Columbia financial aid

Shraf
Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:46:01 +0000

thegodofrice, your argument is absolutely absurd

first of all sprtn117 hit it right on the nose:



I thought college financial aid is given based on a family’s income after taxes not the 200K figure the OP gave



this is true…they don’t look at your income before taxes and of course saying that your income is “cut in half” after taxes is a silly overstatement because we all know thats not true…we’re not in france or the UK …the most you would pay in taxes in the US is 33% not to mention when you file a return you are sure to find deductions up the wazoo.

the point is though that a 200k income should be plenty to afford a college eduction…which of course doesn’t cost 52k up front. I’m positive that the EFC on your fafsa was well above the cost of attendance and as a result you shouldnt really have expected any aid from any school you were going to apply to. I also get the sense that you haven’t really talked to your parents about this and there is probably little justification for your (albeit noble) concerns.

Also, to respond to the point about your parents being newly well off…doesn’t matter at all…colleges mainly look at your income and don’t expect your parents to dip into savings to pay for college.

That being said…my senior year, my family’s income was about 100k and my brother had just graduated from college…so i was the only one in college. As a result my family’s EFC was over 40k and of course i didn’t get any grant money. Mind you my family lives in manhattan so your NJ argument is really not holding water and if you write in the special circumstances section of the fafsa that 200k doesn’t go a long way in ny/nj all you will get is a few laughs but zero sympathy.