Hi. I'm interested in attending Purdue University, Embry Riddle(Flordia location), Georgia Tech and a couple of other schools for aerospace engineering or ATC(air traffic controller). My grades/extra-cirrculars are decent for admissions I think, but not good engough for grade-based scholarship. I come from single-parent house and the income is 35,000 a year, which is what those colleges tuition costs are per year. I was wondering if I would recieve ample financial aid to attend or those universities wouln't give financial aid? Thanks for any info. I am from NY, out of state for all those universities if that is important. Unique:
The primary source of financial aid for education is the federal government. They offer two forms of aid - general aid (that is available to pretty much everyone), and need-based aid (which is only offered to applicants from lower income households).
About 1/3 of all aid applicants qualify for need-based aid, and whether you'll qualify or not is based on a little more than just your parent's income, so no one can predict that for you, without knowing a lot more about your household's financial circumstances.
That's why you'll complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as the "FAFSA", a form that collects the specific information that the financial aid departments use to figure out what forms of aid you qualify for. You'll submit the FAFSA to the Department of Education, and they'll compute something known as your Expected Family Contribution (EFC), and they'll send it on to your school, where the financial aid office will actually put together your "financial aid offer".
Need-based forms of financial aid are various forms of "free" money, like the Pell Grant, which can cover as much as $4731 a year in your college costs. Another grant, the FSEOG grant, could kick in as much as $4000 more.
MOST federal financial aid takes the form of simply giving you access to the government's Stafford loan program. The Stafford is the best and cheapest form of educational loan that you can get - and to be honest, right now, it's about the only loan that most students can get. Stafford loans don't require a credit check or a credit history or a cosigner - and all the other forms of educational loans do. Stafford loans also offer significantly lower interest rates than other educational loans, and the interest rates are fixed throughout the entire loan, not variable, like with the other loans.
With one form of Stafford loan, the subsidized Stafford, the government actually picks up all of the interest payments for you while you're in school. That can save you thousands of dollars.
I guess you were hoping to hear that there was a way for students to go to school for free, and not have to borrow, but that's a very, very rare situation - and usually a situation where either the school is very cheap, the family is very poor, and the student is exceptionally bright and successful. It's also possible at the elite private schools - because they have huge endowment funds that allow them to provide institutional assistance to their students - far above and beyond what the government can afford to offer you.
If you're going to need to almost (or maybe even totally) rely on financial aid, you will have to pick a school that financial aid can cover. Unfortunately, you don't get more federal aid, just because you want to go to an expensive school. Why should the taxpayers give "Suzy" $50,000 because she wants to go to NYU, but only give "Jimmy" $8000, because he's happy to attend his local state school?
If you have $12,000 available to buy a car, that helps point you in the right direction in terms of what dealerships you should be shopping at. I'm not going into the Jaguar dealer with my $12,000.
If you have, let's say - $12,000 of financial aid available to you, you should be shopping at a Honda or Toyota college, and not a Lexus or Mercedes college.
And yes, if you're hoping to attend an out of state public university (Georgia Tech), or an expensive private school (Purdue), your Cost of Attendance is going to be significantly higher than the total amount of federal aid that you are likely to be offered. If you're sure that you're not scholarship material, these kinds of schools may be beyond your means. Think about starting local - maybe even at a community college - and getting really good grades, so you can compete for scholarship funds directly from the university in a couple of years.
Good luck to you! I hope this helped.
Check out the US Department of Education pamphlet I'm linking to below - it explains the federal financial aid system, and has information about all of the other forms of financial aid, too. Universities are not going to let your slide by because you are short on financial aid. They have financial aid counselors to make sure you get enough financial aid to cover tuition. This is why they get paid first then issue you the rest. I am going to book mark this page with your question on it.Talk to my sister in law.She works at Emery Riddle Arizona location.I will try to get you a decent answer. |
