<p>just feel like starting a thread for those of us who are above average students and whose parents make okay amoutn of money, let's say around 100k. scucks for us, we ain't getting no scholarship/financial aid</p>
<p>yes it does suck for us. I'm applying to mostly local scholarships, like all of them next year, because I'm hoping a whole bunch of little ones will add up, though I will try basically everyone fastweb gives me</p>
<p>your parents can afford it anyway, that is why you dont get scholarships.</p>
<p>no they can't. 100k is much split between 6 people, 1 kid in sophomore and already they can't pay her tuition at a public state college</p>
<p>wut r u talking about? a family that makes 100,000 can afford college tuition at 33,000 a year? r u kidding me? they have like 70,000 after taxes, plus 1400+ rental fees for housing, 500 dollars worth of bills for utitlities, give me a break,,, ppl with lower income is so much better off than mid-class when it comes to pay for college tuition. besides, why should smart, hardworkign citzens have to work even harder to send their kids to school, when the lazy ass parents just sit home and try to have more babies, but yet,, their kids go to college for free... anyway, i</p>
<p>celebrian25 - 6 people is NOT the average.... but 100k is enough for 2 kids to get through college if the family had adequately saved.. like they should have.</p>
<p>crazyforee - i know how you feel, but if you make 100k gross then you can afford STATE SCHOOL, at 15k roughly... def. not 33k, agreed there...</p>
<p>i got screwed in fin. aid..... my dad makes 80k/year, yet i have to pay 27k/year.... and they say that is 100% of my need? ********.. my dad had 10k in the bank when we did the css profile for ED at Duke.. I really got nailed in the assets category... he has 400k in rental properties.. but those are where his retirement money is saved.. but since its not a government established "retirement plan" duke gets to take another 10k/year...</p>
<p>I resent the lazy asses who make 30k/year and send their kids to college for free... it just teaches people that being lazy and irresponsible is OK, which is complete BS...</p>
<p>also, you should get serious Fin. Aid. if you are one of 6 kids</p>
<p>yeah at the princeton talk they were telling us about their fin aid package which is pretty amazing and my mom whispered 'they make it sound so good, i want one!'...needless to say, she will be very disappointed come april.</p>
<p>Crazyforee - Be careful with what you say. Although there are parents who should have never had kids and are lazy making 20k a year off the dole, there are plenty of people who ended up in that situation even though they were working hard. I can tell you right now from experience, I've got a mother who has been dealt a tough hand of cards and she has worked her butt off since day one to do the best that she can, but there are things people can't control.... Health, for example. She's been going deaf for over a decade now and is almost deaf now (She can't hear you unless you are facing her and annunciating each word... this is WITH the strongest hearing aid she can get). She has a chronic pain illness that she has to overcome EVERY DAY in order to function. And what about jobs? Enron, Worldcom? She was working steadily at Worldcom but got laid off due to other peoples' lack of integrity. Due to all of this and a mix of other bad breaks (landlord died, gave his son the property, he doubled the rent, we couldn't afford to stay), we were left homeless.... it's sort of hard for a deaf person, limited to part-time work due to her illness to get a job.
You might wonder about her education? She immigrated over at 19 in order to start a better life. The best she could do was attend a Business Institute for 2 yrs because by the time she could afford it, she had been married for a while and pregnant with me. And boy, did she work for it. She had to take the train, bus, sometimes the subway and then walk over a dozen blocks to get to school each day... she perservered even though she got morning sickness almost everyday and even though the time she spent in the classroom was LESS than the time she spent in Transportation. These are only a FEW, a VERY FEW of the things that she has had to go through and that we have had to go through together. </p>
<p>The point here is that don't open your mouth until you have more facts. I know if I didn't get any financial aid, I'd be stuck, working my butt off to pay for a low-end state school or community college and receiving no help from my parents.</p>
<p>And by the way, remember that while people growing up in the higher middle class were gifted with sports/dance/vacations/luxuries and generally better communities, you have no idea how much kids growing up in impoverished homes have missed out on ALL THEIR LIVES. Please, getting money for college is one of the few breaks we get and if we've worked hard enough in spite of our living situation to get good enough stats to get into a good school... the last thing we need is to know we can't go there because of the money.... which is something we've heard all too often.</p>
<p>tulane, Umiami, Emory, etc. have scholarships based on merit. check em out...most important thing: ASK YOUR PARENTS HOW MUCH THEY CAN GIVE YOU...trust me, it may be akward at first but you need to know...theres a lot of good cheaper schools out there, even private ones (mentioned above, LACs includie Grinnell, Macalester).</p>
<p>People who make $30K a year aren't folks who spent all their money and all of a sudden have none left (causing them to reap thousands of dollars in fin aid). On the contrary, on your W-2 forms it will state how much money you made (income wise). That's where the real nail hits the board.</p>
<p>Colleges will know if you spent all the money because they will see that a) you made a lot of money, b) have very little or no assets because you spent it all (relative to what you made income wise), and c) make you pay for the full EFC. They aren't going to give any leniency to folks who were fiscally irresponsible.</p>
<p>Everyone who is arguing on the side of families making 80k+ should take a hard look at their lives. First of all, you have no right to call yourselves "middle-class." Second of all, the more money you have the more resources you have (tutoring, books, summer programs). If two kids of equal intelligence and work ethic were raised by different families, the kid who was raised by a richer family would have a better resume. Third, the majority of the families making 30-50k are hard-working functioning members of society, not lazy bums. Fourth and last, financial aid is FOR THE KIDS. If a hard-working kid with lazy parents got into a great college, his parents ineptitude should not limit him from attending the college. And that is why financial aid works. Families with above average incomes DONT NEED IT. Families with low incomes NEED IT. And truly middle-class families just get screwed.</p>
<p>Actually, Seven Nights, some people are unfortunately wrongly penalized here, albeit very few. Folk who have had low-paying jobs most of their lives, and then got a break, and wages are doubled since 2003; or folks that do not have fixed incomes, but had good earnings in 2003 and 04.</p>
<p>and Juzam, $80,000 in Alabama is a lot more money than $80,000 in Connecticut, and in the latter case, barely make middle class. This difference is not taken into account, as far as I can see, for FAFSA.</p>
<p>i dunno about others, but my family didn't start making 100,000 10 years ago, they had that kind income since 2001, and other than that, they had not savings. we don't even own a house to live in. although my stepdad owns a house in another state. and all the savings my mom had in the years were gonna be her retirement, now looks like she'll give it away for my college. this life sucks...</p>
<p>"we don't even own a house to live in. although my stepdad owns a house in another state. and all the savings my mom had in the years were gonna be her retirement, now looks like she'll give it away for my college. this life sucks...
"</p>
<p>Instead of whining, why don't you do what you can to find money for college. This includes getting high grades and good scores because many colleges give merit aid based on these factors.</p>
<p>It also includes combing the bushes to find merit scholarships to apply for.</p>
<p>And it includes applying to colleges that you can afford to go to because they either give merit aid that you'd qualify for or they have relatively low costs or you could live at home and go to college.</p>
<p>For many people, the most affordable way of attending college is to live at home and then go to community college for 2 years and then transfer to a low public institution.</p>
<p>I see lots of students on CC whining that they can't afford to go to their dream schools. Well, most of us dream of luxury cruises, mansions and luxury cars. Most of us can't afford these things. We don't spend our time whining that the government won't give us these things or the sellers won't lower their prices so we can afford those things.</p>
<p>We work to get what we can afford, and in general, we are content with our lifestyles. The same is true for colleges.</p>
<p>if one wants to go to college in the US, in general, one can find a way to go to college even if that means joining the military, participating in Americorps or Teach for America, or going to a local college. Whining about one' so-called sad fate is simply a waste of time.</p>
<p>many large families are hurt by the fasfa. if you have one student in college, they expect all of your resources to go to that one child. when we talked to a financial aid counselor, she pretty much said that they will not take into consideration my family's size (two parents and seven children) until my sister and i are both going to college at the same time. this logic only hurts middle-class large families. also, my parents have begun saving for college for my six younger siblings, and according to the fasfa, all of that money "should" go towards me. secondly, "untaxed income" includes pensions and retirement plans for your parents. public officers, who have automatic pension plans, will be expected to contribute their entire "untaxed income" to their childrens' educations. this is very unrealistic.</p>
<p>You can take a deep breath, suck it in and start looking for work. Lucrative work. Work on weekends now and during spring break and as soon as school lets out. Bus boy, waitressing, along with any other position open. My kids worked 80-90 hours a week in the summers giving private lessons, caddying, whatever they could get. You can get a nice $10k by September. Then work at school. 10 hours a week can net you about $40-50. working a few cafeteria shifts can also bag you a few more bucks and you usually eat for free when you do that. See if you can get a loan for about $2000 that first year which is reasonable. You can probably come up with about $15 of the first year cost if you bust your tail. Your parents can then come up with another $15K and if you really want to go to that school, they should borrow another $15K. You can then look for ways to either take off a year and work and take courses at a local state school or cc and graduate a year early so that your total education would cost your parents $45k from assets and income and $45k in loans which comes to about $475 per month payment or less with current interest rate for a max of 12 years but they will be paying that full amount only 8 years since each year's loan is amortized over 10 years. There are many ways this can be done, but it involves sacrifice and work. No senior trips, no summer off, put those money gifts towards tuition, no eating out this summer, pack that lunch. The goal is college. If you want it badly enough, you can do it.</p>
<p>I want to add that families who do not have incomes in the $100k range, the ones who do qualify for full rides generally have very tight restraints in every aspect of life. Those parents cannot take out a loan for that amount as it may be the food or shelter budget. And there is no way of scraping a cent out of the income for current school expenses. They do not live in the neighborhoods that families making that kind of money tend to live. Our family lived in unsafe, not good neighborhoods because we could not afford the cheapest house that a "good" neighborhood offered anywere. </p>
<p>It is unfair that the cost of living is not taken into account. But,you know, when I lived in Westchester county, NY which is one of the most expensive in the country, I found housing for our large family at about a third of what we were told it would cost. We lived in an area that was not nice. It was rundown, the schools were not that great, and it was borderline dangerous. Our house was also shabby. Many of my H's colleagues and my kids friends were a bit aghast as to where we lived. But it was a lot cheaper than those homes in Edgemont, Scarsdale, Bronxville,etc. There is cheap housing within an hour of NYC, but you do have to lower your standards as to neighborhood, house condition, etc. A person making $80K in Fairfield county should not be living in comparable quarter as the one making the same in Weirton, WV.</p>
<p>Fairfield county. That's where i live. Definitely very high cost of living here.</p>