Lozz

My EFC is about 17k, and Syracuse and Northeastern expected me to pay about 30k. Do the math
But Northwestern was really good with aid for me. I got 27k in a grant and another 13k in an academic-merit based scholarship. Was really surprised

bandnerd91321

has anyone mentioned Villanova yet? They were beyond cheap with all the posters on their threads....

giajale

sybbie719 - that's what i meant.

He's going to pay 25k cos I dont wanna go into debt... either way.

I thought grinnell gave rather good FA... rhapsodyinpink, perhaps you should clarify (if youre planning on going there). the ratio was 87:23 - Scholarship/Grant:loans - I think.

Bballgirl

So far my worst aid package has been from Duke. My EFC is $14500 and they have concluded that my parents can afford $22000 with $6800 in loans for me. Plus my brother also attends and his aid has been poor. My parents have been able to deal with it but my mom lost her job last Sept and it halved our family income. There is no way they can come up with this money. Colgate matched the EFC and so far has been the best. USC gave me a presidential scholarship and I am waiting to hear if I will get more aid. I am just really disappointed about Duke.

somemom

UVA has one of these programs- if your income is less than XYZ they will give you a package with no loans. They asked more details than just FAFSA, I think they asked about cars and home equity and some other Profilish questions. They gave a great package, making that option almost the same out of pocket as our in state university.

I made a spread sheet for tuition, room & board in the dorm & subtracted any aid that was not to be paid back or even self-help like work study, to compare programs and UVA was excellent as was Baylor.

stupidkid

For me, Caltech's fin aid is $13k less than MIT's and $5k less than Duke's.

kmaqMom

Lozz~ that is an unbelievable FA package. Congratulations!

i<3YaoMing

i was really psyched about Uchicago, but with the finaid package they're offering me, I've got no chance.

i mean, i need at least another 15k to be able to even consider affording the school.

arg. and uchicag was one of my top choices...

tokenadult

Just to be clear about what the problems are, how many of you are saying that your offer of financial aid "gaps" you compared to what your federal EFC is, and how many of you are saying that you had a high federal methodology to begin with and you got less "merit aid" than you expected? (Related to this is whether your PROFILE, that is "institutional methodology" expected family contribution is much higher than your federal EFC or not.) I'm still not sure how many of the disappointed posters here are disappointed about not getting a discount from list price, on whatever basis, and how many are saying that a particular college (which college?) is offering need-based aid that is far less than what the college acknowledges is your financial need.

treeman

Sorry == been at work all day. No, I didn't mean the award is literally taxable. It was meant to imply that a school that reduces need aid $1 for every $1 they award in merit aid is effectively taxing you for receiving the merit aid. Our EFC is $27 K and Kenyon awarded $1.5 K in grants. With loans and the merit aid, they are expecting us to pay an amount about equal to our EFC. The kicker is that the merit aid isn't in addition to need based aid, it just seems to be replacing it. Given everyone else's situation, I may be making a mountain out of a molehill, and certainly 2blue has a point. Nonetheless ...

huguenot

Duke gave us a very great package - no loans and close to what we expected by IM calculators. Our federal EFC was <500, though.

My concern, though, as I read everyone else's experience, is what about the future? We certainly hope we won't have an income this low for long, and I'm very concerned that ds will start at a school and then we won't be able to afford it by a long shot after a couple of years. Once we're making money, there's a lot of catching up to do in maintainance and things we've let slide, so it's going to be very tight even once the numbers are better.

I, too, would love to know what your EFC is when you quote aid numbers. That lets us run calculators with scenarios for the future and get an idea of what to expect at different schools.

SBellesDad

Colorado State-
EFC is about $15K
They gave $2500 in workstudy and $28000 in loans.
I am near retirement and work in a field were my income varies BIGTIME from year to year.
Thankfully D has numerous options. Can anyone say "Next"?

bartleby

UCs gave virtually nothing, other than a few loans. Tulane was awful too. The merit aid seemed nice, but then they decided that since I got merit aid, I don't deserve need based aid, so it was the same as if I didn't get the merit aid,

jedimaster

Northwestern was disappointing. Their expected contribution is higher than my parents annual wages...

goonymom

OK, tokenadult, i'm still not going to give you the names of the colleges, but ALL of my childs schools gapped us.

She applied to 8 schools. She's been accepted at 6, waitlisted at one, and is waiting to hear from one. For the six that accepted her, she was offered a variety of need and merit-based aid. As someone else said, it appears that the schools that offered merit aid just reduced the need-based aid, so the total package was the same. After accounting for the gift aid, and taking out the loans, and then taking out the EFC that we're supposed to pay, we were gapped between $5700 and $10,900. Maybe that isn't too bad, but since our EFC is 5k, it's two to three times our EFC that we'll have to pay. So we're going to have to look really hard at what types of loans are being offered, etc, and take all that into consideration.

Of the six accepts, two were FAFSA only schools and four were CSS Profile schools. Ironically, the FAFSA only schools are the ones that gave the least aid.