<p>That was me Zephyr!</p>
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<p>The real financial aid will be different IF your parents’ tax returns and income are significantly different than the one used for the online calculator. If not, then the online calculator is correct and you most likely will NOT get anything from Cornell. I basically went through what you are talking about: I applied early decision to the college of engineering, got accepted, and got no financial aid from Cornell so I withdrew my acceptance in January. I actually did use the online calculator before hand and it calculated I would get 0 aid from Cornell and yeah I definitely should NOT have applied early decision.</p>
<p>Your parents are right, there is no sense in paying $60,000 a year unless you are very wealthy; Cornell is not worth that much money a year. There are plenty of great schools and programs and you apply to and enter for a much lower cost. I ended up at Rensselaer polytechnic institute, a highly reputable engineering school, and am paying about $25,000 a year, down from the original cost of about $60,000 a year due to a merit scholarship. If you are strong enough to get into Cornell, there is a good chance you can win substantial merit scholarships at other schools, including RPI, that will significantly curtail the cost of attendance. You also need to think about your plans after graduating from undergraduate college. For example, I plan on applying to medical school, which is a fortune, and I don’t want to be in any debt if I do enter medical school.</p>
<p>Bottom line: Don’t apply early decision. Even if you apply regular decision, you really wouldn’t get any more financial aid from Cornell than if you applied early. Cornell doesn;t offer merit scholarships and in the absence of significant changes in your family’s income, your financial aid offer will only increase IF you get a better offer from another Ivy League School, Stanford, MIT, or Duke (Cornell will match any offer from any of those schools, even if you initially get 0 aid). And those schools give basically the same or near the amount of financial aid at cornell except for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford who have more funds and are generally more generous with financial aid.</p>