<p>Hey guys,
I was admitted to the Pomona College class of 2014! Whoo! However, the financial aid offer they provided is far from sufficient to cover our needs. Their offer was $30,454 out of a total CoA of $54,180, leaving almost $24,000. My family’s income is between $80,000 to $90,000, but my parents have a lot of assets in the form of extra real estate which they’ve saved for retirement. I’ve heard that Pomona is quite generous in reviews of financial aid, but to be competitive with another college I got into, it would need to increase its offer by $12,000. If I request a review, should I consider this kind of increase even remotely possible, or should I just give up?</p>
<p>Also, is Pomona the type of college that would consider the offers of other colleges in financial aid reviews, or should I not mention other colleges at all?</p>
<p>Congratulations!
Here are some things to think about…</p>
<p>A consideration is how long will it take you to get your degree at another school. My younger son is at Pomona and older son
is graduating from a private university in Oregon. Older son’s friends who are going to UCs and state schools still have a minimum of three semesters to go to graduate. He is done paying tuition and has a two year commitment to Teach for America, so he will be making money soon.</p>
<p>Second son has had a great experience with everything at Pomona. I
don’t think that Pomona can bargain, but there is a form you can fill out to petition your financial aid. I don’t think it would be processed in time for you not to lose out on deposit money though. Good luck with your decision!</p>
<p>P.S. The $54,000 is including everything–including travel and books.
You can be thrifty in many ways to save money–not travel
as much, buy books on-line, not go out very often. Sometimes
if they give you too much, you end up paying taxes on it anyway.
Second son had to claim extra money from Pomona for taxes since it covered tuition and part of living expenses.</p>
<p>At MSU, I would be able to enter as a junior due to AP credit, so the amount of time necessary to graduate is not a concern. Plus, as an Honors College student, I have smaller sections and can get around a lot of prerequisites.</p>
<p>I think that because your parents have a lot of assets in the form of real estate that they have saved for retirement, your financial aid offer may not be as high as you expected. You can certainly ask them for a review, as the financial aid office is great and will usually try to accommodate you. Pomona loves all of their admitted students and wants to do anything they can for them to come. However, if it’s just not financially viable for you to attend Pomona (it doesn’t really seem like it would be too much of a financial burden with those raw numbers, though, and of course I don’t know any other details), then you should just choose another school.</p>
<p>Pomona is unusually generous about shielding the value of your primary residence when calculating FA. If your family has other real estate, it’s the equivalent of money in the bank in the eyes of any financial aid officer. You would be expected to use some of these assets to pay for college. There are actually few people who can pay their full contribution from income alone. </p>
<p>My take on your rough numbers is that Pomona is being really generous with you. For comparison purposes, my D’s award seems very fair to me, but we are still going to be paying about 65% of our gross annual income to pay for 2 kids in college. And the lion’s share of that will go to Pomona. To us, it’s worth it though.</p>
<p>Just a word of advice… I’d push for the financial aid now. It’ll be harder to get later when they know they have you. If you have an equally good school to go to, be ballsy about what you want financial-aid-wise. Don’t wait till you get here. The people who work in our financial office are ******bags. They won’t do you any favors once you’re here.</p>
<p>Other than the not-friendlyness of our financial aid people, Pomona is a great place. I’d say that if you’re in you should come. Smart people. Nice environment. Teachers will all know your name. Pretty good grade inflation… lots of subsidized stuff… etc. etc. etc.</p>
<p>Oh yea… .and we wear flip flops all the time. Take that Harvard :P</p>
<p>Pretty generous “******bags” if you ask me. Or any of the other 800 or so students here who are very happy with their financial aid packages - for all four years.</p>
<p>you can ask them maybe to match it as long as the other school is on par with pomona (AKA only ivies/top liberal arts colleges), not you state university where you get merit scholarships and the like</p>
<p>So what it looks like is that my parents have an appropriate amount of assets, just not in the right places…
Anyway, we called their FA office and they’ll get back to us by Tuesday or Wednesday with their final offer!</p>
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<p>Nah, they’re nice people. It’s just that I wish they understood my situation better - which of course is kind of unrealistic, but I can still wish it, right? :P</p>
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<p>Well, of course! I’m not going to enroll and then walk up and be like, “Yo, ya wanna give me some money?”</p>
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<p>Well, I got not-so-great financial aid everywhere. I got a $15,000 merit scholarship from Grinnell, but as a result they took $15,000 off my need-based aid, so I was left thinking what the point of merit aid was. Maybe if I just showed them the letter for the merit scholarship, they might reconsider…and Grinnell is pretty good, so they might consider it a peer institution. We casually mentioned MSU’s full ride, but I don’t know if that would change anything. Like most other colleges, they don’t seem to match offers - their appeals are mostly based on changed family circumstances.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’d be content with MSU, but I just want to see if Pomona is feasible before crossing it out entirely because I really do love it a lot!</p>