What kind of financial aid is this?

cawcaw90 · 04-22-2008, 11:31 PM

My family's income is ~$130,000 a year, which probably sounds good, but since I live in California, the standards of living are much, much higher. Today, I received my financial aid package, and basically, they are giving me a federal loan of $3500 and my family is expected to pay $48,800. That's more than a third of our yearly income (and that's BEFORE taxes). Is this some sort of mistake, or this is pretty common?

monkeybb · 04-22-2008, 11:45 PM

They count all your family assets too.

legendofmax · 04-23-2008, 12:17 AM

Yep. Basically, it prevents kids from going "*** I should get a full ride, my dad can't afford to buy fuel for our yacht anymore and my Corvette won't fit in the tertiary garage next to the pool and gazebo" and getting a better aid package than the guys who don't have any assets and make comparably less money. If your family is making $130k a year, odds are you are living in a nice home, which is probably counting against you pretty hard.

tenebrousfire · 04-23-2008, 12:22 AM

pretty common indeed - and your fasfa application should have given you an efc of approximately the same (if it didn't, then that's something to potentially dispute)

mattwonder · 04-23-2008, 12:38 AM

We should qualify that - legendofmax doesn't mean you're living in a nice home, but that you're living in a relatively valuable home. A million dollar home in CA may be less of a house than one in rural TX, but it's still worth a million dollars. The truth is that standard of living doesn't account for much, because Penn still charges the same price regardless of your home state, and your house is still worth the same dollar value.

cawcaw90 · 04-23-2008, 01:21 AM

Ah, thanks for the help. Although, I'm not particularly happy :P Looks like I'll be working a lot to pay off my debt.

mattwonder: Yeah, I actually live in a neighborhood which would be considered the "ghetto" of the town. Lol, 'course it's like white suburbia, so it's not all that bad.

akim90 · 04-23-2008, 01:55 AM

Hey. i'm in the same position as you. my parents make about 140k a year (before taxes) and i didnt get ANY aid. it's ridiculous. i even considered going to a community college because of the heavy financial burden.
but i figured that if i didnt go to Penn then I would regret it cuz i fell in LOVE with the school after visiting.
i'm going to have a lot of debt after graduation or.... i dont know. i guess the financial situation will just work out. but it's crazy stuff.
i live in California also... where everything is 9348098429034 times more costly than the east. (it's pretty evident in the gas prices) and it's going to be hard stuff. :/

legendofmax · 04-23-2008, 03:48 AM

Right, I was talking about value -- thanks for the clarification Matt

gbesq · 04-23-2008, 04:19 AM

Quote:

"i live in California also... where everything is 9348098429034 times more costly than the east."

ROFL. Try living in suburban Connecticut before you complain about how expensive California is. Regular unleaded gasoline in my town was $3.81/gallon as of yesterday -- premium was $4.01. The cost of living for everything else is ridiculously high as well. :-(

freetense · 04-23-2008, 07:46 AM

you know, I'm not saying things aren't more expensive in California, but it's pretty ridiculous to say that 130k ISNT a high amount of income. I don't care where you live. please come back down to earth

cawcaw90 · 04-23-2008, 09:57 AM

akim90, I feel yah. I hope I'm not in debt or something even when I'm 40 or something.

gbesq: Gas in my area was $3.95 yesterday. :P I beat ya, but in the worst way possible.

freetense, I've never claimed that $130,000 isn't a high amount of income, it's just that the std. of living in California offsets what would be a very good number elsewhere. If you subtract taxes and the amount that UPenn expect me to pay, I mean, what's my family income then? Like $40,000 per year? I mean, I realize I should complain because other's are in worse situations, it just came as a shock to me how little fin. aid I would be receiving.

drnoeyedea · 04-23-2008, 05:34 PM

Dude you are getting ripped off. We make a little more than you and Penn gave us around 14k in aid. Idk if it was fin aid or merit aid though...it said some leadership scholarship. and they said no loans. Surprised that you only got 3500 loan. Did your parents accidentally add a 0 somewhere?

cawcaw90 · 04-23-2008, 06:36 PM

Huh. That's weird. I think it might be fin aid that you received because I heard that they don't give out merit scholarships ( I think). I don't think my parents could have added a 0 because we sent in tax returns, and you don't make mistakes on those :P. Maybe I'll try contacting them...

rr43 · 04-23-2008, 07:18 PM

@cawcaw - Yes, either UPenn is not very generous or their EFC caculation is messed up. Having got pretty much the same EFC from Cornell, CMU and USC, where they gave the rest ($18K-$25K) in grants, UPenn (with same FAFSA and CSS) came up with nothing but a $3K loan.
The only thing I thought was UPenn factors in the Primary Home value - which for a CA resident is a big number. What they don't realize is value of primary residence is pretty much paper money as you can't sell it for education and live in the streets.
A lot of privates have taken out the value of primary home in their EFC calculation - looks like UPenn doesn't, based on what I hear from California residents.
The only other reason may be UPenn is not generous. Even for preview visit, Upenn said "sorry, we don't have funds for visits", while Cornell gave some money for preview visit from California, wihout even asking.

tenebrousfire · 04-23-2008, 09:52 PM

nonetheless, penn should match a financial aid offer from any other comparable school