184,000 in student debt???

Keep in mind that for any ABET accredited Engineering school you are going to get a very similiar education.
There is no need to take out giant loans for engineering.
Student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy so do all you can to keep student loans to a minimum.
Have her go to her instate school and save money!!

Strong students should be able to finish engineering degrees in 4 academic years (8 semesters or 12 quarters). Time off school doing co-op jobs should not require tuition to be paid (but room and board at and commuting costs to the co-op job location has costs, just like at school, though work earnings from the co-op job typically pays for it and possibly more).

However, less strong students are more likely to need extra semesters or quarters of school, so that may be worth considering in the budget if the student was a B or B+ student in high school.

In terms of debt amount, others have mentioned the maximum federal direct loan amounts, which are far lower than $184,000.

Be sure that you will be able to give fair contributions for the college costs of the younger children.

Why is Pitt bioengineering 5 yr? If she does coops she won’t pay tuition during those semesters, just a coop fee I think and will earn money during the coop.

Pitt has first year engineering that leaves the choice of engineering specialty open to them. She might change her mind about bioengineering.

Do you have $100,000 saved for all four kids?

If she takes her direct loans, that would be $27,000 for four years, she could earn the rest of the money during summers and coops possibly.

What state do you live in? Any ABET accredited state university should be fine for engineering.

There has been a lot of good discussion on this thread in a short period of time.

“That leaves 184K in student debt.”

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I agree with everyone that this is a complete non-starter. My youngest had stats that were very similar to OP’s daughter’s stats, and we did have some very good local private schools that the NPCs showed would be similarly severely unaffordable. I think that we all just have to say no to the most expensive schools.

“she will most likely be in a 5yr program”

It would be a good idea, if possible, to budget to avoid a disaster if things stretch out to 5 years.

“I did not realize the merit scholarship GPA requirement”

One daughter went to university on a merit scholarship that required maintaining a 3.0. The other daughter is currently at university on a merit scholarship that requires maintaining a 3.5. Both have been able to keep above the requirement usually with a significant cushion. This isn’t easy and “events” such as a bad breakup can make this harder for one semester at some point. OP’s daughter’s stats suggest that it should at least be possible to do.

“5 yrs is required because co-ops are required.”

A co-op should not increase the total cost.

My youngest has started on a program at her school that requires internships. This will stretch things out for one more semester (to 4 1/2 years). However, the internships are paid. I am pretty sure that she will be getting minimum wage, which is enough for her to pay room and board with a bit left over. As such, the internship is not going to add anything to the price. It will however require that she get a car, since it is off campus and a bit too far to get there any other way.

“Have you got that 100K equiv plus inflation for each of your next 3 kids?”

This is a good point. Anything that you spend on child #1 is a precedent that applies to all remaining children.

Although, yes, strong students can and have completed engineering programs in 4 years, this is a course of study with very high change of major rates. Also some engineering programs are structured to be done in 4 years, so a student has to buck the tide and get exception to get done in 3. Pitt is such a program.

The OP is now at a point where applications have been sent already, and answers are returning. There is a set of choices on the table and that’s it for the year. The choices are to figure out how to afford those schools on the acceptance slate, try to find some last minute schools that are less expensive, or to take a gap year and redo the process with more understanding how the scholarship process works for this particular student.

$7500 a year is the max that is available per year for an undergraduate student, and that only starting in junior, or third year of college. Beyond that are loans where the parent and student have to cosign or the Parent Direct PLUS Loan. A bit more for those whose parents are denied PLUS loans, but nowhere close to the $184K amount that OP mentions.

Unless the OP wants a large loan burden with the first child, both on self and student, both parties have to come up with more money from current income each year. That means student works during the year and summer, and the family goes on an austerity regiment to pay up whatever they can to avoid loans. An amount acceptable to both parents and students should be established as the borrowing plan and course of action.

If that is unacceptable, then a different set of schools needs to be found that has better possibilities of merit money. It is possible. There is a nice amount of savings in the pot and the student is an excellent candidate for scholarships. It’s just that the schools chosen are high name recognition schools that do not give out the amounts for this student that this family wants .

hmmm…all the forms want to know exactly what kind of net worth you have. If it doesn’t matter why do they ask and require specifics?

Or may it’s not myopic it’s just a sense of personal responsibility and not asking others to subsidize your kids education.

Is there any point in hand wringing? You have Pitt instate with no merit, is that affordable or not? Your kid’s stats are the nice but no cigar type for engineering, to get real merit means looking at schools that won’t be as well regarded as your own instate school.

@mom517

Not trying to pick on anyone here, but this hi-lights the fact that we as parents need to understand the costs with the places our kids are applying. My D19 has good stats and we have some money so she applied to 17 schools in the hunt for money. They were all levels of elite down to easy to get in. Plus relatively low costs up to expensive.

She got merit. Now we have a lot of decisions to make. Some have been weeded out, but we are still weighing 5 schools plus waiting on acceptances from 4 elite schools. It is just one long marathon.

When I did the NPC for Pitt, it came out to $35,000+, but you can’t ignore inflation. With an estimated 2.5% increase for each year, I estimated Pitt would cost $147,000 over four years for my D, about $36,750 per year.

Pitt honors selection was very holistic and competitive this year. She doesn’t need to be in honors, especially in engineering.

In future years she can possibly save money by sharing an off campus apartment.

Don’t plan on bringing the car to Pittsburgh, parking is very costly. If she needs it for a coop, maybe she can use it short term but city bus transportation is free for Pitt students.

One of my kids is a Pitt alum, and we paid OOS Pitt costs for him. Great school, great results. We’re happy all around with the education and experience. You are lucky to have Pitt instate. Looking at some posts sandwiched in the middle of this thread, looks like it is a viable option, actually, a very good one.

A lot of parents miscalculate the costs of college and over project the scholarship money that is out there. Reading about college costs and options, it’s my opinion that there is too much optimism about the money available. I see too many parents with very fine students with great academic profiles overestimating what those profiles will net them in merit money, particularly at high name recognition schools. The “elite” schools are often very generous in financial aid, but very little merit, often none. None of the Ivy League school, MIT give merit money. State schools like Pitt that attract a lot of high achieving students have very high standards for any scholarships. Often need some additional handle on top of great academic stats to get any sizeable merit awards

@gpo613 This is my 1st of 4 to go through school. I have learned alot : ) I won’t be such a newb next time for sure.

I am glad you are learning a lot now. You will be able to use that knowledge for your No. 2, 3, and 4.
I was way savvier for my second kid!!

Coops can provide valuable job experience, but at Pitt they aren’t required.

The pay one receives at the coop should offset extra housing costs though.

https://www.engineering.pitt.edu/First-Year/First-Year/Advising/Advanced-Standing/

She might bring in some AP credit.

How are you subsidizing the college education of the kids whose parents were big spenders when they could have been saving for college expenses?

I don’t agree with this, and feel it is a family decision. I had two kids who went to college at the same time and they each got to pick the school they wanted even though one cost a lot more than the other. They each had a budget (the same) but I helped them find ways to pay for the schools they wanted. One (the one at the much more expensive school) came in under budget and the one from the less expensive public school has more in loans.

All 4 of OP’s kids are probably not identical so their education needs won’t be the same.

The EFC is driven largely by income. If your friends are getting need based aid it’s because colleges determined they have need based on their income level.

You aren’t paying for other people’s kids. You’re likely not even paying the full cost of what it takes to educate your own. Some endowment is probably covering some of it. Even if OP’s kid attended a state school or cc, your bill isn’t going down. If you resent spending the money, just don’t do it. If you decide to spend it then that’s a choice. Don’t blame others for it.

Yes, if you save money, you can lose eligibility for a number of programs that consider assets when distributing funds. This works for all sorts of things from SSI to low income housing to Financial aid at colleges, among any other things. However, you gain quite a bit when you have funds accumulated for any emergency or journey. You may well lose out on some funds that may or may not be there when you need them, but you have the security of the buying power of your savings.

I’ve been through this process many times because I have many kids. I’ve known parents who did not save any or enough money to pay for college choices that they really, really wanted, that their kids very much wanted. Some of them did it anyways, taking out tremendous loans, repayment be hanged, manage somehow, and they are now hog tied to these loans that really grow quickly if not paid on a strict schedule. Some of the kids have issues with some of these loans as well. Other families, realizing that paying for their children to go to colleges well out of their price range would not be a wise financial move, ended up having to pull the rug out form under their kids at acceptance time when the bottom line prices were just not tenable. Most of these parents I’ve known made sufficient income to have saved enough money to pay for top college prices, but they did not. They spent their money on other things. For any number of reasons.

So if you save the money, what you gain is flexibility and breathing room during those college years. That’s what you gain , and believe me, it can be a big plus for families. My kids are grateful not having any student loans, having seen and seeing what so many of their peers have on their backs in terms of loan debt before they even got their first out of college jobs. It is always a plus to have the options that college funds, any savings funds offer instead of counting on scholarships and aid that may or may not happen.

As for treating all kids equally…ummm… I don’t think so. My kids all had different needs and issues. Didn’t make an accounting on who cost what. We gave what we felt was needed at the time. Or what we felt like giving. We were a work in progress in terms of raising kids and some things we gave or didn’t give to the older ones, were lessons learned.

We did save the most for our oldest in terms of college, just by default. Hardly anything for the youngest, who turned out to be the most expensive in terms of college costs. But we didn’t have all those other kids at home and were beginning to down size The older kids were out of our wallets by then, and they even contributed to their brothers’ college expenses at times. So it worked out. The middle years were the tough ones for us. It seemed like the tuition train was never going to end, and after the excitement of having kids in college wore off, it was no fun paying all of that tuition, year after year, month after month. It’s not that first college tuition payment that hurt the most, I can tell you. It’s the subsequent ones that show up way to quickly.

It’s a family decision as to what to save for college, what to spend for college, how to distribute savings and resources among multiple kids. Different things work for different people