Most of schools expect you to use past (savings), now (current earnings) and future (loans) to pay for college education. This is especially true for those private expensive schools.
Did you ever go back to the school to negotiate FA package? If your EFC is $28,000, then you either makes over $120K or has a lot of "networth".
I successfully negotiated two FA package deals, each worth about 6K a year of grant money.