My guess is that UCLA will be a non-option for your parents compared to Yale. If they say they can pay I would believe them. I think Yale is a wonderful college and you should feel extremely excited about attending. Also, you haven’t yet gotten an acceptance to UCLA so I wouldn’t yet be fantasizing about these options. I wish you all the best.
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Massive loans by the parents for 3 children does not sound like a good idea to me but it’s not my money or my family. But, it may mean the kids end up having to substantially financially support the parents in their old age, so maybe discuss those kinds of issues with your parents and their expectations about that. And it is worrisome that they have nothing saved in a retirement plan. Are they puting lots of their money into you, and will that effect options for your siblings? Are they clear that any debt for this is not going to just go away? Good luck with the decision.
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I think the article confuses correlation with causation. Students that are admitted to T30 schools, at least until two years ago, had high test scores. This increases the likelihood that the same group of kids would have high LSATs and gpas.
Besides attending a feeder law school, the most important criteria for Supreme Court clerkships is serving as a law review editor. Depending on law school, this is either determined by first year law school grades, performance on a write on competition or some combination of both. Again, being a great writer or being able to sustain a high gpa are skills important to admission at a T30 school.
How does this relate to op and her decision making? The skill set that got her admitted to Yale may be more predictive of her future success than actually attending Yale. There are definitely other intangible benefits of attending Yale that need to be balanced with how easily her family can handle financing the tuition.
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Yes…But I suppose my corollary concern is their apparent magical thinking about Biden wiping away these loans…Are they taking out money without great concern because they really believe that they might never have to repay it all? Maybe they don’t really believe that - maybe they just said that to the OP to reassure them that all would be OK. But also something that needs to clarified.
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I’m with @tsbna44 on this one. Blithely suggesting that Yale is worth the parents taking on that amount of debt is, IMO, not realistic.
This thread has been going for a while now and I remember the earlier concerns of OP, when they still had time to apply to other colleges where they might get some great scholarships. I don’t know if OP did apply elsewhere.
Here is the original post by OP.
Here is today’s post:
None of,which sounds like a recipe for this student’s happiness.
So what has changed for the OP? Nothing that I can see. OP is still worried. OP repeatedly states that the parents SAY they can pay, that they believe in the prestige mindset, that this student is clearly troubled by this situation and has a LOT a more insight into the family finances than we do.
I am not going to ignore what seems clear, consistently, since OP started this thread: Going to Yale will cause the family to go into significant debt, there is, possibly, an unspoken expectation that this student will be expected to “provide” for this family once @bigbluebelugawhale is earning their millions (no guarantees of that), that OP senses the family will make huge personal sacrifes that @bigbluebelugawhale isn’t comfortable with.
Meanwhile, UCLA is a GREAT school and a lot of people here are saying, hey, Yale is worth the extra $200k or whatever it might be. I’m not so sure it is worth and extra $200k for this kids family. UCLA is hardly East Podunk State U.
What you do is follow your head and not your heart. Here’s your head talking…
You will almost certainly be able to achieve the same success at UCLA. I think it’s unfair on you, a 17 or 18 year old, to have to consider the financial burden of this decision, but it seems that you are the most clearheaded person in your family. Imagine if you don’t get your mega millions job at Bain (of course, they might love working at Bain), but instead, you get another job that makes you really happy but won’t come close to repaying your parents’ debt? That’s a lifetime of stress, guilt, etc…that you’ll have to deal with. Make decisions that will make you happy.
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Your tags in this thread include Princeton, Stanford and Harvard in addition to Yale. Did you apply to those additional schools too…or were those tags a mistake?
At this point…really all you can do is wait to see IF you get accepted to UCLA (which sounds like the only UC you really are interested in), and then discuss the finances with your family.
I’m not sure there is any additional advice you can get here.
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#1 - how much $$?
And their assumptions are false. Future loans will not be wiped. Nor has a single penny of past btw. And inflation will hurt the ability to pay, not help.
#3. That’s all you need to know why this is a bad decision.
Listen, maybe you will be a clerk for a Justice or maybe you’ll be an I Banker. But the odds strongly say you won’t.
I, for one, am shocked at what some are telling you.
If you tell me your parents need $40 or $60k in loans over four years, I’m not a fan but I get it.
If it’s $100k and up and potentially $300k, there is no one who should ever put themselves in that sort of debt.
Loans have costs - financial and mental as you’ve noted.
Do you really want these loans hanging over your head. Btw don’t forget when you borrow money not only are you accruing interest on day one (after the small federal loans) but you are paying 4.2% just to get the money. So you borrow $100k, you aren’t. You are only borrowing $95,800. The rest is a fee for the privilege of borrowing.
If you borrow $60k at 6% and rates are going up, that’s $666 a month for 10 years. 150k is $1665. But my rate is too low and don’t forget the 4.2% you lose.
This makes Yale far more expensive than even $88k.
Perhaps you’ll be the exception but most would be strangled by this. It’s why so many high paid medical professionals say taking on debt was the dumbest thing they ever did.
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Yes, talk to your parents and get specifics on the financial picture.
Keep in mind that even if your parents are expecting loan forgiveness, Yale is not. They are assessing ability to pay and I believe assuming there won’t be any loans. So they must be seeing something that indicates ability to pay from current assets or income; or there was an error somewhere.
Having said that, do take a look at the income based repayment programs that are a significant part (though less publicized) of the current administration’s plans. I haven’t followed closely enough to give advice but maybe others have.
The fact that your parents are talking about arbitraging interest rates against inflation makes me think they might have a better understanding and capacity of financing this than you might think.
Anyway, don’t get discouraged and give yourself some time to understand the full picture before stressing too much.
If you can swing a trip to admitted student days I’d definitely do it.
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No matter the source, every article states to find retirement ahead of college. Just one of a million examples.
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Well, not if there’s a significant inflation-sensitive asset that will grow in value at a faster rate than the carrying costs.
We don’t know whether this is the case or not. But I can definitely see a family in CA with 500k of equity in a rental home worth 800k deciding to borrow on that asset rather than sell, thinking that rent increases and appreciation will be a better net outcome.
That’s different than a family with insufficient assets and income that needs to borrow to cover the gap. But I guess I’m assuming Yale and parents might understand he finances better than worried student. That’s where I think a conversation will help.
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This I agree with.
Yale is likely as generous as they come and the parents have cash flow or assets to pull this off. Bit OP seems to feel otherwise.
The bigger issue here and it’s like family related as I’ve read on here other immigrant families are similar - that they’ll only consider high pedigree schools.
In doing so, where it’s not affordable, they will put a strangle on their kids or their own future.
Many here are making a lot of assurances about OP’s future income. These will likely not come to fruition, Yale or otherwise.
There are great schools out there should a UC not happen that are affordable. And many from these schools will, in fact, have Ivy grads working for them one day.
The federal government will not wipe out student loans of more than $10k. And if looks increasingly likely that even that won’t happen. $10k is the max and it’s still a big maybe.
Interest is a thing. So the parents can add, I have no clue, but maybe $15k? to the loans they might need to take out to pay for Yale. There is no magical money for college. The money is real and someone has to pay it. The debt doesn’t disappear.
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None of us has a crystal ball.
We are supposed to be here helping a 17 or 18 year old student with a question she posed.
At this point…nothing can be decided until she speaks with her parents, and finds out her other acceptances. Maybe she will get a small scholarship at the UC…it happens.
At this point, I hope this student puts all of this aside, and just waits. Then have the family discussion. Go from there.
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I think it might be a good idea for the family to sit down with a CFP fee based, especially since the OP doesn’t think the parents have retirement funds. If they need to take loans, depending on the amount, interest can definite top $15,000. We co-signed private loans for our kids, they take us off a year after graduation, there were many months we paid (autopay) $1000+ a month to get a lower interest rate and to lower their debt. My oldest still has $20,000 in federal loans (privates are all paid off, she paid $1000 a month), she is hoping for Biden to make some go away (but knows that might not happen). She makes enough to pay them off.
In actuality though, it is not a $300k or $360k incremental cost for Op and her family, unless she gets a full ride covering all COA for UCLA. We need to look at the differential between UCLA and Yale. Assuming that UCLA is not going to be more generous in terms of FA or grant merit, 2022 to 2023 COA for UCLA is $37.5k vs $84.5k for Yale, a $47k annual difference or $188k over 4 years. By no means chump change, but this is the real additional cost we are talking about. Maybe still not worth it to some, but an easier number to imagine making up without getting into qualitative comparisons between the experience the OP would have at one vs the other.
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Good point.
We are all assuming that this student will make enough money on leaving college to pay off the parents’ debt. And this student has two siblings coming after them. Who is going to loan the parents more money to pay for the next two kids?
Granted, we do not know the exact finances of this family. But we can reasonably assume that there is not enough money to pay for Yale and the college education of two more siblings without substantial, possibly crippling loans. IMO, it is unfair to keep telling this student that it will all be fine. MAYBE this kid would like to be a social worker or a journalist. Why are we all assuming this person wants to head into a high pressured job that they might hate in order to ensure that she(?) is able to take care of her parents’ debts? Like it or not, that is most definitely an assumption we are all making.
Why can’t this student consider the route of less stress and not go into IB or management consulting? There was some mention of law school. That’s incredibly expensive and stressful too. What if this student does go to law school and ends up at Jacoby & Myers? (Judging by the billboards all over So Cal, they aren’t doing badly, so…) Btw, lawyers lead very streeeful lives, and this student seems to want to avoid stress.
This kid needs to live her own life and do what will make her happy down the line. This student needs to go to college to pursue HER dreams, not her parents’ dreams. And that does not mean forget about the parents and never support them. Cultural expectations are real, but this student does not have to live her life by cultural expectations. This student can choose to do what feels right for her. It seems that having her family go into debt that will also affect her siblings does not feel right to this student.
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The elephant in the room…and we don’t know the answer…
Will the Parents agree to fund a UC? We don’t know.
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There’s a lot we don’t know. And we don’t need to know, but the OP definitely needs to have a serious conversation with the parents.
I don’t believe OP said they needed loans for the entire cost of Yale so that needs to be clarified. Can they cash flow a UC but need loans for the difference?
Also, while the OP doesn’t think they have a 401K/IRA, that does not mean the parents don’t have funds or investments they plan to use for retirement. As someone else mentioned, that certainly would contribute to Yale classifying OP as full pay.
They may even have investments they specifically planned to leverage for college.
There’s too much unknown. And that’s not necessarily surprising as many parents do not share financial details with their kids. Since this is causing the OP so much stress, hopefully they can talk to the parents and share their fears, their wishes for a career… and they can all come up with the best plan for their family.
OP, I hope after that conversation your concerns will be addressed and you can move forward celebrating your accomplishments and enjoy making a college decision that is right for you. If on the off chance you want a backup plan of more affordable (but much less prestigious) schools still accepting applications, let us know. But I hope you won’t need that. 
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Yale is one of the most generous schools in the country and decided this family could afford the full COA. There has to be money somewhere that Yale is thinking they could use. It’s possible that all their money is tied up in the business and real estate and the family is choosing to borrow against their equity. This is not the same thing as a family that has no money at all and must borrow.
I’m not in favor of poor families going into debt to finance expensive colleges, but a wealthy family borrowing against equity is a very different thing. Maybe the family has lived frugally so the OP doesn’t realize how much money the family has and so she is worried. I’m still not convinced there is a problem here.
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