By Cassidy Johnson
The admitted are angry. We feel lied to. Bamboozled. Blindsided. Betrayed. Hoodwinked. Willy Wonka’ed. Skiddamarink’ed. We did everything right. We effectively killed ourselves these last few years. Getting the right grades, obtaining leadership positions in honors societies and clubs. Becoming student organizers and leaders. Volunteering, sports, even working jobs. Rinse and repeat. No sleep. But we made it. Competing with each other at almost every turn. What we thought would be a marathon turned into a triathlon, but we made it. We got it. Acceptance letters and emailed received, printed out, framed. So what stops us from putting down our enrollment deposits? Thousands of dollars that’s what.
This financial manticore reveals itself in one of two situations. The first: The well-off kid who isn’t actually well off. My best friend is suffering from this right now. She got into a Top 20 school, but can’t pay for it. Her family’s ‘demonstrated financial need” and expected family contribution” do no match what her family can actually afford to pay for her education. Currently, she’s $30K short of the money needed to pay one year’s tuition and has until May 1st to figure out her future. Her family owns a business, yes, but they have significant debt, another child already in college, send money back to their family overseas, and pay for the Alzheimer’s treatment of a relative. Paying for college is one of the few times where all the overwhelming financial circumstances are supposed to work in the student’s favor. How can an university financial aid office be aware of all these exigent circumstances and expect a family to pay $120 over the course of 4 years. It’s not as if this major institution lacks the financial resources to give my friend more money in grants.
The second way this Demogorgon eats away at the hopeful prospective student is through institution policy. There are a number of out of state college and universities who guarantee that they will meet 100% of a student’s demonstrated financial need, a number of schools (like my best friend’s dream school) who do not. They admit the student and attempt to hit them will a bill they know they cannot pay. Don’t get me wrong it so great and noble of these institutions to have Need-blind admission policies, but they must know the emotional distress they put on the student and family who cannot pay for their dream. Are they so pompous that even after reviewing a student’s FAFSA and/or CSS Profile that they believe a prospective student will get themselves into what could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to attend their college? These practices run the risk (or maybe purposely) of creating an on-campus cultural heavily set by children to whom money is so concern. Do you think that’s overwhelmingly a positive, humbling environment for student’s to learn in?
There are those of us in the admitted pool who find a way out; a way to still live our dream. There are outside scholarships, institutional merit-based scholarships, GI bills, getting into a university that actually meets 100% of our need, or even impressing our college admission interviewers so much that they offer to pay the difference. The situation is not without hope, it just requires a variable mixture of tenacity and luck. A student can have one without the other, or worse, be lacking in both. For those of you still holding out, hoping, trying for more grant aid, doing you can until May 1st. For those of you asking, “how do you get a student loan?” Don’t give up just yet, use the very same perseverance that got you admitted. If dreams were easy to obtain then they wouldn’t be called dreams now would they?