Update 3/24: Financial Aid Sucks

So since I last posted I received an (again, expected—I am soooo good at this) rejection from Northwestern and a kind of surprising wait list from American! My first wait list! Exciting! As my mother said, "the plot thickens." The plot thickened even more when I got my DePaul financial aid package back. The theatre school gave me $18,000 but even with my loans, that leaves 1.5 times as much money as our EFC...which apparently my parents are supposed to take out a giant loan to pay for. I'm actually pissed. I mean, we could maybe make that much money work, but expecting a student's parent to take out a loan of that size? REALLY?! Ugh. My financial situation is better than a lot of people and I feel lucky...but still, my family can't pay for college! Nobody can! My dad kept saying "its Monopoly money," which is so real. Ughhhh. UArts is tied with Ithaca for cheapest but my dad hates it and thinks they gave me so much money "because I don't belong there." DePaul and Ithaca gave me even more in scholarship, UArts was just generous with grants...I don't know. I would be perfectly happy there but obviously I can't go if my dad won't pay for it. Now I'm just waiting for the Brandeis aid package to come in the mail, but my hopes are not high. Ew. Capitalism.