Is Tulane worth 100K debt?

fallenchemist
Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:27:08 +0000

No one can give a rough guess or any other kind because the remaining FA is based mostly on your financial circumstances, not your academic merit. How that aid is given to you might be influenced by your academic profile.

So Tulane has a total cost of $60K in round numbers. Let’s say for the sake of this example your EFC is indeed 25K, although that seems high to me for a gross income of $125K and one already in college. That leaves, as you say, the $35K to be awarded in aid. $25K of that is met by the Distinguished Scholar Award, so Tulane would come up with the remaining $10K or close to it. That could be a grant or a combination of grant and loan and maybe work/study, but probably not the last. So while the FA package never contains more merit aid, to answer that question, it can contain grant money that does not have to be repaid. Why is that not the same? Because merit aid is guaranteed for all 4 years, assuming you make the grades, etc. Grant money can change if your family’s financial circumstances change, either direction.

So I am not sure where you come up with $100K in loans. Are you saying that your family cannot pay anything out of the current income, that the entire $25K per year would have to be borrowed? Again, I rather suspect your $25K number is high anyway, but I am no expert in this area. But EFC, whatever the number, is what it seems the family should be able to pay out of current income and assets. While it is often unrealistically high, it shouldn’t be zero either.

So before you paint the worst case scenario and get tense/upset/sad, I strongly suggest your family fill out both the FAFSA and CSS forms (maybe already have with another already in school) and then either wait to see what the Tulane package looks like or set up a time to talk to your financial aid person at Tulane (they are assigned based on last name alphabetically) and get a better understanding how this all works. But that conversation will be meaningless unless they have all your forms.