My parents make above 100K a year combined and they were wondering whether or not applying for financial aid is going to help. The private schools I could use financial aid for include USC, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Washington-Seattle. I don’t want to apply if it will hurt my chances or is useless (by useless they mean receiving very little assistance). What do you guys think? Thanks in advance!
Run the net price calculator on each school website to see.
^^^^^Agree, check the NPC for each school.
OP,
Do you need Federal Loans?
All those are need blind so applying for aid doesn’t hurt you. Both JHU and USC promise to meet full need so you would get some institutional aid perhaps, they probably calculate your need differently. UW is not private. If you are OOS, don’t expect aid except your federal loan Of course it is worth it to get some aid, saving thousands of dollars is always worth it.
Without substantial accumulated savings, a family earning only 100k cannot afford a 65k/yr school without aid. There’s no point in NOT applying for aid if you can’t afford the school without it.
How will your parents pay for the school if you’re accepted?? If their income is around $100k, then the schools won’t be affordable.
Do your parents own a business?
I hope you applied to a safety school. Your stats don’t support USC and Hopkins. Even for incomes of $180,000 paying $65,000 per year is not affordable.
If you don’t have a safety, apply now!
Hopefully you’ve applied to your in-state schools (I think the UCs from another thread?)
My son is applying to Hopkins. We make 150K/yr. Most of our savings are in retirement plans or 529 plans. I ran the the net price calculator twice (we have another kid in college so I ran it when both are in college and just one in college). With both in college, it showed a grant of about $35K. With one in college, it showed a grant of about $18K. I too was shocked at those numbers.
Shocked that the grants too low?
No. I did not expect to get any needs based aid. Of course, I didn’t expect college to cost as much as it does now when I began saving in 529 plans 15 years ago. To be honest, I was expecting to get merit based aid but would need to change our college choices for that to happen. It seems our choices are:
- Apply to a not as competitive school and get merit aid.
- Apply to a competitive school and get need-based aid.
- Apply to an in-state public school
- Take out loans to cover any gap (home equity, Parent Plus, etc)
4 is a very bad idea and should be avoided at all costs, ESPECIALLY parent plus loans .
Agree with post #9, we are in a similar situation income wise and FA wise. Also some schools require the FAFSA form to be eligible for any merit aid or scholarships, even ones that don’t consider financial situation. My understanding is that they don’t want applicants and parents not to understand that they might be eligible for need-based aid first, then merit aid.
My son’s merit aid was cut by the amount of his Federal loans, if you believe the NPC and what his college’s FA office said.
“Also some schools require the FAFSA form to be eligible for any merit aid or scholarships, even ones that don’t consider financial situation.”
I didn’t know this. Would FAFSA being required for merit be clearly stated under financial aid section of school websites?
I really haven’t seen it stated online. I was contacted by my D’s school and told to fill out the CSS Profile in order to get the merit aid they promised (after she accepted her admission).
Yes, it should be spelled out that FAFSA is required for merit aid, but many school web pages are not that clear. It is not required at my daughter’s school, but the school waits for FAFSA to be received before posting all the aid, so if the student isn’t going to fill it out, make sure the school knows.