<p>My friend got only $7000 from Georgetown and her EFC is $17,000. There is no way her parents can pay $30000+ for her education, despite how much she wants to go to Georgetown and has worked so hard throughout highschool. How is Georgetown when it comes to negotiating financial aid? Has anyone done it and what was the result? Any other suggestions would be very helpful.</p>
<p>Some more encouragement:</p>
<p>I wanted to go to Emory – that was my dream school. However, the financial aid was very poor, and my parents couldn’t afford to pay for me to go there either. I decided to go to Spelman, a very good second-tier women’s college.</p>
<p>Four years later, I have had an absolute blast – made lots of friends, studied abroad, traveled across the country, enjoyed homecoming and other events, and maintained a great GPA and GRE scores. And for graduate school, I got accepted to great prestigious schools, including a master’s at Emory with half-tuition…and a Ph.D program at Columbia with full funding.</p>
<p>It’s only four years, and those four years are what you make it! Your college doesn’t have to be famous or prestigious in order for you to be successful. YOU have to be prestigious, and a go-getter. Success isn’t about where you go but what you do when you get there.</p>
<p>It sucks when you hear that other people can go wherever they want because their parents have the resources to send them there. However, don’t resent your parents for not being as resourceful, even if it is their “fault” they aren’t as such. Make the best of what you have and count your blessings – the majority of people don’t get the opportunity to go to college at all.</p>
<p>I can’t believe that I am reading some of these posting…</p>
<p>Boo Hoo, “I worked very hard,” “I deserved more merit aid.” 'I can’t go to my dream, private school." " I got into… ( insert schools name) and now my parents won’t pay for it." “It’s so unfair.” “I had terrific SATs and worked like a dog in high school, and now I have to go to the local city/state university with the other peons.”</p>
<p>Did I hit upon all of the complaints?</p>
<p>Didn’t any of you kids study history? Didn’t you learn that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of incredibly smart immigrants who attend City University of New York due to lack of funding? They became judges, including Supreme Court Judges, major acting stars, Lawyers, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, wealthy businessmen and much, much more…</p>
<p>Life isn’t about fairness…In fact, life isn’t fair. … You can complain, whine, mop around ,and blame everyone around you…OR… you can make lemonade out of lemons by doing fabulously well and getting a solid GPA.</p>
<p>I can promise you that if you get a strong GPA , you will do every bit as well as attending your dream college and doing well.For the most part, the school that you attend for undergraduate studies DOESN’T MATTER. If there is one thing that I have learned in my many years of associating with thousands of people, it is this one truism: Attitude will determine your altitude in life… Say that give times because it is very true! If you have to, go outside and SCREAM HOW UNFAIR YOUR LIFE WAS… but get over it!</p>
<p>As Shakespeare noted many years ago, " The fault lies not in our stars that we are underlings ,but in ourselves if we are underlings!</p>
<p>just know that no hard work goes wasted. the work ethic you built in high school will stay with you for life.</p>
<p>this thread illustrates why one goes to hs to learn, not to obsess about college and sats. If you learn about life in hs, and gain knowledge not for the sake
of the grade, you will develop a skillset that can help you succeed at whatever college you go to. Go to the cheap school, learn and excel, get a job and work your way up without being in debt. Instaed of paying 7k a year in loans until your 30 or even more, invest that for your retirement. Istead of sat crammage to get into Princeton, which you can’t afford, learn how to get a 4.0 in hs, and then get it at whatever cheap school you can go to.</p>
<h2>Do you really think that BC will yield you a job that pays $20,000 per year more than Rutgers?</h2>
<p>Well in terms of starting salary, probably not</p>
<h2>But in terms of future salary and job placement later on, I think it will</h2>
<p>I have rarely seen interviews asking (or being interested to know) which college I did my degree. They might ask what were my majors (In my interviews I have not asked which college did the candidate attend). </p>
<p>If starting salary does noy yield, IMO, then there is no difference. Because next job is really the affect of what job / experience you have gained in previous job. Certainly the knowledge you gained in your college is useful but not necessarily “from”.</p>
<h2>Churning: I spoke to a gal today that graduated from USC some years back in a professional degree. With 130k in loans. She really buckled down so she could pay off the loans, it came to $1800 a month for 7 years. And her husband had school loans too. Luckily she has a good job. But think about it: 1800 a month for 7 years! Sounds a little crazy to me. No a lot crazy.</h2>
<p>Hi churning, do you think that her good job is a result of going through a “better” college and hence that amount of loan is worth such job. And some one else getting out of a “lesser” college can’t get that job?</p>
<p>LWF wrote “What’s the point of attending a better college then?”</p>
<p>From my observation, the point is that other parents at PTA meetings open up their eyes really wide when they find out, and that the alumni events you get invited to include museum tours guided by the head of the museum instead of football games.</p>
<p>There are lots of good reasons to attend a “better college”, but none of them are worth getting yourself or your family into bone crushing debt. If you can reasonably afford the “better college” and the debt load is manageable, then by all means go there. I was lucky enough to get a full tuition scholarship to a smallish well respected private university and I enjoyed every single minute there, plus made friends for life. Know what? Of the friends I still correspond with, 30 years later, not one of them sent their own kids to that university, and my best friend and college roomate sent her two kids (same as me) to a state u.</p>
<p>Any way, the last finaid letter came yesterday at our house and the decision has now been made for S to attend a state u on scholarship. Partly the private school finaid papers argued against going to the private school. They had a chart that showed how much debt was appropriate based on your earning potential with your degree. The chart topped off with a salary of $100k. The maximum debt load for that degree was $72k, which is $18k a year for 4 years. S did the math and it took less than 3 seconds to say “I can’t afford to go there”.</p>
<p>If I can figure out how to reproduce the chart quickly I’ll post the whole thing, but the bottom line is you can’t borrow more than $72k for college, total, unless you’re going to earn more than $100k a year when you get out.</p>
<p>Go state u!!!</p>
<p>I just wanted to know what you guys thought of this situation: Last year my cousin got into a really good school, but recieved very little money in aid. The school she wanted to attend was like 50,000/yr., and i felt really bad for her b/c alll she ever talked about was going to that school. Her family is very low-income, her mother suffers from MS and cannot work, and her stepfather also is unable to work due to his physical limitations. On top of that, she lives with 6 other people who have to be supported, including a cousin who the family has adopted. When I asked her what she was going to do, she said, “I am going to that school, no matter what. I will work how ever many jobs I need to and eat Ramen noodles every day if I have to.” When I asked her what about her parents, she said “I don’t expect them to pay anything, this is my choice and my decision, and I was going to have to pay for my own tuition anyway.” Now she’s applying for a bunch of scholarships and grants. She’s probably going to end up having to pay $35,000/yr.(unless she receives scholarships/grants), and she still refuses to go to another school! I think it’s crazy, but at the same time kind of admirable in a way-my cousin refuses to let anything get in the way of her dreams, because she really wants to go to a good school and make her parents proud, and support them; and she’s willing to struggle in order to do that. Do you think it’s still selfish/annoying, even though her parents aren’t paying anything?</p>
<p>I don’t think she is selfish or annoying. I think she is very naive about finances and does not have a realistic idea of how detrimental such a debt will be to her future. With annual loans of $35k she will have accrued a debt of $140k by the time she graduates if she pays the interest each year and $165-$170K if she does not pay the interest each year as she goes along. Assuming an interest rate of @ 7% she will be facing loan payments of $1600 to $2000 a month for ten years or $1100 to $1300 a month for 20 years. She will be lucky to be able to support herself let alone support her parents. </p>
<p>It makes me sad to think of a 17-18 year old taking on such a debt. At 17-18 years old it is understandable that a student would not appreciate the long term consequences of the debt. But it is criminal that anyone would lend her such a sum. It is highly unlikeley she will start her working life with a job paying the salary over $100,000+ needed to pay such a monthly debt.</p>
<p>I read a lot about not being able to get into a dream school. How about ANY school? I’ve gotten a hard slap of reality as a parent.</p>
<p>Apparently, if you make more than 50K per year (we’re about 80K), there is NO need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>With two more kids to send to school, I can’t afford $80-$90K over four years to send my child to schools that weren’t even her dream choice.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, state schools, in the state you live, will probably be just fine, but it irks me that if I were only about $25K per year poorer, I’d save $90K!</p>
<p>There is no ‘rolling’ basis for financial aid. It’s everything for those under $50K (which I’m not knocking) and nothing (except loans) for those above that threshhold.</p>
<p>Yes, we have a college fund, but with our modest incomes, it’s about 1/3 of what is needed.</p>
<p>Again, no problem, we’re not promised anything in life, but I wish these schools would stop the LIE of “you’d be surprised how affordable School X can be.”</p>
<p>These schools also call “loans” aid! Loans are not aid, unless your credit is too bad to get a loan otherwise.</p>
<p>
It must depend on the school. If you make about $10000 with minimal assets, the FAFSA EFC for a family of 4 is about $25,000 a year. Some schools are better than others at meeting need. We’ve received very good grant aid at incomes above 80K. It’s important to apply to some “fullneed” schools, along with some merit choices.</p>
<p>The real problem is that EFC doesn’t include loans. Our EFC is 13,000, perhaps because of family size (5), but one school’s ‘aid’ includes $25,000 PER YEAR in loans. Some aid! And that is not an expensive, well relatively so, school.</p>
<p>I saw one article on financial aid recently that said when did loans become aid? If you buy a car, the dealer doesn’t cut the price by giving you a loan.</p>
<p>It’s frustrating because at 50K, we’d qualify for everything, grants, need-based scholarships, etc…at 80K we’re expected to basically pay everything between the 50 and 80K and we have two more kids on the way to college!</p>
<p>Just don’t tell me that a “College X education is more affordable than you think?” I didn’t expect a free ride, but my idea of $13,000 EFC is $13,000 with loans plus my checkbook. Plus, those loans accrue interest, so they aren’t really $25K in loans, more like $30K.</p>
<p>NODad:</p>
<p>Very few colleges meet 100% of full financial need. And, of those that do, some may practice financial enrollment management, by which they offer more grant aid to the top % of their admittees and more loans to the lower end of their admittees. The trick is to find colleges where your kid is in the upper % of the applicant pool, and/or apply to colleges where your child will qualify for merit aid.</p>
<p>vballgirl: I highly doubt any bank will loan much money to an 18-year-old with no job and no credit history and no prospects of paying the money back.</p>
<p>I can’t understand how, in this day and age of information overload, so many parents arrive at the college admissions point and only THEN discover the financial issues. My son is a high school senior, and from the time he was born, I read numerous articles about NOT waiting until your child is a teenager to start planning for college costs. This was pre-Internet, of course, but the information was certainly out there, including scary charts with how much you have to invest each month from birth in order to send your child to a public or private university. </p>
<p>NO ONE should be surprised that many private universities are extremely expensive, and that most colleges will expect families to make significant sacrifices in order to attend them. You can even go to websites and get a ballpark estimate of your EFC within minutes. You will probably not like the numbers you see, but you certainly will get a good idea of how much financial aid your family is likely to receive. Why on earth rely on the blithe assurances of the 20-somethings who lead college admissions tours and information sessions? Why do so many parents assume that the finances won’t be an issue, fail to fully investigate the financial aspects BEFORE their children apply to colleges that they probably cannot afford to attend, and then wring their hands because their children have to forego their dream schools??</p>
<p>I’m just surprised that there is no sliding scale. Until we filled out the FAFSA tester (prior to filling out the FAFSA), we didn’t know what our EFC would be. When it came out at $13K, that was on the higher end of our range, but we were going to make it work between what we had saved and some loans, an extra job, etc…</p>
<p>What did surprise me, and maybe my homework wasn’t thorough enough on this one, was that EFC didn’t include loans, that loans were considered part of the aid, and that almost ALL non-merit based scholarships were need based only for the extremely poor. </p>
<p>Harvard and MIT now have $0 tuition (no loans, nothing) for anyone making less than $80K and a sliding scale up to $150,000 per year.</p>
<p>One school sent us an award letter with $23K per year in scholarship and $7K in 'aid" in the form of government loans. Then there’s our EFC of $13K…but what that means to us is $20K year one, $22K year two, $24K year three and $26K year four.</p>
<p>That’s $92K!</p>
<p>Again, even that doesn’t surprise me, what surprises me is that loans are called ‘aid.’ Heck, I can get a home equity loan, I don’t need that ‘aid.’ I just can’t get three large home equity loans for three kids.</p>
<p>NODad - I am not quite sure why you think families with an income of $50k get a lot of grants. Perhaps at private schools that have large endowments. Not at most schools. A family of 4 with 1 in college and with parent income of $50k will have a FAFSA EFC of 4919 which would not qualify them for any federal grants - just loans and work study. And most public universities do not have their own grants. So maybe at private schools $50k income gets a lot of grants - for many on that income - more loans.</p>
<p>And the main government grant, the Pell grant, *is *on a sliding scale. For an EFC of 0 the Pell is $4731 which is the maximum. As the EFC goes up the Pell grant goes down until the minimum Pell of 890 is awarded for EFCs between 3801 to 4041. Over the EFC of4041 there is no pell grant. And no other government grant. Other government grants such as ACT and SMART also depend on Pell eligibility. To qualify for even the minimum Pell of $890 a family of four would have to have an income of @46,500. And the rest would all be loans and work study just like you.</p>
<p>If you read through the many threads on this subject you will find many many students with very low EFCs (much lower than yours) who are as shocked as you are to find themselves with lots of loans in their financial aid package and maybe minimal grants.</p>
<p>OP - A friend of mine went to a fourth tier state university, one that had practically open admissions, because her family could not afford anything else. Sure, she was disappointed that she could not go to her dream schools after all of her hard work, and life seemed very unfair for a while. But she made the most of her undergraduate years, did very well, and would up with a full ride to Columbia for her PhD. The point of this story is that your dreams have not ended if you cannot go to your dream school. You will find new dreams, and who knows, maybe you will wind up at one of your top choices for graduate school!</p>
<p>Thanks swimscatsmom,</p>
<p>Like I said, I’m a bit surprised because one school doesn’t give our daughter anything but loans and her merit awards. </p>
<p>These schools say, you’ll be surprised how affordable an education here can be, I guess it’s like a car dealer.</p>
<p>Also, I hardly see how loans are ‘aid.’ They’re just big burdens for the future for the family or student or both.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t feel as if I’m owed anything, just some truth in advertising would be nice.</p>
<p>As for the 50K mark, I’ve seen that as the “number” given on many need-based scholarships, so at 80K we need not even apply.</p>
<p>We really never counted on a private school but were encouraged to apply because they can ‘give more’ than out of state publics and because ‘you might be surprised at what you might get.’</p>
<p>I can get a loan, so these schools aren’t helping me at all, except for the Stafford loan, because it doesn’t need to be repaid, nor accrue interest until the student is out of school.</p>
<p>It’s just a slap of reality that will serve me well in two more years when my next child starts the search.</p>