So I'm an English major. I studied at Framingham State University for two years, but now it's time for me to transfer to a college with an English program that better suits my career goals. I intend to be a YA lit editor, and unfortunately, FSU's English is too focused on literature and teaching to truly help me on my path.
So I applied to schools! I wrote new essays! I paid $120 to send my SAT scores and transcripts to schools! (The SAT and CollegeBoard in general is terrible, but more on that later.)
And then, financial aid.
Of course, applying for financial aid anywhere in the US involves filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. The FAFSA, for those of you blessed enough to be unfamiliar with it, is approximately a million pages of questions about your finances, and requires you to literally go line-by-line through your taxes and write down the numbers from The Appropriate Line On Your Taxes in The Appropriate Space On The FAFSA.
However, since I applied to three private schools, I also had to do the CSS (College Scholarship Service) Profile, run by CollegeBoard. Of course it's run by CollegeBoard. Why wouldn't it be? And the CSS is a million more pages of the exact information you just spent three hours putting into the FAFSA, but worse, for three reasons.
First of all, the CSS is somehow even more detailed than the FAFSA. The most irritating addition, for those of us with two or more living but separated parents, is that unlike the FAFSA (which only requires the information of The Parent Who's Supporting You More), the CSS requires both parents' information, even if one parent is contributing nothing. If you aren't totally independent (which, who is at this age in 2019), even if you haven't seen one of your parents in three months and that parent does nothing in the way of providing for you, you still need their information.
Now, this is logistically a pain for someone with separated parents, because you have to sit down and do this an extra half a time for the noncustodial parent application; and if your parent is less reliable/harder to get ahold of/whatever, getting them to even fill out the application can be a challenge. But more than that, it's a cop-out for schools. My dad makes way more than my mom does right now, and even though he doesn't intend to give whichever school a single cent, his income counts towards how much money is ostensibly available for me to go to school. This is made slightly more ridiculous by the fact that my dad has mandatory retirement in less than a year, and is squirreling away every possible cent for retirement so he doesn't, y'know, starve.
So okay, this takes forever. But hey, at least you'll get money out of it, right?
Sure. Once you pay CollegeBoard money for every application.
That's right! You have to pay to tell the school how poor you are! Some schools offer a fee waiver, but not all of them because of course not.
So here we are. We've filled out the CSS, we've filled out the FAFSA, I'm now out a total of almost $200 just for test scores, transcripts, and financial aid applications. (Thankfully, I did get a fee waiver on all the actual college applications because I'm a poor baby.) Now, after all this suffering, the colleges will hopefully make it affordable for me to go, right? Right??
I applied to three private schools and two public ones, plus I submitted a financial aid application to FSU in case everything else failed and I had to go back. I didn't get into Williams, and I'm still waiting on financial aid packages from UMass Lowell and FSU, but here's what I'd be expected to pay out of pocket, not counting loans, at each of the other schools:
- UMass Amherst, a public university: ~$5,500
- Wheaton College, a private college: ~$12,000 (down from $22,000!)
- Emerson College, a private college: ~$20,000, not counting books or room and board! (I'm not guaranteed housing at Emerson because it's a city campus and doesn't have enough dorms.)
Now, the FAFSA has a handy-dandy feature that tells you your expected family contribution, or EFC. Mine is $4,376. You'll notice that not one of those three packages has me at or below that level. Why? Because college financial aid is a fucking joke.
"Get a scholarship!" you might suggest. "Take out a loan!"
Well, student loans are predatory as hell, and even the ones that are ostensibly To Help People are evil. The Direct PLUS loan, something suggested to us several times, has 7.5% interest and goes into repayment immediately. And scholarships? Please. I applied to literally dozens, both this year and when I started college, and got absolutely nothing.
I still don't know where I'm going to school in the fall. UMass Amherst is out, because every single aspect of it besides the food and the study-away programs makes me want to be far away. Emerson is out, because that package is the maximum they're going to give me. I'd love to go to Wheaton, but doing so means that I'm going to live like a hermit, have no money for the next two years, not have a car until I'm like 30, and owe a lot of money. And UMass Lowell has a better creative writing program than Framingham, but it sure isn't the ideal.
To those of you who have felt, or are still feeling, the struggle of financial aid: I love and support you and I hope your career is lucrative enough for you to someday pay off your debts. And to those of you who have not experienced this: pray for the rest of us.
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