How financial aid works

Gardna
Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:34:31 +0000

The good news is that you can probably afford to be on-campus at most in-state universities no matter where you live. The bad news is that it’s unlikely that your EFC will be low enough for you to qualify for any aid from the federal government except for an extremely small Stafford loan (a drop in the bucket compared to what you have and to the cost of attendance at almost any college). You can fill out the FAFSA just to have the option of taking that should you or your parents need that safety option for college expenses, but any of the other means-tested programs (Pell, SEOG, Work Study, Perkins) would be out of reach. State aid programs can sometimes have higher cut offs, but I’m not sure you would be able to get that at any state; the recession is making them cut back quite a bit and providing aid to someone with a six-figure income and (comparatively) massive financial assets might not be affordable to some of the more cash-strapped states.

As has been mentioned above, merit aid (based on your SAT scores, GPA, and other “soft” factors like extracurriculars, essays, and recommendations, varying depending on the school) is your best bet for any money at all, really. You have to search different school websites or this forum in order to find the ones that match up to your qualifications.