No. An asset’s market value is determined by the market. Any lien against the asset or money owed will not affect the market value.
With $160,000 or so in family income, I would not say you are “low income”. Even with two in college, you would not qualify for a Pell Grant, for example.
Your parents are divorced. Your family has home equity.
Frankly, this isn’t a financial picture that is a clean one in terms of anticipating need based aid awards.
Sure…go ahead and apply…but please don’t guilt your parents into paying for Columbia if the school doesn’t offer you sufficient need based aid.
You also have a sibling applying to college at the same time. You say your family can pay $40,000-$60,000 a year for you…what about your sibling? Or are you expecting your parents to provide 25-30% of their income for your college expenses alone? What if your sibling also needs college funding?
Or are you saying they will pay $40k to $60k for each of you…per year…on $160,000 income…plus pay their college loans back?
Please take a personal finances course.
This is over 4 years, right? So they can pay $10-15k/year? If that’s true, Columbia won’t be affordable.
High income parents who will pay $10-15k per year would mean that your options would be mainly these:
A. Commuting to a low cost in-state public university.
B. Colleges that award large (full tuition or more) merit scholarships.
That $40,000 to $60,000 your parents can pay is for all four years total? If so, how will Columbia be affordable?
OP should talk to parents, both of them, and find out what they are willing and able to pay if no financial, no merit money is forthcoming. @thumper1 is absolutely correct, that this is not a clean situation
However, financial aid packages can vary widely. One of kid’s fiancée got an aid package of $30k more from Duke than from Amherst , with numbers all over the place in between. She, too, had complexities, a non custodial parent due to divorce, property, a family business, and a sibling in college at a state school. All of those factors were evaluated differently by the schools. Then, there was merit thrown into the mix.
Where the disadvantage with ED comes into play, is that you cannot compare financial aid offers and negotiate. Yes, you can negotiate , showing one school what a like School offers in aid, which was what this young woman did, and did get a reassessment from Amherst. Had she applied ED to Amherst, she would have had to take it or leave it, since she would not have had Duke’s fin aid package in hand.