Financial Aid for Middle Class

thesmartazz
Fri, 26 Aug 2005 01:20:56 +0000

I also don’t feel like talking about my family’s specific financial circumstances, but here’s some background. I am a student on financial aid, and my family would be classified as middle/upper-middle class, I guess. While the aid is never enough (heh), I feel that it is generally fair for most students. You can maximize your leverage by applying to decent number of schools so that you can compare financial aid packages. For example, I was going to major in biomedical engineering and was looking seriously at Johns Hopkins (#1 for undergrad BME, etc.) until I got their financial aid package, which was quite lackluster. If something like this were to happen to you, you can always call the financial aid dept. up on the phone and tell them that you get a better package from a peer institution, etc. They’ll usually match another school’s fin. aid package if it’s reasonable.