<p>Hey everyone,</p>
<p>These past few weeks have been absolutely horrendous - to put it simply, the financial aid award we received from Georgetown was far below what we had expected. My family recently moved to California, and my parents separated/began divorce litigation only a few months after that. To compound the problem, my father was recently laid off, and because his severance package was included in his salary, it gave an artificially high income number for the CSS Profile. My parents are essentially broke, and are saddled with debt that originated from trying to buy a house here in California, which is now going into short-sale. It’s a mess. We had informed them of these circumstances, and our FA adviser assured us that they would be taken into consideration, but in the end, that was not reflective of the result: they calculated our EFC for the year to be roughly around $44,000, which is an astronomical amount of money for us to pay. </p>
<p>Georgetown won’t budge on the amount of aid they’re giving - we’ve done our best to appeal, but the director of FA had essentially said that there is nothing they can do, because the numbers make it seem as if we have far more money than we actually do. Our situation will change next year, because my parents will be officially divorced, and my father’s severance package will not be on the CSS profile. He will still have a few months’ worth of earnings from his previous job on the profile, because they were technically still part of the fiscal year, but that won’t be nearly as bad. We’ve calculated it, and it looks like our EFC will go down to about $28,000, which we can manage. The year after that, the EFC will go down even further, as all of the weird ‘surplus income’ figure are taken out of the equation.</p>
<p>Georgetown SFS (the school to which I was accepted) is my dream, and I’ve wanted to go there for years. In order to go there in the fall, though, I would have to take out almost $35,000 in loans for the first year - this wouldn’t be a sustained pattern, but that is A LOT of debt for only one year. If I were to do that, I would graduate with anywhere from $35,000 to $50,000 in loans. As a last-resort option, we’ve contacted Georgetown and they have told us that it is possible to defer my admission for a year. </p>
<p>I was hoping to get your advice on this. I am really terrified at the thought of having to defer everything. It was never something that I had remotely considered, but we were completely blindsided by the news of our FA package, so it has just recently become a serious option. In my ‘gap year,’ of sorts, I would continue working at my job to raise as much money for tuition as possible, and presumably enroll at the local community college to at least get credits. For me, even considering going to the CC in our area is disappointing - I had been looking forward to going to Georgetown so badly, and I just feel like I’ve failed somehow. I just can’t believe how thoroughly my parents have gotten themselves in debt, and what an enormous mess we got ourselves in after moving. Ugh. </p>
<p>I need to get as much information on gap years at Georgetown as possible, I really want to know if this is viable. First of all, even though the gap year option would be more financially responsible, do you think I should just gulp and take the loans? I would watch my friends graduate and go off to college, and I just feel like it would be weird to be one year older than my future freshman dorm-mate next year. </p>
<p>In addition, would the credits from my local community college even be applicable at Georgetown? I know that they are transferable to the UC system, but I would be a little disappointed if any academic work I did during this time was just sort of ‘lost,’ in the end. I’ll definitely be calling their offices for a definite answer, but I was just wondering if you might have any expertise in this area.</p>
<p>Finally, my parents are urging me to apply to additional colleges, beyond what I did this year, as absolute financial safeties. If I defer my enrollment at Georgetown for a year, are you allowed to apply to other schools? Again, I have every intention of still enrolling at Georgetown (it has always been my top-choice school), but I understand my parents’ concerns, and if possible, would like to follow their advice too. </p>
<p>Thank you so much for reading this long post, I would appreciate any advice you have. Especially on these sorts of ‘gap years’ in general - is it worth it? Will it be beneficial?</p>