Financial need vs want

bgallo
Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:29:57 +0000

I will be attending the University of Nebraska. They made me a very generous offer, and I am very blessed. When I filled out Yale’s aid calculator, they said we would pay $35,000/yr. The other roughly $15,000 would have been primarily loans, with only about $4,000 in grants.

I’m not trying to say I’m not blessed, to ask for pity, or anything like that. I just feel that people need to know that it isn’t just the economically disadvantaged that can’t afford college.

So maybe we are in the top income quintile, or whatever you want to call it. But we spend frugally: buying clothes at Goodwill, shopping at garage sales, buying generics whenever possible, driving modest cars, etc. While I feel blessed, I have never thought I was rich. But these blessings apparently come with the expectation that my dad should pay for my college, something his parents didn’t do for him, and something he doens’t feel he should have to do for me. So if it weren’t for my very generous offer from UNL, I would be stuck taking out loans just like disadvantaged people who can’t afford college.