Appealing USC financial aid

Eilrymist
Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:24:47 +0000

This is my appeal letter:

First, I would like to thank you for the financial aid awarded, and the time you took to generate the award. However, I wanted to highlight certain aspects of my financial situation that a financial aid officer over the phone stated was not taken into account, namely the nature of my father’s income.

Looking at the tax return I had sent for 2013, my father’s income is listed as foreign income, which is indeed taxed. It can be seen starting from the third page on the federal tax return for 2013. This is why the gross income, $5,037, was much lower than the listed wages of $66,477. I was told by the financial aid officer that my father’s income was considered as untaxed income, while in fact, this is taxed in Japan. This income he makes in Japan is needed to support not only my mother, my sister and I in America, but also himself in Japan. He is working in Japan because he needs to be there to take care of my grandfather and grandmother.

I was told that it was looking at my father’s income as untaxed income that gave an expected parent contribution of $9200. Because of the fact that my father’s income is indeed taxed and that we do not see most of this money in American, I would be extremely grateful if you could adjust the expected parent contribution to reflect this information.

I want to also highlight that there will also be a drop in my own income from 2013 because I left my job at BriteMinds Learning Center to focus more on my studies making it even harder to cover not only my expected portion of the tuition, which I was told was at $4684, but also my parent’s expected portion of $9,200. Please let me know if you need any additional information.

Thank you for your consideration.