Who Really Gets the Most College Financial Aid?

Class disparity in student aid

I came from a lower middle class family and was accepted into a well known college in Ohio. I had to do work study, use student loans, and every other resource possibly to pay for 1 year-there was a student in the next dorm living in a single room, did no work study, but smoked & drank a lot and partied S-S every week! Very well off family, but she rec'd a presidential, and merit grant! Go figure??? I was in the top 10 of my class-this chick said she had been taking her exams while "high" since 10th grade-I on the other hand had worked since I was 14! How is this fair----the US dept. of Ed. needs to be re-done...some know how to work the system, and others do not...By the way, the "rich" girl was white, and I am not-so, by standards mentioned in other comments, I should have been educatede for free right??? Wrong-didn't happpen for me!

College

Wow. It seems like a lot of people on here suffer from "oppressed white man syndrome". If you listen to some of you, all a minority has to do is just have passing grades and they can get into any school they want. But, on the other hand white students with a 4.0 avg. can't get any help at all. I read a few posts where parents said that their child took honors classes and had a 4.0 grade point average but got no schoarships or any kind of financial assistance. I find that hard to believe considering all of the kids in the top ten of my graduating class got some kind of academic scholarship. I am from a small, mostly white town in East Texas.

There are also a few people on here that are/were in the military that are saying they can't afford to send their kids to college. It varies from state to state ,but if you have any kind of service-conneced disability usually your children can go to college for free or at a reduced rate. Also, if you're still on active duty any un-married children 21 and under can go to college for free. Veterans even can get loans and grants that others can't get. If you are a military veteran/retiree there are mmany options and avenues that you can go through to put your children through college. In Texas they have the Hazlewood Act that provides qualified veterans, spouses, and children with an education benefit of up to 150 hours of tuition and fee exemptions at state supported colleges or universities. That is the main reason why I plan on moving back to Texas from Australia in the near future. I am sure they have similar programs in other states.So in my opinion for any veteran to get on here and say that they can't afford to send their kids to college is false.

School Loans....

Very sad indeed. I'm 50k in debt with a 16.75/hour job. How can I pay this off and buy a house at the same time. I can't. Thanks America. I can now live my american dream in debt.

collgeg education

I am commenting on the lack of help,support allowed for college students and the income cut offs to be able to qualify for student Finachial aid etc. I am a current college student of sanford brown college in middleburge heights, oh. I have a learning disability and find it hard to keep my bills paid and try to concentrate of my studies. I also tried the work study program to work for. I found it helpful being able to earn and learn on the job in the field i was going for. That only lasts so long how do you get through the rest of my academics. I have also liiked into merit scholorships for me and my daughters. I have two. One is 17 a senior in high school going to college while being in high school. excellent. she gets a head start. Because the income her father and step mother make she will probably not qualify for much finacial aid. We are sure that because of her grades she will be able to recieve a pretty good scholorship. She wants to go to ohio university and live in the doorms. (Be her own person) If she could use my and my husband's income (her stepdad) she can get more finacial aid help. Not that i like making such a low income. But it would benifit her. I know if we thought it through everyone would realize that our children are our future. I don't want my children to strugglle like I did through there child hood. In my opinion a good education starting from the begining (freshley out of high school) going directly to collge is the best) That is what my daughters want also. I think we have to make it happen for them. For the opportunity to be there for them. Not wait!!! 1-27-2009

An unfair deal

I think that too many people are allowing categories to carry their arguments here. I feel like the biggest problem with financial aid in this country is just that... everyone gets put into a category and no one takes the time to look at a situation personally.

I graduated from high school in the top 5% of my class, had tons of extracurriculars and leadership positions, the whole 9 yards. My parents are middle class earners and my older brother was also in college. Because my parents made too much money, neither he nor I EVER got a federal grant (and I DO NOT consider loans financial aid... you have to pay that back... duh!)

I did get a nice financial aid package from my school, but it still left about $18,000/year (in JUST tuition) to come out of my pocket. I asked my financial aid office MANY times for more aid and they simply told me again and again that I could "always take out private loans." My parents did not pay for my college, and I worked 30 hours a week to pay my own bills and living expenses in addition to going to school full time, until I was diagnosed with cancer and had to stop working for over a year. Additionally, because I was on a medical leave of absence, my federal loan grace periods began (so when I graduated, I had to start repayment within 3 months instead of 9). When I reentered school, I didn't get any extra aid as a "nonconventional student" who had taken time out.

I continually searched and applied for scholarships (but never won any) and have graduated with student loans in excess of $100,000. And no, I'm not going on to be a doctor... Who knows if I'll ever be able to buy a house? So to Priscilla in TX: don't make a glib remark to just get a part time job and expect everything to be better for a student. Nobody has suggested here that college should be entirely paid for, but don't you think that it'd be nice if there were a better way to make it reflective of your abilities and your hard work instead of your parents' situation?

What's wrong with the USA??

I got my BA from Yale and am a grad student at Cambridge now. I started Yale at 25 due to family problems. Even though we grew up near the poverty line for most of my life, I wasn't given financial aid from Yale due to a loophole that applied to older students (now changed). I worked full-time while going to school. Even low-income students at Yale graduate with less than 10,000 total debt. For low-income students at schools with small endowments, they are basically screwed, or they have to go to fourth-tier sub-state schools that are close by to where they live.

Then I came to the UK. Not only do citizens and even international students (myself included) get full, free health care, tuition in the UK amounts to about $9500. 5-6 years ago it was totally free. So if you're able to get into Oxbridge, you pay 1/3 the tuition that you would pay at the US equivalent, HYP.

It's truly embarrassing that the world's most industrialized and affluent nation is so awful at distributing these essential public goods. Its really disturbing.

Who Really Gets the Most College Financial Aid?

Who get's financial Aid?

Maximize Your Aid like the Pros Do

The federal government authorizes students may get help from fee-based federal student aid application preparation services. (The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 re-approved this option.) Legitimate professionals charge modest fees and must inform students of the "free" option of preparing the application themselves.

Just as some people get help from a professional income tax preparer, fee-based FAFSA preparation services can help maximize students' aid.

The biggest advantage is accuracy. Top FAFSA preparers not only use computer reviews but read every answer. The Dept. of Ed only uses a computer review and it can approve applications with incorrect answers, which could lower a student's aid award.

James Boyle, president of College Parents of America, which searches the Web for the best services for parents with college-bound students, recommends Student Financial Aid Services, Inc. He was on radio programs this week. http://www.collegeparents.org/cpa/about-ontheair-radio.html

Most aid is offered first-come, first-served. Nearly everyone can benefit. Applying in January is the smartest move. No need to file income taxes before preparing your aid application. Accurate estimates of your adjusted gross income are acceptable.

If you miscalculate your adjusted gross income or make a simple mistake, you could lower your aid award. Your taxable income is not your adjusted gross income. If funds from a retirement fund are withdrawn, check to see if they are taxed or not. Don’t roll this figure into both your untaxed income and the adjustable gross or you’ll inflate your expected family contribution and lower your aid award.

States, colleges, and the federal government have different deadlines. The earliest state deadline is Feb. 15.

Mistakes on dependency questions are common because children of divorced parents often believe that the parent they live with is their legal guardian and that they are in a legal guardianship. Not true in all cases. Answering incorrectly changes your status to “independent” and that usually changes your aid.

If someone in your family has a job loss, you may be eligible for more aid. Check the “dislocated worker” question. You must meet 1 of the 4 criteria. Assets are treated differently for “dislocated workers,” and this could reduce your expected family contribution to zero, which increases your aid award.

Don’t count your house as an asset. While your home is one of your biggest investments, a primary residence isn’t considered an asset on the FAFSA. Including it will reduce your aid.

When calculating assets, not all businesses are treated the same. A family-owned business with fewer than 100 employees isn’t an asset on the FAFSA. If you make a mistake on this one, your application won’t be rejected but you will receive less aid than you deserve.

Transposing numbers or mistyping are common errors. List your name and Social Security number exactly as they appear on your card. Double-check everything.

Being an Undergrad and lower middle-class is really hard...

I started college when I was 21, right after I moved out of my parents house. So I was living alone, working 40 hours at a good paying job, and going to school full time my first three years of college. I had to do this because I didn't qualify for enough aid. My parents combined earnings totaled <$40,000, but because I was not 23 and didn't have any kids or a wife, the money my parents and I made got totaled together and this reduced my eligibility for aid. For example, I didn't qualify for Perkins Loans or Pell Grants until I was a junior because of this, and the whole time I was told by the financial aid people at my school that my parents were expected to give me money for college. This idea is just absurd to me. My parents are old-school and they both told me that they would not help me (even if they were able) to pay for college. So I was living on my own, trying to be a full time student and get good grades so I could get more financial aid and I was working 40 hours a week, all because of this ridiculous formula the government has set up to determine who is eligible for aid and why they are eligible. Once I started working part-time, turned 23, and had a semester of straight A's behind me, I qualified for more aid, but it was only enough to pay for tuition and books so there were many times I didn't have food or rent money or my diabetes medicine. It was only through the loving charity of my roommates, friends and doctors that I was able to make it through my undergraduate degree. Getting aid in Graduate school is easier, and there is more of it, but I still don't get enough not to have to work, which is making my first year as a Grad student very difficult. This whole system needs to be revamped, really. We are the richest nation in the world with our Gross Domestic Income three times as much as the next wealthiest nation (Japan) according to the CIA Factbook, and American students have to PAY for school?? In other, poorer, nations, nationals don't pay for undergraduate college books or tuition, and living stipends are supplied for need based students (Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, to name a few who do this if I remember correctly). And we say we're the land of opportunity, the land of freedom, while we enslave our poorer classes to a life of mediocre jobs once they graduate from high school because the options we provide these students for financial aid is based on a "cookie-cutter" approach to determining a student's needs. Disgusting....

Right on......

Although I do believe there are many more factors to financial aid than this article discusses, I do agree with the premise. I had two kids in college at the same time and we did not qualify for anything but unsubsidized loans which we used sparingly. The entire financial aid process was incredibly frustrating. I wondered why we bothered with FASFA at all. Most scholarships have ridiculous requirements and the ones that don't have so many applicants the chance of scoring one is minimal. We never qualified for any work study programs also limiting on-campus employment. I, for one, did not want my kids starting out with huge student loans to pay off once they completed school, so my husband and I chose to foot the bill for their education. (Yes, Suze Orman would definitely disagree!). However, we did find a few ways to cut costs. 1. my oldest, an average student went to a community college for 2 years. We followed information from the college he planned to attend to be sure most of the classes taken at the CC would transfer. This also helped him decide if a 4 year degree is what he wanted before dishing out the big bucks. 2. We insisted that both boys attend a state university. We live in VA and there are MANY really good schools here so there was no reason they couldn't find a school that 'fit' their ambitions. I basically told them that out-of-state tuition and private school tuition were not in the budget. 3. Once they moved out of the dorms there was a limit on what I was willing to pay for rent so they had to be prudent or pay the added amount. 4. Save early for education expenses. I started stashing $$ away when they were small. Only $25-$50 per paycheck but it added up quickly. 5. Kids were responsible for purchasing their own books so they learned to shop on-line to find good deals on used textbooks. They also sold the ones they no longer needed on-line. For middle class folks, it can be difficult but it is doable if you plan ahead and look at options.