Undergraduate Financial Aid

Loyola believes that the cost of a high-quality education should not be a deterrent to prospective applicants. In recognition of the concern students and families have with finding adequate resources to meet these costs, our financial aid program is designed to make Loyola affordable to those students we admit. Approximately 65 percent of all undergraduates receive some form of aid from federal, state, institutional and private sources.

Loyola is willing to share the financial responsibilities of attending college with students and their parents, but we expect the primary or maximum effort to pay for college to come from students and their families. The system used to determine the family's ability to pay contains the following assumptions:

• To the extent they are able, parents have the primary responsibility to pay for their children's education.
• Students, as well as their parents, have a responsibility to help pay for their education.
• The family must be considered in its present financial condition.
• Families must be evaluated in a consistent and equitable manner recognizing, however, that special circumstances can and do alter a family's ability to contribute.

The information provided by families on the PROFILE Application form of the College Scholarship Service and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is used to assist the financial aid office in determining an expected family contribution according to standard federal formulas and institutional policies. In general, the family's income and assets are considered to produce a comprehensive index of family financial strength and capacity to absorb the costs of a college education.

If the full cost of attending Loyola is beyond reach, students are first expected to seek assistance from sources outside the University. Money from outside sources in the form of scholarships, grants, and loan programs is available through federal and state governments, as well as through private organizations and businesses.

When these outside resources, combined with the student and parental contributions are still inadequate to meet the cost of attending Loyola, the University will assume its role as a partner in meeting college costs.

In the administration of financial aid, "eligibility" is considered to be the difference between the cost of attending a college or university and the total family contribution toward that cost as shown in the following simple formula:

Family Contribution

The parents of a student are expected to make a maximum effort to assist the student with college expenses. Additionally, students have a responsibility to help pay for their education. The results of the analyses performed using the information provided on the PROFILE Application and the FAFSA assist the financial aid administrator in determining what the parents' and student's reasonable contribution toward educational expenses should be. The family contribution formulas consider not only the family's income and assets but also such factors as the size of the family, the age of the parents, and the number of dependent children attending college.

It is assumed that families will make individual decisions about how to finance their share of educational costs using a combination of assets, current income and borrowing against future income.