Financial Aid Letter?

johnnycomelately
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:15:41 +0000

I see that one can easily conclude from my earlier post that our decisions were made based on the chat on these forums. I must clarify that reading the forums only identified this as an issue for us and motivated me to respond to this thread and voice my concerns rather than make the decision itself.

While the CC forum has been very informative and relevant - we do understand the dynamics of these forums. Signing up 4 years of your child’s life to any institution is a huge decision and cannot be made on hearsay and unsubstantiated information. Therefore, to make a decision of this magnitude and attributing it solely to this forum and its participants is not only irresponsible but also unfair to the CC community.

Here is a list of issues we debated on before arriving at our decision:


Are we compromising or hurting his academic choices and college options - answer was a clear NO.
This was the most important parameter. So we spent a lot of time polling family, friends and their friends from around the country, in the academia and business circles and used their informed suggestions to come to this conclusion.
Should we add a new variable that could potentially ruin his college experience - answer was NO.
Although we recognized the peer issue only from the forums, we did a lot of research online as well. As everyone else have stated here, we did find out that financial aid is NOT a matter that is commonly discussed on campuses. We just decided that we did not want to add another distraction, thats all. This aspect of financial need was not even in our discussions, until of course, we chanced upon these discussions on the forums.
Can we ( parents ) handle the additional debt - answer was WE CAN and WE MUST - but only if absolutely required and is conditional in that - we expect our son to honor his part of the bargain - and that is to stay focussed on education, stay involved in community and develop into a responsible and contributing adult. We stop our support at the first sign that he has wavered.
Will this decision benefit someone else equally deserving - answer was YES ( that is what I meant by eye opener) - until we started on the forums, we were only thinking about ourselves, immersed in our own issues, choices and options - but we quickly found how so many others are also hurting badly and that our decision might possibly help others.
How important are peer groups and life outside the classroom v/s classroom experience - Equally, if not more important.


As you can see, like everyone else here, we too have put in a lot of effort and research into our decisions. And we hope that everything will work out as planned. Most of the other common elements like academics, athletics, community service, research opportunities, prestige, institutional commitment to education etc were pretty much the same in our choices.

Thank you all for your sincere responses. I thought I have answered to all of them in as much detail as I could.

May 1st is still 9 days away and anything can change - I dont know if I would be glad or sad after May 1st - but I do know that we gave it our best, as always :-)

One thing I must add here is that I am totally impressed by the college admissions process. For students aspiring towards great education, tt starts in the Freshman year of High school and ends 4 years later in their senior years. As parents you will agree that this process brings out what is best in them. I am inspired by the hard work and sincere involvement of the admissions officers in many of these colleges - hats off to them - absolutely. They have made an impossible job easy for the faculty - getting the best possible mix of students into their classes. It is now up to the faculty and the institutions to take each of these amazing students and bring out the unique gems in each of them. I can see the pride and the pain in all the parents - and their children. Every one of the parents deserve nothing less than the very best for their children. I hope that you all get exactly that and nothing less. Good Luck.