<p>I agree it is depressing, but virtually all state universities are on life-support financially. Programs are being cut, faculty losing their jobs. It’s not like they’re trying to make life miserable for students and families just for the heck of it. It certainly isn’t a personal insult, it’s just financial reality. Also the financial responsibility of public universities has to be to their own in-state students first. It’s the very definition of “state university”. They do that by keeping the prices lower for in-state students, even when they don’t have the resources to give even them viable financial aid awards.</p>
<p>At public universities a student may feel like “why accept me if I can’t go?” – but colleges don’t make that judgement for you. If you are someone they choose to admit for academic reasons or because you have a strong overall application and they feel you’re someone who would benefit by being there, they’ll admit you. They don’t discriminate based on who appears to have the money to attend and who doesn’t – it’s hard to even know that. One lower income student may have a generous grandma, the college has no way of knowing that, but surely we wouldn’t want to see that student rejected based only a limited snapshot of his parent’s financial situation given by the FAFSA. That does mean, though, that a lot of students will be admitted, but then can’t make the end meet financially and won’t end up attending.</p>
<p>College is just really horrendously expensive. I think it’s hard to appreciate just how expensive it is until you are dealing with it directly. I do volunteer advising at the local high school helping kids out with the whole college application and financial aid process, so I see kids and families dealing with the shock of this all the time.</p>