I just got my cornell financial aid today... 18,000 in aid, 8500 loan, 3000 work study. The loan to aid ratio seems awfully high though, so i was wondering if it's worth it to call up the office and try to see if they could sort of "shift" some of the loans to aid? Has anyone had the experience of trying to barter with them? I'm applying from Canada too, so it's kind of sketchy...
dude, for my package i got 15k loans and 5k grant aid...thats a 1:3 ratio. I think you got an excellent package based on what others have been getting.
I got $22k grant, $10k loan, $2k work study. (haha i'm relatively poor; my family earns around $65k a year ><)
I went up to visit Cornell and dropped by the financial aid office and asked if they could "shift" some of the loans as well, since JHU and CMU gave me a bit more in grants (~$25k). They told me that everything on the financial aid sheet is final, unless something drastic happens to your financial aid situation, in which case you must give them documentation and whatnot for them to think about giving you more money.
Probably not. I got more grants from other non-ivy colleges (JHU, CMU) due to my financial situation, and from what I heard, my friend got $25k to Princeton and his family is very well off.
Cornell will match financial aid offers of other Ivies. For me, they wouldn't match JHU or Northwestern, but they did match UPenn's, which was quite generous.
usually, no.
Their endowment/student of all Ivy Leagues is as follows:
Princeton: $1.64 million. This makes Princeton the wealthiest major institution in the country on a per capita basis.
Yale: $1.34 million. This makes Yale the second wealthiest on a per capita basis.
Harvard: $1.29 million. This makes Harvard the third wealthiest.
Dartmouth: $473,000. This makes Dartmouth the seventh wealthiest.
Brown: $263,000.
Columbia: $218,000.
University of Pennsylvania: $189,000.
Cornell: $187,000.
With so much money to spend on each institution, Princeton can afford to switch on the money shower on each kid.
Cornell can afford hardly 1/10th of that...so it figures when they offer such small packages.
Basically if you're EFC is above 30,000, you're screwed cuz all the aid past 30,000 are covered with loans and work study, not grants. So to go to cornell, you either need to be drop dead poor or filthy rich. It sucks having a salary around $90000-$150000.
Can anyone vouch for Cornell's consistency year to year? Their aid right now is good, but are they one of those schools that lures you in and then the next year you're stuck? I wouldn't have thought that except for the fact that they seem to have been much more generous to us than to some other posters with similar incomes. I wondered if they wanted my son to improve their diversity stats.
