Financial aid package at Seton Hall University

cptofthehouse
Wed, 27 Feb 2013 10:20:44 +0000

A true FULL RIDE is when you are given grants for the entire official COA of the college. The term gets used very loosely. A loan is not the same as a grant, not at all. You are just given time to come up with the money, and when a loan is subsidized, you may have no interest while in school or lower than any other interest you can find anywhere.

A Stafford Loan comes from the government and if you get one of those in your package, it doesn’t come from the school. You could get that same loan at any school as long as the cost to you justifies it (you can’t borrow more than COA). However, a lot of schools, and SH seems to fall into this category, packages this loan as part of their financial aid from them. Nope.

The private loan or parent loan should particularly not be packaged as financial aid because the school absolutely has nothing to do with it other than providing cost figures for it. You or your parents may not even be able to get such a loan–you have apply and be approved. You even have to find places to apply many times.

Though Work Study is usually packaged as part of the finanical aid deal, you are not guaranteed those funds either, and you don’t get them unless you earn them and there is no guarantee of the job or hours. It just says that the school will let you work for that much under the program if you can find it.

The problem with getting Stafford Loans and Work study as part of a package and put towards your need, is that you then can’t use it to pay your EFC. I don’t like the way SH puts together fin aid packages because it is not clear what one is getting.