardian? If she doesn’t have any income, you will likely qualify for the [automatic</a> 0 EFC](<a href=“http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/Au/Automatic_Zero_EFC.html]automatic”>http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/Au/Automatic_Zero_EFC.html). On the FAFSA, there will be an actual question that basically asks if you/your parent are planning to file a tax return for the year, and you will just check the box that says “will not file”.</p>
<p>[I</a> found this instruction file (click here)](<a href=“http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/completing_fafsa/2008_2009/ques2.html]I”>http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/completing_fafsa/2008_2009/ques2.html) for the FAFSA. You can go question by question and it will explain to you what you need to do for each question (which is helpful for the technical financial questions!)</p>
<p>^^ Whether a particular college will offer you money depends on many, many factors. Some of them are:</p>
<p>1) Are you a US citizen or permanent resident of the US? In that case you’ll need to fill out the FAFSA to find out if you are eligible for federal aid (Pell grants and subsidized student loans known as Stafford and Perkins loans).</p>
<p>2) Individual colleges have their own formulas for deciding how much need-based financial aid to give a particular student. If a school is a FAFSA-only school, the basic need is usually defined as the difference between the cost of attendance (COA) and the FAFSA-determined expected family contribution (EFC). Some schools also use the so-called CSS Profile to determine a given student’s need in addition to the FAFSA. The CSS Profile takes into account many more things such as home equity and whether there is a non-custodial parent with income in the picture. For some students the difference between the FAFSA EFC and the CSS Profile EFC is not very much; for other students the CSS Profile EFC may be signficantly greater than the FAFSA EFC. If the college determined EFC is greater than the college’s COA, you will not be given any need-based aid. [Filing a FAFSA will allow you to take out an unsubsidized Stafford loan each year, but you’ll have to pay interest on the loans while you are still in school or let the interest capitalize—which means that the interest is added to the principal of the loan and then you’re charged interest on both the principal and the older interest. If the college determined EFC is less than the COA, then your “need” is defined to be COA-EFC. NOTE: Very few US colleges claim to “meet full need” for all students—in other words, at most colleges, your need-based aid will be less than your COA-EFC. The few colleges that do claim to meet full need for all students are often CSS Profile schools and quite selective—i.e. harder to get into. Many “meet full need” schools will include both Stafford/Perkins loans and work study in the FA package. A very, very few schools will meet full need without loans, but these schools are extremely selective—like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—and should be considered a reach no matter how strong your qualifications are.</p>
<p>3) What are your PSAT scores? SAT scores? ACT scores? What’s your high school GPA look like? What about the rigor of your high school courses? The better your basic stats are, the more likely you might get merit aid at the schools that offer it. NOTE: Not all schools offer merit aid. Schools which offer no merit aid include the Ivies and most other top 10 universities and top 10 LACs. At some schools merit aid require additional application material—often in the form of an additional essay. At some schools, merit aid is automatically given to any student with high enough test score/gpa combinations. Each college is different and you have to read the websites very carefully to determine (1) if the particular college gives any merit aid and (2)if they do, what’s the process?</p>
<p>So there’s no way to predict how much money an unnamed college is likely to give you. Once you know your FAFSA EFC, you’ll have an upper bound on what colleges are likely to give you in terms of need-based aid (grants, loans, and work study), but MOST colleges will not give you your full need in the aid package. You need to read the college’s FA web pages very carefully in order to make an intelligent guess as to whether you are likely to receive enough aid to make the college affordable.</p>
<p>Finally, you can find a rather decent quick EFC estimator (both FAFSA and CSS as I recall) if you go to [Pay</a> for College - College Scholarships - Financial Aid - School Loans - Easyplanner](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>Calculate Your College Costs – BigFuture | College Board) The link is on the right.</p>
<p>Longhornchick, Robinsue has some good advice for you. Without knowing your specific situation, everyone is just throwing out ideas to you. There is no way anyone can tell how much money you will receive for which colleges, if any.</p>
<p>If you are eligible for Federal money, and your family is in a low income category with few assets, you might qualify for the PELL grant if your FAFSA EFC is below a certain number. You can estimate your family EFC from the above post. That only guarantees you PELL money up to $5300 for the 2 semester academic year with a zero EFC. You may also be eligbile for the Stafford loans. Other state and school scholarships may also be available. BUT NONE OF THIS IS GUARANTEED.</p>
<p>When you are picking your schools, if money is going to be an issue, make sure your counselor is aware of the fact. Let her know if you are likely to be PELL eligible. Then pick a variety of schools that are financial safeties along with schools you like. There is no specific number of schools you have to have, but do look for a financial safety if money is an issue. That might be a local state college where you can commute. Every else would then depend on the financial aid and scholarships that come through.</p>
<p>My friend’s daughter is PELL eligible. However, when the offers came rolling in, her choices came down to local college commuting which meant buying a car since it is not that close and no public transportation nor could anyone commit to drive her daily, or a private school that with all of the loans, grants, workstudy, would mean coming up with about $6000, probably through additional loans and working this summer and maybe some private scholarships in the works, and hopefully some money, even a few hundred from family. This would allow her to go away for college which is really her optimal option and what she wants to do. But if she cannot come up with that extra, she needs to arrange for transportation to her nearest local state college. It’s that, or take off a year and try again.</p>
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<p>Exactly. </p>
<p>Simply put: The cost of attendance (COA) of a college can be very high i.e. the cost of tuition, fees, dormitory, living expenses, travel etc. can go up to as high as $60,000 a year in some colleges, often less for in state universities. Most students and their parents cannot afford that. Colleges look at your and your parents financial situation (how much money do they earn, how much do they have in the bank, how much do they have in property etc.). The schools then tell the student: We will give you so much in grants (money that does not have to be repaid), so much money in loans (that has to be repaid) and the remaining you or your parents have to pay. I am being simplistic, but that is in a nut shell.</p>
<p>Now some colleges give more grants, some more loans. Some colleges may look at your financial situation and say your parents should contribute say $10,000. Another college may use a different formula and decide that your parents need to contribute say $15,000. Also there many different types of loans that you may or may not be eligible for.</p>
<p>So what you get in form of financial aid as pointed out by robinsuesanders and cptofthehouse depends on lots of factors. If you post your profile (SAT or ACT scores, GPA, type of high school, what type of colleges your are looking, a little bit of your financial situation etc.), people can give you better advice.</p>
<p>In effect, many colleges, particularly high-priced private colleges with large endowments, cahrge what it is in effect a sliding scale based on your income. So the higher your income, the greater percentage of the sticker price you have to pay, and the lower your income, the more financial aid you will get and in effect the less money you will have to pay. People with EFCs at or around 0 almost always sometimes receive substantial financial aid from federal and state programs as well as from the colleges themselves that will reduce the cost of college to a pittance, if that. This isn’t at EVERY college, mind you, but for especially high-ranked colleges with larger endowments (such as Harvard, Yale) and certain publics (UC-Berkeley, NYU, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and University of Virginia) this is often the case for poorer applicants.</p>
<p>Are you still considering Texas schools? If I remember correctly, your stats aren’t high enough for high ranked schools that are generous with aid.</p>
<p>Do you know how good UT schools are with aid for instate students? IF they don’t meet need, then that will be an issue.</p>
<p>Bedouin …schools like UCBerkeley and NYU are awful with aid. Berkeley is only good with in-state students.</p>
<p>Bedouin says:
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<p>This is highly misleading. The maximum federal grant for a typical poor student is currently about $5000 per year, I believe. A few students may qualify for some additional small grants based on their major, their intended career, or the rigor of their high school course work, but some of these may change to loans if the student switches majors or doesn’t follow through on the intended career. Additional federal aid is in the form of work study and loans—some subsidized, some not. Unless a college participates in the Perkins program, the federal-based student loans are Staffords, with a max of $3500 subsidized and $2000 unsubsidized for the freshman year. Federal work study dollars varies tremendously from one college to another. So an effective maximum for federal aid is around $10,000 to $12,000, which is typically not enough to cover the COA of many in-state public four year U’s if you do not (or cannot) live with your parents. Note that in-state tuition and fees also vary widely from state to state. Here in NYS, max federal aid + max state aid (TAP awards) usually can come close to covering the total COA for many students—if they live frugally. But we’ve also got (relatively speaking) pretty cheap in-state tuition.</p>
<p>State aid varies tremendously from state to state—both in amount and in the strings that are attached. NYS TAP awards can only be used at SUNY/CUNY schools (I think).</p>
<p>And very, very few schools meet full need for all students, including most public in-state schools. Even the privates with large endowments usually don’t promise to meet full need for all students. And the very few rich privates that do meet full need with little or no loans in the package are also the same schools that have a “win the lottery” feel to admissions. You just can’t count on solving the “how to finance college” problem by expecting to get admitted to Harvard or similar elite schools that meet full need without large loans.</p>
<p>So for poor students—especially ones with FAFSA EFC = $0, understanding the FA process at every school they apply to is critical. And such a student should hope for the best—a great FA package with no more than Stafford loans and affordable cost to family, but should plan for the worst—what happens if all the FA packages leave gaps that are far too large to fill without incurring tremendous debt.</p>
<p>Now I’m not saying that a poor student shouldn’t apply to an expensive private college. If the student has the stats to be a competitive applicant and understands the private college’s FA process and knows that the college meets a substantial percentage of the need for a substantial percentage of the students with the only loans being Stafford and Perkins loans, then the student may well win admission and get an FA package that makes the college affordable. But if the college often doesn’t meet need or uses large Parent Plus loans as part of the package, the student is likely to be disappointed in the FA package and will need to enroll elsewhere. So a poor student with really strong stats needs to cast a very wide net when applying to maximize the chances of getting a workable FA package <em>somewhere</em>.</p>
<p>*People with EFCs at or around 0 almost always sometimes receive substantial financial aid from federal and state programs as well as from the colleges themselves that will reduce the cost of college to a pittance, if that. *</p>
<p>This is one of the most untrue statements EVER. Most schools do not have any institutional funds to give and many states don’t either. So for many kids, all they can get is Pell and a bit more…not nearly enough to pay for school. </p>
<p>Bedoiun, please stop misleading students. Those on this board have to go around cleaning up the messes you make by posting inaccurate info.</p>
<p>"certain publics (UC-Berkeley, NYU, University of North Carolina - "</p>
<p>NYU is not a public school. New York’s public schools are the SUNY and CUNY schools.
From what people have written on this forum, NYU gives very disappointing financial aid packages.</p>
<p>What does “almost, always, sometimes” mean? </p>
<p>An EFC of $0 will qualify a student for the maximum Pell Grant (about $5000), subsidized loans, and possibly some other grants depending on IF the school offers them. This federally funded aid would fund attendance at a community college for a student who could continue to live at home. It is not “generous” enough in and of itself to support a student at most four year residential colleges (tuition/room/board/fees/ expenses would far exceed the amount of federally funded aid a student would get).</p>
<p>But it’s a start. </p>
<p>Bedouin…please describe what you mean by “generous”…and what you mean by “almost, always, sometimes”.</p>
<p>Bedouin,</p>
<p>Once again, stop, just stop! You have no credibility, and don’t even know that NYU is not public.</p>
<p>I think Bedouin is doing some kind of Andy Kaufman-version of college advising. It has to be joke, right? No one could miss at every swing unless they were doing it on purpose.</p>
<p>That can’t be allowed, can it? I haven’t mastered the regulations of this board, but I think that you can only give horrible advice out of ignorance, right? Actual out-and-out bad faith is indefensible except on certain political threads.</p>
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<p>Sorry, that was a mistake. I should have grouped NYU with the PRIVs that are bad with aid. </p>
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<p>:rolleyes: Obviously I was referring to colleges with large endowments, which I mentioned SEVERAL times. Those colleges with large endowments are the ones who are most generous towards low-income students, provided they are admitted.</p>
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<p>Generous describes the programs of schools like Harvard, Princeton, etc. (for the privates), who guarantee to meet need for low-income families and are working or have worked to eliminate loans. It also refers to publics like UNC-Chapel Hill and UVA who demand to prove that they meet full need, and are low-cost high-quality schools in and of themselves.</p>
<p>I was just kidding, Gardna. I don’t really think Bedouin is channeling Andy Kaufman. Sometimes it just gets pretty funny, yknow.</p>
<p>Bedouin says:</p>
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<p>Yes, UVa does promise to meet full need for even OOS students with grants, federal loans (i.e. Perkins and Staffords), and federal work study.</p>
<p>But according to UVa’s webpage, in-state tuition for students entering next fall is $10,836. COA is estimated at $22,893 for an in-state student who lives on campus. OOS tuition itself is $33,782, with a COA of $46,000 to $47,000 for an OOS student living on-campus. Neither is a particularly “low-cost” figure relative to some other state’s flagships, but I agree UVa is a “high-quality school.”</p>
<p>By the way, the UVa financial aid page ([University</a> of Virginia Financial Aid](<a href=“http://www.virginia.edu/financialaid/index.php]University”>http://www.virginia.edu/financialaid/index.php)) is one of the best I’ve seen. The links under the Financial Aid Basics menu on the left side of the page make a really great tutorial for helping a student or parent understand the whole process of what a FAFSA is, what an EFC is, and there are other links that give you a pretty good description of how UVa determines need.</p>
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<p>Couple of minor corrections/clarifications, for the benefit of new readers/NY’rs…maximum Pell is $5550 next year, max TAP is scheduled to be around $4900, and all 4-yr SUNY’s have a tuition rate of $4970 instate/$12870 OOS. All other charges/fees vary by campus. Average COA for an instate residential student is around $19K, or $13,500 for a commuter. So, instate students receiving the maximum in Pell, TAP, and Stafford loans can easily cover full COA if they are commuting, but are likely to be a few thousand short if they’re a residential student and do not receive any other aid. </p>
<p>TAP grants can be used at any NYS college, public or private. SUSTA (smaller additional state grants given to students eligible for max TAP awards) is only available at SUNY schools and are campus-based awards.</p>