<p>No offense but I find this to be rather hard to wrap my mind around this without more clarification. </p>
<p>If your mom is the breadwinner and she’s been unemployed for 2 years, how is it that your parents have high income? Do they somehow have sky high income from capital gains or a ton of money saved up? </p>
<p>If your parents’ income is truly very low (as would normally be the case if the breadwinner is unemployed) I find it hard to believe that Duke would make you pay full price given that you’ll have a sibling in college concurrently. </p>
<p>So taking what you said about your situation at face value, did your parents fill out the FAFSA and CSS Profile correctly? </p>
<p>Of course an appeals process exists but it would really only be of value if you can show that your situation has changed drastically since the time you filled out your FA paperwork or that you made an error on the paperwork which significantly impacted your FA calculations. </p>
<p>I don’t know anything about raising money through wealthy alumni and I really can’t imagine how you would go about doing that, but there are some scholarships available. Unfortunately for most of them you should already have applied or gotten the news. Another route is to go ROTC. You’d need to make a service commitment for after you graduate (deferable I think if you go postgraduate) but you get full tuition scholarship, textbook fees, and a monthly stipend which may be able to cover your room/board. I have a few friends who paid their way through Duke that way and a few right now in med school who’s doing the same.</p>