<p>I didn’t get any aid from colleges. My parents made no money this year, but they made $100,000 last year (which we used to pay off this year’s small business debt). We’ve got about $400,000 in assets, which I assume is the reason for the whole no-aid thing. But that money can’t be used for college, because it’s needed for the aforementioned failing business. What am I gonna do?</p>
<p>Hopefully you have a good school that has accepted you that your family can afford and you can attend that was part of your original planning. The colleges and universities expect that current college costs will be paid in large part from savings and a pecentage of current income. If that fails, then the PLUS loans for parents come into play. Ultimately if your parents are telling you they cannot afford a particular college…they probably can’t and you need to move on. My son is the “best” golfer, but he doen’t have the most expensive set of clubs…the ones he has serve him well. He’d like a set of those expensive clubs and sometimes he thinks he deserves them (because he is the best) but not going to happen. You may think this is a silly analogy…but it’s not. If you are good at something you will be good (hopefully) wherever you land.</p>
<p>You can appeal to colleges, explaining the special circumstances; sometimes it helps.</p>
<p>Talk to the FA department, explain your situation, and send them any pertinent information they ask you for. They might reconsider their offer.</p>
<p>BTW, are you talking about colleges that promise to cover full need?</p>
<p>This poster has posted on this subject before and I fear she scares people. Sometimes she mentions the assets, other times she mentions that the colleges unfairly added back in some of the ‘losses’ of her parent’s business. Bottom line in my opinion is these are issue that concern the family and their financial situation and priorities as opposed to that generous need based aid colleges unfairly don’t meet need as claimed.</p>
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<p>There is an expectation that parents uses some of these assets to pay toward their child’s expectation. Parents have decided that they need the $$ for their business and not their child’s education. Sounds like the decision of the tribal counsel (her parents) is final and she needs to go where the parents are willing to pay or where she can get a full ride.</p>
<p>Ah, hopefully she put a good list together going into the process and applied somewhere she’s willing to go and where her parents are willing to pay. Full ride sounds pretty good to me as a parent, and I’m sure sounds pretty good to her parents in these economic times. I haven’t had time to go back and figure the whole story out or who she’s disappointed about. At the very least, if she’s multiple posting about this it’s a warning shot to soon to be applicants to think their applications through carefully and make sure they have a financial safety that they are willing to attend so I suppose “no harm no foul.”</p>
<p>The harm is in leading other posters to believe that colleges lie about their aid policies and put phony calculators on the web site as the OP has claimed in other posts. There is wonderful aid at many high endowment colleges, but if your family has assets they are expected to contribute.</p>
<p>The OP got a $25K per year merit scholarship at NYU but decided to go to the University of Illinois which obviously gave her a better deal.</p>
<p>Ah, that is rash given the fact that she identifies herself as “upper middle class.” She got some great aid from NYU as supposedly the are not loose with their grants. Also Illinois is a great school so she’ll be fine. Thanks for saving me the time and the search.</p>
<p>Disappointed with Dartmouth, as per another thread, which gave her no aid at all.</p>
<p>Glad that she was smart enough to have some financial safeties lined up.</p>