USC Financial Aid Question

Paying for College
1

I got accepted to USC, which I applied to with QuestBridge RD and is currently my top choice. I am yet to receive my financial aid package as well because they updated my finaid portal with extra requirements.

USC has a policy in which households that make less than $80k will get free tuition. My mom makes less than 15k a year, which makes me think that I should get free tuition, except we have some real estate overseas that have a net value of around $16k. This is what I calculated considering partial ownership and that we are still paying back more than 50% in debt. We also don’t profit off of them through rent. All of this is my FAFSA and I have a -1500 SAI.

Could this disqualify me from aid, if they choose to ignore the fact that our assets are only partially owned + the debt? A lot of people have been saying that USC has been stingy with aid even for low income admits, which is weird since they have a demonstrated need policy.

2

All the ‘less than’ have asset disclaimers.

You might ask for a quick review. Otherwise be patient.

Do you have any affordable admits ?

Congrats on USC. It seems you should be ok in how you explain it but perhaps there’s more to the story ?

3

Yup, the USC free tuition policy requires a household to make less than 80k USD and have typical assets. Which is a really vague statement. I dont think that a net value of 16k USD is a lot but idk what ‘typical assets’ would mean for a low-income family. I called USC and asked how my assets would be calculated into the package but that wasn’t information they could disclose.

Another issue is that appealing once I get my package could potentially reduce what I already have.

4

Typical assets is different at every school but every school says it. You applied via QB so I’d hope you’d be good.

What affordable to you acceotances do you have ?

Only USC can answer you so ask them or wait for them to tell you.

Was the property disclosed in advance - on css ?

5

All you can do right now is wait for your aid package.

Were you accepted to any other CSS Profile schools, and if so what did their aid package look like?

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