Hi. I was just accepted into WPI and they sent me my financial aid offer. The offer has merit based grants and also talks about loans but provides nothing for need based aid. I know I should receive some need based aid considering my EFC is more than 30,000 below the initial cost of attending. Does anyone know if they send out a different package later on or should I contact their financial aid office?
edit: Thanks for all the replies. I guess it comes down to them reducing my need based aid because of my merit based scholarship. It’s still way way way more than I could ever afford so I’m going to wait for other schools financial aid packages and then try to negotiate. Thanks again!
EFC does not actually mean “expected family contribution” but it is a number generated using a formula that determines eligibility for a Pell Grant. There are some schools that guarantee they will meet 100% of a student’s financial need, based on what they calculate that to be, and for the others the gap needs to be covered by families. One last point is that in many cases, financial aid does not stack so being awarded merit based aid will eliminate the “need” for additional aid (for example - if you would qualify for $20k of need based aid and are awarded $10k of merit, they reduce your need based aid to $10k, not add them together and award a total of $30k).
Agree you should run the NPC and see what it says.
I did, because I had the same concern as @breadanddough . Their net price calculator is outdated as it uses 17-18 data, where the cost of attendance was 10k less than now. Also, even using those numbers, my expected aid on it was considerably higher than actually offered. I was also confused with no need-based aid. Hoping its just coming later as I am really interested in the school.
Look on the portal, just above where you are seeing your merit award—there should be a separate tab for financial aid. It is all there now. Most of our aid (apart from merit) is in the form of loans.