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{"id":883,"date":"2013-08-25T21:18:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T21:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/heres-another-thing-that-bugs-me-about-the-financial-aid-process-at-universities.html"},"modified":"2013-08-25T21:18:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T21:18:00","slug":"heres-another-thing-that-bugs-me-about-the-financial-aid-process-at-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/08\/heres-another-thing-that-bugs-me-about-the-financial-aid-process-at-universities.html","title":{"rendered":"Here’s another thing that bugs me about the financial aid process at universities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Experts on the topic (the ones who write the articles online and in the paper) constantly compare tuition to a car\u2019s sticker price.\u00a0 In the same way as a car\u2019s price is negotiable, so, too, do students, on average, pay less than the \u201csticker price\u201d of college tuition.<\/p>\n

But tuition isn\u2019t negotiable.\u00a0 The financial aid office knows everything about you, and they alone make the determination of how much aid to offer you, knowing that your Family Contribution will be defined the same everywhere else.\u00a0 And if your Family Contribution comes out too high, you\u2019re not going to get anything\u00a0\u2014 you will be paying Sticker Price. (See my prior post detailing the Expected Family Contribution calculation<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not what bugs me, though.\u00a0 What gets me is that, as an upper middle class parent who has saved diligently, I will be required, through the tuition checks I expect to someday write, to be paying not only my sons\u2019 cost of attendance, but an inflated amount that represents the cost of attendance for the kid in class next to him, since the university will use a fair chunk of our tuition money to give financial aid to him.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

(I\u2019m in the middle of reading College (Un)Bound and intend to write more on this very eye-opening book when I\u2019m done!)<\/p>\n

UPDATE: I finished \u2014 here\u2019s my summary<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"