Appealing for Financial Aid

fireandrain
Sat, 29 Mar 2014 18:53:30 +0000

Are your parents self-employed, or own a business? That can make a huge difference between FAFSA EFC and CSS profile schools – usually meaning that your income is readjusted to be higher and a larger contribution is required.

In the past, Brown has matched financial aid from other schools. It really depends – it won’t match packages with merit awards, for example, and usually can’t match what Harvard gives.

Based on the little you’ve said, it does seem that something is off – with 3 kids in college, it would make a lot of sense for your package to be much larger. You definitely should call. You should not, under any circumstance, take out $35K in loans/year. Did you fill out Brown financial aid calculator? What does that say? I would also go through the CSS/Profile with your parents, line by line, and make sure that you didn’t make a mistake.

It would be very sad if money is the reason you can’t go to Brown, but unfortunately that does happen to many people at your income level at many schools, not just Brown.