So, I’ve been digging into finances more, and now I just want to go find a corner and cry.
Both schools are listed as:
Forbes B-
US Gov. Financial Responsibility Composite Score 3
I can’t find anything on the bond rating for college A except that it was withdrawn about 10 years ago, before that it was not good, above junk status but barely stable. The school is non-profit supported by Catholic Church, so I’m not sure if that changes anything. I haven’t been able to find anything on how much support the church provides.
For college B, the last bond rating decreased from A to A-, and it looks like the school has been having some financial trouble since around 2014. Apparently, the President sent out an email about the issue to students and staff in the fall of 2018. They enrolled and retained less students than anticipated, causing a 5 million dollar deficit each year this occurred. They also have some debt from new buildings being constructed. He attributed enrollment being down to parents’ safety concerns because of the shooting off campus, so I’m not sure how you really recover from that enrollment wise if it’s really the reason.
I’m not sure about anything at this point. It’s a really complicated situation because a lot depends on questions I don’t have answers to right now pertaining to daughter’s biological family. I keep rerunning the numbers trying to figure out what’s best, and if there’s anyway I can make it happen for her to stay at dream school.
Dream school - $5,000 short
School B - $1,500 short
School A - 0 short
What happened is her biological dad had promised $6,000 a year, and that fell through at the last moment. He’s been regularly contributing more than that to her education, so it wasn’t expected that he couldn’t do it. I thought financially he could do double that, so it never occurred to me there’d be a problem. However, he’s going through some major financial trouble right now, and no one, not even him, I think, realized how bad the situation was until very recently. I’m 99% sure by the time she’s an upperclassman he will be able to help to some extent, but he can’t do anything right now. It’s created a big mess at the worse possible time. We’ve discussed a gap year to give time to get everything financially sorted out, but there’s a number of reasons that’s not a good idea.
You keep mentioning your daughter’s “biological family.” Is she adopted or do you have legal guardianship of some sort? I ask because once she starts college they can’t discuss her business with you unless there are signed release forms.
I agree it would be more helpful if you named the schools. Not all students who are awarded Work Study are able to find a WS job. They have to apply once they get to campus. Larger schools may have more options.
It’s a really complicated situation I don’t feel comfortable discussing online, but I’ve always had POA over her, so I’m very familiar with the legal side of things.
I’m still not sure what we are going to do, but we’ll figure something out. I really just wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy for not pushing daughter toward the school where she basically has it all paid for verses the one where she’d need to work during the summers to make up what she’s short. In my mind, the difference in what you were getting for your money was worth it, and it looks like most of you agree with that, so we’ll see what she decides.