<p>Well, I was accepted! However, the nice little bulldog screen came with a catch: absolutely zero financial aid.</p>
<pre><code> With the information my parents submitted, my family makes $165,000/year, which we expect to drop to $130,000/year the following year. My father is retired, and we have pretty average assets.
I was told by everyone I talked to that Yale is excellent in meeting need; however, I am looking at (at least) $160,000 in loans if I were to attend Yale, which is not feasible.
In short, I feel as though I have worked for 4 years toward a goal, achieved it, and had it ripped out of my hands :/ Is this normal? What should I do?
</code></pre>
<p>Edit: Our financial aid forms were sent in a tad late, but the web site lists them all as recieved</p>
<p>Your FA is recalculated every year and your EFC can go up or go down based on changes in family income so your expectation of a $30K income drop is not really relevant to your current FA offer. Did you get accepted to any other HYPSM school and get a significantly better offer? If so, fax that over to Yale with a request to review your FA package. If you got money from a non-peer school, I wouldn’t expect that to significantly sway Yale in giving you more money. Congrats on the acceptance and hopefully you can make Yale work for you or you have another excellent financial safety option.</p>
<p>I’m in the same situation. I’ve received decent aid from other schools putting most of my schools in the 15-20k a year range. However, Yale is in the 55k range which is very very different. Besides Berkeley (I’m assuming cuz it’s public and I’m not a Cal resident), Yale was on the only school that came in more than 22k. (Other schools are Vandy, NU, Georgetown, Duke, USC, Dartmouth, WUSTL).</p>
<p>Is it worth appealing for either of us? The appeal only sounds like “If something big happened, tell us. Otherwise, you’re SOL”</p>
<p>skirtsteak,</p>
<p>D1 told me that one of her Y classmates got their FA package increased when she showed Y a more generous package from NU. I remember because I was a little surprised that they matched NU as it’s not necessarily a FA peer school.</p>
<p>I have 3 years of comparing Y FA to other schools and your results are very different from my experience; Y has always offered us substantial FA while schools like the ones you listed offered much less and often nothing. It sounds like a mistake might have been made by Y, it happens.</p>
<p>It’s definitely worth asking Y for a FA review (not an appeal) and volunteering the FA packages from the other schools, it can’t hurt and may help.</p>
<p>Spike,</p>
<p>Have you run the FA calculator? That could give you an idea of how much a reduction in income would affect your FA package in future years.</p>
<p>I just checked my EFC from the FAFSA, and our EFC is actually about $10,000 LESS than what Yale expects us to pay. I thought they guaranteed they meet federal EFC…</p>
<p>
Where did you hear this from? Although Yale is one of the most generous privates when it comes to aid there is no guarantee regarding EFC as they also use CSS Profile in determining aid. Did you run their FA calculator prior to applying? If so, how different was the result?</p>
<p>Here is Yale’s policy on aid:</p>
<p>Expected Family Contribution (EFC)</p>
<p>The Student Financial Services Staff carefully analyzes the documents required for an aid application and calculates a family contribution based on federal and institutional methodology. The formula that we use measures the family’s ability to contribute toward college costs and expects a contribution from both natural parents regardless of their current marital status. Needs analysis is a complex procedure. When you file the CSS Profile, Yale will receive an estimated calculation of your family’s expected contribution toward the college costs. We will review this estimate and may make adjustments according to Yale’s policies and any additional information or special circumstances that you may submit. The calculation considers factors such as:</p>
<pre><code>Parents’ total income, both taxable and non-taxable
Parents’ assets (cash, savings, home equity, other real estate and investments)
Family size and number of children attending college
</code></pre>
<p>In addition to a parent contribution, the Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) also includes a student contribution, which consists of a contribution from a student’s own assets, if appropriate, along with a student income contribution from summer earnings which is standard for most undergraduate students.</p>
<p>Each college has a NPC, this is what you should run, not FAFSA. FAFSA is for Federal funds, Institutional FA is calculated using information on the Profile and includes many things that FAFSA does not (eg. home equity). As a result, many times the COA is higher than with FAFSA.</p>
<p>Here’s the Y NPC:</p>
<p>[Yale</a> Net Price Calculator | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/yale-net-price-calculator]Yale”>Estimate Your Cost | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)</p>
<p>[sorry for overlaps w/Kdog]</p>
<p>I will run the aid calculator and talk to the financial aid office to see exactly why this is happening. Maybe my parents secretly run a drug ring or something. If worse comes to worst, I will accept my AFROTC offer and go for free. </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>spike001-
I strongly encourage you to contact Yale FinAid and provide further explanation of your family’s circumstances. Our son’s initial FinAid offer did not do enough to close the gap for him to attend. The Yale FinAid officer we spoke with was very responsive once we re-explained our circumstances. The resulting FinAid package enabled us to make Yale a reality for our son.</p>
<p>Will Yale match financial aid packages even if they originally didn’t give you any? </p>
<p>I’m in a weird situation because I basically live in a housing bubble. Housing prices have quadrupled in my neighbourhood in the last few years, so I have a really valuable house even though my family income is far lower and we have no plans to sell anytime soon (so the house value doesn’t in any way contribute to my ability to pay for college). Basically, any school that takes into account home value rejects my financial aid application, but I’ve been offered a fair amount of aid at Princeton and Stanford. Would Yale still match that?</p>
<p>That is what we plan to do - we are going to set up a meeting with a representative and try to work it out. Your post gave me some hope, though. Thank you!</p>
<p>virgo, P&S are definitely peer schools, the only way to find out is to ask.</p>
<p>My aid is terrible as well… they’re asking for double what we can afford…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Terrible compared to what? </p>
<p>If it’s compared to the need based FA other schools are offering you, then call the Y FA office and ask for a review. </p>
<p>If it’s terrible because you can’t afford it, but the amount is in line with what the Y NPC or what other colleges have given you, then you likely don’t qualify for much/any FA.</p>
<p>Princeton have offered me a much much better financial aid package, but besides that, they’re all the same… Should I just ring them and ask if there’s anything they can do? My financial aid situation is very complicated and the CSS profile didn’t give enough space for my family to explain it all, whereas the PFAA did.</p>
<p>I contacted a Yale Financial Aid adviser and she said that my other packages were merit based, and that Yale only considers need based aid. Is there anything else I can do? It seems like they aren’t willing to match my offer from UChicago.</p>
<p>I’m really sad cause Yale is also asking for about 10k more than the FAFSA EFC.</p>
<p>I have to agree with what entomom wrote - our son’s fin aid from Yale is much better than Duke or U Chicago.
My son called the fin aid office yesterday to inquire about something totally unrelated to this thread - the person on the other end was very, very helpful. I suggest calling them…</p>
<p>lemming, </p>
<p>Definitely call, ask them for a FA review and mention the P offer and tell them that there were complicated factors that were not represented in the Profile. They will likely have you FAX or email the offer to them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wherever you got your information on how FA works, it is very wrong. FAFSA is for Federal funds only. Why do you think you were asked to fill out the Profile? Profile is what is used for Institutional FA and includes much more detail which generally results in a higher EFC since it includes things like non-custodial parent, home equity, etc.</p>