What Would Barbie Do?

June 18th, 2010 by Ken No Comments »

The following story about Barbie is to help illustrate a successful encounter with a college financial aid office.  By reading her story you can see how a well prepared student entering freshman year is able to get the extra funding she needs.  By following the same common sense advice provided in Ken’s Korner, Barbie is able to successfully navigate the process of financing college.

Barbie gets admitted to her number one school of choice.  She is very excited since she had her heart set on attending ABC University, a prestigious private institution offering the kind of education she wants.   But her excitement changes to concern when she reads the financial aid award letter in the admissions packet.  She has been awarded about $25,000 in total aide of which $5500 is federal loans, $1000 is federal work study and $18,500 in grants and scholarships.  She has not yet heard back from any of the outside scholarships she applied for yet.  The tuition with room and board is about $42,000 a year.

Barbie has reached an impasse.  She just realized that if she really wants to attend this school she would have to go into heavy debt.  Barbie’s parents are well to do middle class but by no means wealthy. They do not qualify for any federal grants like Pell and do not have much money saved, but they are willing to cosign her loans with their good credit.  However, over four years she would go into $100,000 of debt with federal and private loans just to finish an undergraduate degree.  Barbie would love to attend the school, but it looks like it is financially out of reach.  There is only one other thing she could do before she looks over the back-up school options: write an appeal.

It is now April and she realizes that time is short for deposits.  However, because she is well prepared she does have a few things going for her in this process.

1. Because Barbie applied for several different schools and filed the FAFSA early, she received many other financial aid award letters offering more money than her primary choice.
2. She also applied for many different outside scholarships early in the year, increasing the odds she would be awarded one.

Barbie proceeded to write a brief, yet concise letter outlining her personal situation.  In the letter she explained her motivation behind applying for ABC University.  She further explained that she is grateful for the awards that have been given to her but because she did not qualify for any federal or state need based grants she is still in great financial need.  She then outlined the high amount of debt she would need to go into in order to attend the University as it stands.  To close out the letter she attached copies of award letters from two other competing schools showing a larger amount of financial aid being offered.  She sent this letter to both the financial aid office and to the admissions office and followed up with a phone call and email to confirm its receipt.

It took over two weeks to get a response about her letter.  This made Barbie nervous.  But while she was waiting for a response from the school, she got a letter in the mail from one of the many scholarships she had applied for earlier in the year.  She was elated to find out that she qualified for a $5000 a year scholarship for students with her background, major and standardized test scores.  Then in the following week she got a letter back from the Vice President of the schools admissions office.  She was awarded an additional $5000 in grant funding based on her compelling and well written letter of appeal.  Now with total financial aid increased to $35,000 her private loan needs were greatly reduced.  She figured out that her debts would be around $50,000 after graduation as opposed to the $100,000 she was originally looking at.  After calculating her repayment options she decided to attend her first school of choice.  Because she planned and prepared her college financing options early she ended up being able to go to the school she wanted and reduce her debts to a responsible level.

Tags: barbie, college financial aid, common sense, encounter, excitement, federal grants, federal loans, financial aid award, financial aid office, financing college, freshman year, impasse, middle class, private institution, private loans, rsquo, scholarships, school options, sense advice, undergraduate degree

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