<p>“More harm than good” is a matter of opinion that I, for one, do not share. You must assume that none of us are experts unless stated otherwise; many of us do have some experience, and some have close relationships with schools.</p>
<p>calmom:</p>
<p>As you know, I did not apply for finaid, so I have not tried to figure out how much a family might be thought to be worth.</p>
<p>Suppose the family has an income of $130k and also owns property worth $1million. If there is no mortgage on the property, the family can be estimated to be able to borrow on equity. Perhaps enough to cover the $28k finaid package it is not receiving.
Suppose the property is a four apartment rental and generates $2500 per apartment, or $60k per year, then the income is no longer $130k but $190, unless the rental income was already counted in the $130k. Still, the family presumably could borrow against the rental property, no?
This makes better sense to me of the gap between what Penn posted on its website and what the student “got.” Unless I’m wrong.</p>
<p>Mummom: No one is giving advice here. We’re trying to understand the system.</p>
<p>Listen everybody, can we just accept a weeee bit of common sense here ?</p>
<p>Colleges trade easier admissions thresholds in return for full payment;
The college does not care if the full payment came from a lender or from inside a mattress. So long as the college, through due diligence, has found the funds to attend through any of grants, loans work-study, and EFC exist, the matter of payment ability is resolved. Resolved, as in clarified.</p>
<p>It really does follow that it is illogical to conclude that the college will, after admitting a student ED, then give further options and rights to one group who borrow money, compared to the group that does not.</p>
<p>^ This does not jive with what Penn says on its website:
</p>
<p>Sorry marite. While “trying to understand the system” erroneous statements are thrown out as fact. If we have parents out there who still do not understand “100% of need,” then it’s quite feasible that we have parents reading this who take these statements at face value (i.e. I earn $70k so I can get, or should get, a $28,000 ballpark FA award at Penn!), when in fact there is absolutely no way of knowing what one’s award will be until one completes one’s personal FAFSA and the CSS, submits them to the college, and sees what the college comes up with.</p>
<p>I think you read too much into certain posts, mummom.</p>
<p>I suspect that calmom was using her very own personal experience to make her case because so many posters were adamant that colleges meet “100% of full need.” That does not mean that her personal experience can be extrapolated by other families. Anyone who believes so is misreading her post.</p>
<p>I also think that when it comes to important issues like finances, one should not rely on whatever one reads on chatboards. One can use the information as a starting point, but it needs to be verified by going to the source, in this case the college websites and financial officers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I would say the parents could make an educated guess based on information about how colleges value certain assets, but in general the wide variation we’ve seen in financial aid really does come down to the colleges’ “coming up” with their version of “meets 100% of need”. Which again supports the point that those who apply ED in good faith might very well find that the financial award offered is not viable for their particular situation, and thus can reasonably take the escape clause that is explicit in all the quoted agreements that have been posted on this thread.</p>
<p>Ah, true, marite, and I would not be concerned had not so many posters on this thread “attested” to calmom’s expertise in FA matters. She made two statements that stuck out to me and which I took issue with. “The average family making $120-$140 with one child does not get FA awards” is untrue. I took that to mean that she was speaking generally. Perhaps she was referring to Penn only. In the first case she is wrong, as I know from personal experience. In the second, she has no way of knowing. She is not an FA officer at Penn.</p>
<p>As to the $70k, $28,000 award statement, she has no way of knowing that. She cannot in any way “attest” to it. It is misinformation pure and simple. If one is going to offer information, if not advice, it should at least be connected in some way to the truth; otherwise, don’t offer it, because it just MAY do more harm than good.</p>
<p>Mummom:</p>
<p>Again, it’s a matter of reading, or perhaps wording. “The average family making $120-$140 with one child does not get FA awards.” I could be wrong, but I think she was not trying to generalize here, but providing a corrective to some generalizations and modifying some of the information provided on colleges’ websites.</p>
<p>Anyway, I did not think she was providing advice.</p>
<p>No, she was not providing advice, but in this case putting forth a statement as fact.</p>
<p>Marite, not all families are in a position to borrow. Lenders look at debt to income ratio – I would not qualify to touch the equity in my home for that reason. I used the example of a retired couple living off of rental income because of the long-term issues they might face if they encumbered their property beyond their ability to pay – essentially in that situation, they are being asked to raid their retirement funds, because their income property IS their retirement. </p>
<p>What about people who just have bad credit? Maybe they’d like to borrow, but they’ve gone through bad times in the recent past and simply don’t qualify. The income property could easily have been acquired by inheritance rather than purchased – you may be looking at people who have very newly acquired - and unliquid - “wealth”. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that they should get financial aid – I’m saying that there are a lot of people who aren’t eligible even though colleges like Penn can put up cute little charts and graphs showing where they stand. I can count at least 5 separate issues in my own financial situation that makes it very difficult to predict my financial aid – colleges might treat each of these factors differently, and some of these factors could get treated differently by the same college from one year to the next. Additionally, the year my daughter applied to college, there was a 6th factor in my case – my son was still a dependent for FAFSA purposes and I didn’t know whether or not he would be in college at the same time. (He had been out of school for several years but talking about returning, and did in fact return).</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the subject at hand is how predictable an ED award might be – NOT whether the system is fair or not. We all might caution about the risks – but what about the student who has his heart set on the ED school, but is otherwise quite willing to attend an in-state public? Why does a student have to be looking at dozens of private colleges? Maybe an individual just has dream school + safeties, and wants the best shot possible of getting into the dream school – and no way of knowing what sort of aid they may get unless and until admitted.</p>
<p>If she used her personal experience, isn’t that a fact?</p>
<p>You sound like you really are after calmom! Take a chill pill.</p>
<p>calmom:</p>
<p>thanks. Yes, the picture is way more complicated than the websites would suggest.What bothers me most, perhaps, is the very short window for families to engage in discussions with finaid officers. For example, the family with bad credit would need to provide this information in order to stand a chance to receive more finaid. The financial information provided in November would not include this important tidbit. Between Dec. 15 and Jan. 1, there is not a whole lot of time to assemble information and discuss it with finaid officers, especially with all the holidays.</p>
<p>Marite, a factor such as bad credit would probably not be taken into consideration - but that would provide some explanation as to why the college’s view of what was adequate or made attendance “possible” is very different than what the family’s is. However, you are right that there are SOME factors that might result in a change of the award, and a limited time frame for that discussion. It took me a lot of years to figure out the best way to approach financial aid officers and to negotiate aid – and I’m still learning (I blew it in 2008, did much better for 2009 – and that was simply the mistake of not asking to talk to the right person) – and I’ve got a legal background. </p>
<p>But the financial aid people do this for a living - I’m sure most of them know how to get to the heart of things pretty quickly in a discussion with a family.</p>
<p>The main point is that there are some good reasons why the college and family might not be able to come to terms on financial aid --and that the ED process always lets a person walk away for financial reasons.</p>
<p>I have been reading this thread and not really participating that much…but I did want to take the chance to thank Calmom for her reasoned and helpful contributions. She has been there and done that with financial aid and understands from personal experience that it can be a stressful and seemingly serendipitous experience. </p>
<p>And congrats to Calmom for being DONE with that particular experience after this semester!!! :)</p>
<p>
I do have more info about all of this from a mod, and suffice it to say that apparently there is a lot more to this whole issue than meets the eye. I’ll post no more about it here, though.</p>
<p>
Thumper, there are others of us who also feel this way, but also those who admire the OP for finding a supposed “loophole” and insist that there is no ethical issue because of the big bad colleges who have all the advantages. Students like OP are victims of the big bad system, and get to walk away from commitments, dontcha know? Those of us who disagree have OUR ethics questioned. </p>
<p>EricLG:</p>
<p>
And that is exactly what is being concluded by some (many?) on this thread, and it doesn’t seem to bother many. One student was described whose parents supposedly made up some changed financial circumstance so he could get out of an ED agreement a few years back. He “drove a bulldozer through ED.” People seemed to think he was unethical. Yet the OP is not acting in an unethical way, despite some striking similarities between the two that at least some of us see. </p>
<p>I can only conclude that it’s no wonder there is cheating and dishonesty going on at so many levels today. Integrity only matters to some people. This is the same sort of thinking that allows for the increased incidences of people writing application essays for students (including editing so much that it doesn’t seem as if it is really the student’s own work anymore), cheating on the standardized tests (posts about how to do this!), people positioning their kids in ECs, kids starting clubs on paper only so they look like leaders, etc. I’d love to see if some of our posters have had (or now will have!) kids who will apply ED because they think there is nothing wrong with getting out of it willy-nilly. I hope students aren’t reading this thread and learning about the loopholes, thinking that they can use them with no repercussions. </p>
<p>I said it once, and I will say it again – if my child had applied ED to UPenn and/or EA to MIT, I would have notified the MIT admissions office about the OP. As it is, I’ve been PM’d that someone has done just that. : - ) If she’s done nothing wrong, let the colleges decide that. </p>
<p>And now the thread is completely off-topic as the self-proclaimed finaid gurus attempt to explain financial aid. It’s not as simple as they seem to think. Too bad OP doesn’t lay out her dire financial circumstances for them to examine. LOL – that would have been interesting!</p>
<p>Deja, "</p>
<p>Early April came around, and the privates sent their finaid awards within days of each other. They were not what we expected. I sent a finaid appeal to S2’s first-choice college, and they gave him more money. I could have sent that appeal to all of them, but I didn’t want to tie up their finaid officers. We only asked the top-choice school. We still didn’t feel comfortable with the amount offered by Top Choice School."</p>
<p>Deja, and this was an ethical decision?</p>
<p>vballmom said:
</p>
<p>I know this. But parents/students who use online calculators will get a ballpark figure. Yes, it could be off by thousands. In this case, it appears as though this family’s EFC must be pretty high, something they would have learned by using an online calculator. There are some circumstances where the FAFSA number and the CSS number will be vastly different (high home equity, noncustodial parent, etc.), so in that case this family might be deceived by their FAFSA number. But in many instances, the FAFSA EFC will give a family some inkling of what to expect.</p>
<p>Based on just our income and Penn’s charts, I might assume that my family would get aid from Penn. But I ran our numbers through lots of calculators, including the one on the Princeton website, and I knew we wouldn’t get a penny.</p>
<p>Deja-- I’m glad you have resolved your issues with the OP and that you are satisfied that she has been reported to the proper authorities and that you are "right’ and she is a bad, bad, bad person. I hope you feel vindicated.</p>
<p>I resent your implication that the rest of us who are really only interested in the availability of the ED route to the less wealthy and the whole financial aid concept and just some general misconceptions some people might have about what certain financial aid terms might mean to kids and less educated parents are somehow advocating unethical or morally ambiguous behavior.</p>
<p>I find this really offensive, as someone who would never have to personally even worry about this question in the life of my kids, and as someone who is morally and ethically very sound. So, good luck to you, but please attempt to refrain from impugning the motives of the interested posters on this thread.</p>