Appealing financial aid from Macalester...possible??

kysakamoto6
Sun, 03 Apr 2011 07:34:56 +0000

Hi all.
I’m an international student living in Japan and I was accepted to Macalester College.

I applied for financial aid and was fortunate enough to get an aid package totaling $25,000 composed of Kofi Anan scholarship (they say it’s extremely competitive scholarship on the website), MCISL loan (7% interest rate), and on-campus employment.

The thing is Mac’s total cost of attendance is a bit more than $51,000 (excluding living cost, health insurance, flights, etc) and with that aid, my parents will have to pay $26,000 in direct cost AND extra few thousand dollars for me.

With this offer, there is absolutely no way I can attend Macalester.
My father is the only one employed and he earns about $120,000 a year (calculated so because Yen is strong). I have one more sibling who attends a private university in Japan and she has 2 more years of college now. (the total cost of attendance including living cost for her is sth like $17,000 a year)

Macalester says it meets 100% demonstrated need of all admitted students and my family’s contribution was $17,000 in the Certification of Finances, which I submitted as part of aid application.

I don’t know how they expect me to come up with additional $10,000 or more…

Japan’s cost of living is extremely high compare to many cities in the USA, especially Twin Cities. It is said that Japan’s cost of living is 30% higher than the States’s.

BUT… I don’t think my family has solid evidence to prove that we desperately need more aid except the future prediction that my sister’s tuition may increase a little bit.

Do you think there is any chance I can appeal for my current aid package?

Please help…
Mac is definitely my first choice, and I REALLY REALLY want to attend Mac…

If you need to know my stats, please post a reply. I will try to reply back ASAP.

Thank you for reading this long post.!