Estimated aid offer vs. actual aid offer, for current students

lizziedoll456
Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:28:52 +0000

Three questions:
-For those of you at the school already, how similar were your offers for financial aid?
-If there’s a significant change in your 2011 income vs your 2010 income, how will that affect things? Since 2010 is what the estimate is on, and both are taken into account for the actual.
-also, is your noncustodial stepparent’s money taken into account?

I’m really worried to get my estimated financial aid offer tomorrow, because it will make or break me going to Emory. I have a really unique situation with my dad (non custodial parent); his income is so weird that there’s no telling how they’ll address it.
He is a government worker and has been going overseas to work for 6 months out of the year for the last couple of years. So, while his BASE salary, what he gets paid at home at his normal job, is 50k, for the last 3 years or so there’s been 10-40k NON-normal extra income from danger pay and overtime. If he applied for a loan at a bank, they wouldn’t look at that income since it’s not guaranteed, but I don’t know how Emory will see it.
Naturally, to make things difficult, the 2010 tax returns listed on the CSS show his income to be the highest it’s ever been (the one year he went to Afghanistan and got a lot of danger pay). So while my estimate will be off of my mom making 20k in 2010 and my dad making 90k/my stepmom making 50k, the 2011 tax returns show my mom making 12k a year (FAFSA shows this as well), my dad making 75k from going to Kuwait/my stepmom making 45k (she quit her job in October due to stress-related illness and wont be returning - soon to file for disability). That’s like nearly a 30k difference in income right there.
Dad won’t be going back overseas, so next year when I re-apply, he will be here all year so it’ll just be 50k and none from my stepmom, and my mom’s probably wont be over 20k if she does find a job. So, as you can see, it’s all over the place. I have no idea how to stress this to financial aid officers if my estimate is really high tomorrow.

It’s starting to feel like getting accepted was the easy part lol.

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