<p>if my parents make less than 40K a year, will SC give me?</p>
<p>most probably.</p>
<p>do they make 40k each, or do they make 40k combined?
It makes a big difference.
Kyle</p>
<p>combined....</p>
<p>so would SC give me any money?</p>
<p>Considering the fact that tuition is higher then your parent's income, in short, you will be getting money. How much? I have no idea, but I can direct you to <a href="http://www.finaid.org/calculators/%5B/url%5D">http://www.finaid.org/calculators/</a> which will give you an estimate. Scroll down to the 'Needs Analysis' and there are several calculators you can pick depending on how much time you've got. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>you'll for sure get money and most likely your needs will be met (as 100% of students with needs receive the money they need to pay for college, according to US News and USC)</p>
<p>yay! See yall at SC</p>
<p>does not applying for merit scholarships affect how much financial aid you'll get? i'm supposing that it won't, but doesn't make u look kinda lazy if u don't try? my scores are pretty good, but i'm not in the top 1-2%.</p>
<p>I don't think it affects how much money you will get. But if you do get some sort of merit scholarships, they will lower your grants and other financial aid and in the end, you'll have the exact same amount of financial aid. That's what happened to me. I got a certain amount for university grant with Deans scholarship. When I got bumped up to Presidential, they lowered the university grant the same amount my merit scholarship increased.</p>
<p>bluehunnydew, I think you should apply for merit scholarships regardless of your scores.</p>
<p>I can tell you that USC does not necesarrily meet ur total EFC. We had to come up with another 12500k. And we already could not afford the EFC Fafsa told us.</p>
<p>It's probably because USC doesn't use the EFC, but uses its own formulas to calculate the financial need of a student.</p>
<p>Right, but they still didnt give what I needed</p>
<p>But you said you couldn't even afford the fafsa efc. So either way, you still needed to find another source for money. The reason that the calculations don't add up perfectly is that they use averages for living expenses etc, but most families spend a lot more than that avg.</p>
<p>Its not that we spend a lot more than the average, they just dont realize that we pay high state taxes and just because our home has a big price tage doesn't mean that we could actually afford to buy the house today. We had to find other means and were fortunate to find them, but its not easy on my family.</p>
<p>I understand, my family is going through a similar situation. I was just using living expenses as one area that creates differences between the efc calculations.</p>
<p>Also, the living expense - gas, water, eletricity, etc... - in our area keep rising.</p>
<p>but remember, it never hurts to ask for more money once you do get your financial aid offer from them. just by asking i got another $2000. i had a good reason, but i can't quite remember what it was.
the worst they can do is say no.
also, the idea of loans may be unpleasant, but they can be very helpful, especially the subsidized government one (Stafford).</p>