Help? I am in a really bad situation

cptofthehouse
Sun, 30 Nov 2014 18:01:44 +0000

Here is the situation as I see. OP applied to UR when family income put hi at a an EFC of about $15K. Rochester does an excellent job in meeting need, and it did for the student. But when the parents made MORE money, the aid was reduced. That’s the way it works with financial aid. THe EFC is likely now about $30K, and the fact of the matter is that hardly any school, if any school at all, is going to give aid until the EFC is met. You gotta pay your EFC before you get penny one of any federal aid, most state aid and most college money as well. Gearmom has summarized the situation well.

Cornell meets full need for transfers but it’s not going to give you much more than Rochester is if, or any more at all. Still gotta pay your EFC. So it works with need based aid. When the need changes, so does the aid, especially when the need goes down.

You can look for some merit awards for transfer students as mentioned above, or look for some low cost schools. There are some schools where the entire cost is around $20K and as a high GPA engineerng transfer, they might kick some money into the mix as merit. You need merit, not financial aid since Rochester is giving as much as most any school would give you in that respect.