<p>Alamemom,</p>
<p>You’ve been a great resource on the boards. But I feel as if you took my words out of context and certainly I’ve been appreciative of your willingness to “tell the truth” about the realities of financial aid. And certainly I wasn’t citing “broad generalizations” but real live flesh and blood cases.</p>
<p>First - I didn’t say (and don’t think) there is anything “wrong” about the process. My comment was a cautionary tale that the COA calculator - even when using the specific fields from the CSS doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual package a student will receive. Parents going into the next round of fall applications should recognize that and take it into stride. Even plan for it so April numbers aren’t jolting.</p>
<p>Also, I’ve noticed the distress friends of my child are going through (and students on this board as well) when they realize the final number is often as high as $40-50K after Stafford loans. Just as some who posted they got Presidential scholarships, for instance, come to realize that it may replace, not supplement university grants. So helping parents to brace for anything in the range of zero - $60K is advisable. Certainly that is what I did - stated that although we don’t have a high asset base but assumed our financial aid and scholarships would be zero. Therefore anything greater than “zero” would be considered a “gift.” and welcome news.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it isn’t fair to suggest that other parents who were blindsided may have had “significant” assets. At least one school I talked with pointed to the elimination of employee “retirement” contributions as a way to pay for our children’s college. Home equity might be tapped (if the house is not under water) but with more stringent loan rules, many families are shut out of that process as well. That may, in fact, be part of the case for the families I cited. Or it may simply be that a $40,000 loan nets out to about $300 a month if you take it to the full term available and the school saw the figure as manageable. Again, despite the online COA, we adjusted our expectations when the final numbers came back higher and concluded we’d have to take out loans. For other parents, it may be a devastating game changer.</p>
<p>Still, I don’t retract my statement. We’re talking about kids and dreams. Several students on this thread are mourning the loss of a dream because of the high costs to be borne over four years. Either they can’t afford it - or parents are declining to subsidize it. Posting that a school was “generous” and leaving a family with little EFC is fair game, but as it was limited to that single sentence with no context felt a bit off “key.” Certainly that’s some of the offline chatter, according to my D on the FB page where after some students are announcing they can’t enroll while others comment on it by rejoicing that they got a full ride due to low assets and income.</p>
<p>I do know several families who are getting full rides at colleges. I rejoice right there with them. But context and a little Trojan empathy goes a long way when a kid just posted that his/her parents said “no.” </p>
<p>USC is a fabulous university - just an expensive one. If people start the USC process knowing that, it makes the journey a little bit smoother, I think. It did for us.</p>
<p>We’re happy with our outcome, but I can understand how this is not the case for someone else and I’m mourning along with them.</p>
. Go through line-by-line, because sometimes the dollar amount does not change by an item does - like in the previous poster’s case, an outside scholarship might have replaced a bit of the grant (and then appeal to get the grant restored as in the above case, of course 
).</p>