Help with George Washington Aid

Skipper18542
Thu, 12 Jul 2018 04:57:01 +0000

I am happy yet have mixed feelings about the email I got from George Washington University yesterday. I just finished my freshman year of college and I was looking to enter GWU as a sophomore in the fall of 2018. I was accepted into the college, but only sort of. I was told that there was no room in the Fall of 2018 class but that they wanted me to attend regardless so that they would give me 100% guaranteed admission for the Spring 2019 semester.

I was so delighted to hear this news because it is truly an honor that they went out of their way to make room for me even before applications for Spring 2019 opened up. On the other hand, came the poison pill. I would not be allowed to look at my financial aid package until December when I was “officially accepted.”

This might not bother the average person, but it poses a serious problem for me. I am an American student who has done his education in the United States, but his parents live abroad, hence I am the only member of my entire family who lives in the United States. I didn’t want to live in Latin America so I decided to make my life work up here all by myself. However, the problem I face is the following:

My rent contract is set to expire on August 9th of this year. This means that if I was to take GW’s offer I would have to find a place to stay for another 6 months before the spring semester started. However, I am not rich to say it kindly. I have an EFC of 0 on my FAFSA and the assets that we have might as well be $0 as we don’t really own anything. The only things that my family owns are a small house in South America, an old used car and that is it really. Not to mention that they only help that they could possible give me is a few hundred dollars a month simply because inflation in South America is so terrible when you covert it to dollars. So, for all practical purposes I am left to pay for anything I need by myself of through loans. However, after having read other posts here as well as checking their estimate calculator, I am afraid that even with an EFC of 0, if I have to go there I will still need to borrow tens of thousands of dollars a year. Not to mention that I will had to move out of my place and completely restructure my life for six months in terms of scheduling and work for something that I might not even be able to afford and hence not be able to do.

On the other hand, if I simply chose to go to UCLA (I live in California) after another year at my college I could get my entire tuition taken care of at no cost because of my EFC of 0 and a CalGrant would cover most of the rest of the costs for the two years that I would be there, meaning I would incur little to no debt going to college. However, as a student studying politics, DC is clearly a better option in terms of future careers.

My question to you all is, would you risk it? Would you risk taking the risk and waiting for GW and then taking it no matter what they offer you in terms of aid, or you would focus on attending UCLA? I spoke with a UCLA rep at my school as well as my counselor. Thanks to the honors classes I am taking and my major not really being one that people are killing to apply for, my chances of getting into the the college go WAY up to around 79% which is basically guaranteed acceptance to one of the best schools in the world. I simply do not know what to do. One is the center of world politics and the other one saves me (potentially) tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

What would you do guys? Thank you so much for any advice that you give. I didn’t know who to ask or where to ask so I just assumed that someone here might be able to help me. Thank you.