This has been bothering me for some time now and I just want to put the question out there: Do you, as students, feel that you recieve the amount of financial aid you deserve?
In my opinion, no. I have fallen through the cracks of this system several times.
First of all, I do not live with either of my parents. I live with my grandma and pay her every month for various bills and help with the groceries. I also have bills of my own. I am solely responsible for my tuition, books, private expenses, ect. However, since I am not yet 24, I am still considered financially dependent. I am in no way dependent. I've tried to figure a loop hole or special circumstance around this, but have had no luck. I spoke to my financial aid advisor several times and he said that I have to claim at least one of my parent's income on my FAFSA until I turn 24.
I know several other people that have been screwed over because of these strict rules. For instance, one of my friend's mom's because seriously ill and ended up having to get one of her legs amputated. Her family was up to the roof in medical bills and it left them tens of thousand of dollars in debt. However, when filing her FAFSA she had to claim her parents wages, with no expeptions. The fact that her family was in debt and now only had one working family member had no weight when deciding her estimated family contribution.
I think that this is appalling, and there should be a more accurate process instituted when deciding how much a student can afford to spend on school and how much help from the government a student should recieve.
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I agree, getting the financial aid we really need is much harder than it should be. I've spent hours working for scholarships and still haven't received any money that would make a dent in college tuition, let alone buying a couple course books. It seems the system needs to be less concerned with hours of paperwork and what our parents make and more concerned with how on earth we are supposed to be educated if we have no money!
-S
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I filled out a FAFSA for the first time this year and I feel gyped after I was given my SAR. Sure my family makes decent amount of money for us to be comfortable, but my parents work so much and so hard in order to get that money.
They do not work in fancy offices or anything like that; my parents do hard labor. My father makes medical needles for a needle company and my mother works at a meat packaging factory. And since I cannot take out a loan myself since I'm still a minor; my parents have to take one out for me and pay for it themselves, meaning they have to work even MORE to be able to pay for my schooling.
I'll have a part-time job to help them pay for it since I would feel selfish not doing so.
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Completely agree. It makes me mad that there are students such as myself that desperately need the money to go to school, and then there are those that are taking the maximum offered so that they can get the refund check from their schools at the end of the semester to have extra spending money and such. I'm 21 and live at home still but not because my parents support me, in fact it's the other way around. My father is too ill to work, and so my mother being the only working parent needs help from me to pay bills. When filing my financial aid it is not taken into account that the money me or my mother make is not available for my college expenses. In the real world bills come before education. My family of 6 (none of them I can claim as dependents) is more important to have fed and housed than my educational needs. I have dropped several classes in my college career for lack of funds. Wheter it was the tuition costs itself or the costs of books I couldn't afford it and the financial aid I received was not nearly enough to cover tuition alone.
...how bout being a dependant whose parents refuse to pay? O.o I'm sure there's kids like that as well. x.x
My parents certainly aren't going to pay much - as well as having five other kids, they also expect me to pay for most of college myself.
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