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Hi,

Assuming I decide to go full COA--->LRAP/PAYE route is it possible to sock money that I have now into a retirement fund that won't be touched by/accounted for in the aid disbursement process.

For example, say I'm a 22 year old private school teacher in a foreign country with approximately 8k in liquid assets. If I squirrel 5k away into a Roth or 401k will that money be discounted when student loans are being disbursed (so, for example, if I get say 70k to study for 1 year at Penn the Gov. will disburse 70k and not 65k and when I enroll in LRAP/PAYE after graduation that money will stay in my retirement accounts).

Basically, I want to plan for retirement now and it seems silly that I would have to give up everything I have in savings now for a wildly inflated tuition that in all likelihood I won't be paying back anyways.

If its unlikely that I can do this I'll probably wait a few years to reapply and more aggressively pursue schollys at t-20 schools (rn I have a 150k to WUSTL and 105k to USC without applying or negotiating so I think I could go a little higher if I was more proactive. I really want to get involved in non-profit/gov. work out of law school so I've been thinking that it would be more prudent to go for the highest ranked school I could get into/that feeds into the orgs/regions I want to work for/at).

If you take out federal loans it doesn't matter what your assets are or what you do with them - you can borrow up to the COA regardless of whether you're Midas or homeless (assuming you don't have massive credit problems). It only matters for need-based aid, which is primarily at HYS (and maybe occasionally some other schools, but I haven't seen a consistent list of which ones? But not many). In your Penn scenario, if COA is $70k it doesn't matter if you can actually pay $70k in cash, you can still borrow up to that amount.