I asked you to make some suggestions and ask questions which were raised by our publication, Making MIT Affordable, and some of you were happy to oblige.

Lisa Dahl asked "Can we deposit funds into the TechCash account with a debit card? On page 7 it says we can use a credit card or charge our MIT account - so perhaps we could charge our MIT account and then pay with a debit card? Maybe this is found online already, it just came to mind when I was reading through."

Lisa, as far as I am aware, you can make a deposit to your Tech Cash account with a debit card. There is no different process for credit cards than debit cards. Maybe we can be more clear next year in the publication.

gyan daniel (or is it Daniel Gyan?) asked "i would also like to know the criteria meted out to international students.i am from ghana.how can you evaluate aid on need-basis. who qualifies for a waiver of application enrollment fees?"

And Faiqah Mumtaz asked "International students especially from the third world countries always wonder if they can actually apply for the financial aid, reason being even students from upper class in their country might not be able to pay the tuition fees, because of the ever-varying denomination of the currency in different parts of the world, thus keeping them in a big confusion all the time. Can you please help in solving the above mystery?"

We perform a complete analysis on every admitted financial aid applicant. For international students, this includes obtaining copies of either your national tax document (if you have one) translated into English, or a letter from your parent's (or s') employers verifying their salary. Once we collect this information, along with your International Student Financial Application we convert the amounts into US$ (using a conversion rate set annually by country, usually around February 1st) and run the same process on the data as we would if you were living in the U.S. As you probably can imagine, gyan, most International students are not able to afford significant contributions and therefore qualify for a significant amount of financial assistance from MIT. You may want to talk with some current MIT international students to get their perspective on the issue.

vivek had some questions about the Tech Loan:

"sir
i have something to ask about the MIT TECHNOLOGY LOAN (i am an international student)
When can i apply for it?
i mean before i join, i mean after i intimate MITabout my final decision and before originally joining, or after i finally join college
and when will i be intimated before i finally move to collge for admission
my second question is
if i wish to borrow less than 4000$ but if i dont earn what i did expect earlier will i be able to ask for further
another thing i could not get clear was, perhaps i need to go through once again, is this 4000$ a fix for total of four years or i can borrow this much amount each year. i hope it is each year.
and about this 8%loan i want to know how is the bank going to calculate the loan 8%of(4000*12)or 8%of 4000$"

Well, first vivek, don't call me sir... Please feel free to refer to me as Daniel (or Moneyman if that works for you)...

As for the Tech Loan, please be aware that we did change the terms mid-way during this year's application system to provide some advantages to those of you borrowing a loan (namely the subsidy of interest while you are in school). The way the process works for the Tech Loan is that after you accept the offer of decision, we will send you out a "Self Help and Outside Award Reply Form" which allows you to tell us how you would like your self-help ($5500) broken down (between work and loan). Once we receive this from you, we will turn around and send an award letter stating the amount of the Tech Loan and a co-signer application (all loans now require a co-signer). Once your co-signer is approved and you and your co-signer sign the Promissory Note, we will disburse the funds to your account. Another major change is that, since the loan is subsidized, nothing will accrue on the loan until the student graduates, and the student should not plan on paying anything during their school program. The new interest rate is 7% and is subsidized while you are in school.

nehalita wrote: "My biggest question is: is there a special salary that our parents earn that just makes it pointless to try for financial aid? What about the people in upper middle class? This is, obviously, a fuzzy line but how can a simple form show the difference between how much parents can contribute and how much they WILL contribute? Many students have to earn the money on their own and, being one of them, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in debt."

As for your first question, we have many people with incomes in the top two income quintiles who receive financial aid, so that there is no "artificial" cut-off salary limit. The problem with stating any limit is that there will always be exceptions to it (for example, a family earning $200,000 generally will not qualify, but there may be cases -- high medical expenses, more than one child in college, etc. -- where they will qualify). The other issue you have hit upon in your question, nehalita, is a harder one to answer. There is often a difference between our measure of how much a family can contribute and how much they are willing to contribute (both in the positive and negative direction). We will work with you on strategies as to how to afford the EFC (Expected Family Contribution) to make sure it is practical for your family (you can look at last year's posts to see how), but we recognize that our process measures ability to pay, not willingness.

Timur posted the following question/comment:

"Mr. Barkowitz,

If you could address my concerns about students working and self-help, it'd be much appreciated. As I understand it right now, all the work I've done for pay contributes to my family's income, and thus reduces my need, which reduces my financial aid package. The money I've earned doesn't go towards the $5500 self help, even though that's what that is.

It gets worse. My father just got a new job in December, after being in between jobs or unemployed for the past three years, and it looks like MIT wants the 2005 data, which has his higher-paying job. Is there a financial aid form that is perhaps better representative of his income over the past few years?

It just seems unfair to me that because I helped support my family, that it's not only harder for me to get in, but also creates MORE of a financial burden than if I hadn't worked. I'm sure you can understand my frustration. I apologize for it, but I don't think it's unwarranted."

Timur, let me see if I can put your mind at rest in some ways. First, we do take a look at student earnings used to help support a family and consider that when we review a case; on occasion, we may use this income to offset expenses related to maintenance of the family since it is not money you can freely spend. Alternatively, if your income is substantially over the minimum which would lead to a higher contribution that the base $1500 for Freshmen, we would then use any higher contribution from you to offset your Self-Help before your MIT Grant (as an example, if your contribution was $4,000, your Self-Help would be $3000 [$5,500, the base Self-Help, plus $1500, the base Student Contribution for Freshmen, minus $4000, your Student Contribution]).

As for your father's change in employment, we will take this into account on the first read of your file and it also may be grounds for an appeal of our financial aid decision. Remember that the income used for the base purposes of the financial aid system is the last completed tax year before your academic year begins (for those of you coming in 2006-07, that means we look at 2005), but we are given latitude to make different determinations if your situation warrants doing so. For example, we may use a three-year average income, we may protect assets for retirement (since presumably your parents have not been able to save for retirement effectively), or we may shelter some part of this year's income. Our reaction will differ based on the specific case, but it will be case-specific. Trust me, we will take your specific needs and situation into account.