Low income no loan policy for college (UVA) How is this fair?

[Anonymous]

Come on...some one has to pay for the academic industrial complex...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sucks. Maybe it will be a new branch of business for lawyers. Drafting official documents that legally declare a kid not a dependent on their parents. Then the kid would be poor. But then the parents couldn't declare them on taxes. What to do, what to do.

Pretty sure spending a lot of money on a lawyer to emancipate would make for an unconvincing argument for need.

It doesn't take a lot of money. It doesn't even necessarily take a lawyer (we're not talking about Lohan self-emancipating so that her mother and sister could become her dependents). I know several kids whose circumstances forced self-emancipation. There has been a SFAS form for this for years.

I used to work in Financial Aid at a top school. Parental information is taken into consideration regardless for school-based aid of ANY kind (except Federal loans and grants which have their own applications.) Otherwise its way too easy for some rich parent to claim they will not pay, just to get the aid, when in fact they will (and do) pay.

FWIW, I don't agree with this. But its the way it was (and I'm pretty sure still is.)

[Anonymous]

I read the linked story - it says very little. Not clear if the loans are now required because the state was spending too much on grants, because too many grant recipients were dropping out and they wanted to have "skin in the game," or for some other reason. Without knowing the background, the discussion seems academic and may not really be related to this program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sucks. Maybe it will be a new branch of business for lawyers. Drafting official documents that legally declare a kid not a dependent on their parents. Then the kid would be poor. But then the parents couldn't declare them on taxes. What to do, what to do.

There's no legal loophole there. Pretty sure they're considered dependents for financial aid purposes until they are 26.

1. Not true. A child may emancipate, and there is a specific Federally-recognized process for establishing that one receives no material financial support from parents (except for intermittent housing, which does not necessarily count).

2. This whole business is unfair. But I also view it as a threat by UVA against those who should be funding it. The state General Assembly members from out in banjo territory keep slashing the UVA and W&M state funding levels. Time to show the miscreants what they are sowing.

As to your number 1, not quite. A student can be independent for financial aid purposes if they are a ward of the court, true. And in very rare, very exceptional circumstances (as rare as a unicorn), a financial aid officer may use professional judgment to declare a student independent because of extenuating circumstances, generally involving reams of evidence that the student is abused/estranged from parents. The parents being unwilling to pay is NOT enough. There is a pernicious myth out there that you can "declare yourself independent" and it is simply untrue.

[Anonymous]

First of all, UVa gets less than 15 percent of its operating budget from the state. Second, UVa has a 4.5 billion dollar endowment. (In contrast, George Mason U has a $60 million endowment, I believe). Third, UVa wants to compete with other top schools that are also doing this.
My son was invited to A College Night in fall of' '12 sponsored by three universities together ... Harvard, Princeton and UVa. The first two schools promoted their financial aid programs that involved no loans. The UVa Dean if Admissions just had to smile, but had nothing like that to offer.
Oh, but my darling son has the awesome test scores, but most likely not the grades to get into one of those schools. Sigh. I suppose there is always grad school...