<p>
I think I’ve read somewhere that most college students attend college within 200 miles of home. Being able to come home more often is probably a factor in that stat.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>Right…</p>
<p>Maybe I’m reading too much “between the lines,” but my feeling is this. This may be the only child of the OP single mon, and they are very close. It might be very hard for both to only see each other twice a year. But, again, maybe I’m reading too much between the lines. :)</p>
<p>1sttimemom–</p>
<p>I do not like to see someone with your income taking on so much debt. In your shoes I would have been suggesting community college for 2 yr, then state, or state U with aid, etc. If your D wants/needs to go to grad school later, how is she paying for that? Better she should have less debt from ugrad years.</p>
<p>On the traveling, my oldest D’s best friend went to Brown, and came from Calif. In the FA pkg, they calculate 2 round trips/yr in the travel allowance—Sept, to & from at winter break, and end of May. The rest, the kid stays with friends, as in “goes to East Coast friend’s for Thanksgiving.” Brown allows FA kids with major distance issues (India, California) to briefly move to certain dorms during winter holiday (because they turn the heat way down in all the others!). The same wd probably apply at other schools when distance is great, though I don’t know.</p>
<p>You are making an appeal? FA offices use tables of averages for cost of living in different parts of the country, when calculating EFC. Do this – make photocopies of your actual bills, the ones you can do nothing about. Several copies if it varies from season to season. Mortg, elec bill, other utils, heating oil, health/life ins or doctor bills, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, charge card bills and car loans do not count because they are considered consumer debt. Write a polite letter saying this is what I have to meet every month. </p>
<p>FA officers pay these bills themselves, at home. If you give them the real numbers instead of a table of averages, they can use those. We did this at Brown and it worked for us. D got better aid package. We didn’t do it as an appeal, we just sent it in with our application.</p>
<p>From what you describe in finances, if it was me, D wd be going to the instate school. You are presumably middle aged and that is a mountain of debt to take on at this point in your life. Your D does not need it either, just when she is starting out after graduation.</p>
<p>Assuming she did her homework and applied to a school that had what she was looking for in majors, etc, she will get what she needs there, and she will be able to make great friends and all anywhere she goes. You & she both sound like lovely people!</p>
<p>D can also be an RA at the instate school too, and cut costs there. There are places here & there you can shave college costs – not by lots, but by enough to take away some of the sting – and I can list some ( Is there another thread for this?) I put myself through college, though years ago. </p>
<p>I hope the best for you and your daughter!</p>
<p>Can we ask what are the two top school choices?</p>
<p>Are they NU and FSU?</p>
<p>I’m reading this thread with interest because I’m a single mother having to take out PLUS loans for my daughter, too. (And mine, even though they’re low, will be about twice my income for the year. <em>grumble</em>)</p>
<p>I’m confused about one thing, though. Someone said that the phrase in the documentation about beginning payment after the end of enrollment means that the first payments have to begin at the end of that school year. (I can’t find the post that mentioned this.) However, I’m seeing the following: </p>
<p>“You can defer payments on your Parent PLUS loan until six months after your dependent student graduates, leaves school, or drops below half-time.” </p>
<p>Understanding that one can and <em>should</em> at least pay the interest during that time, isn’t it true that repayment can be defered until the student graduates? I ask because in four years I expect to have a higher income (well, higher than 5-10K a year, at least), but I have not planned on repayment beginning in 2012.</p>
<p>cal & mom2 - excellent points about travel expenses - thank you!</p>
<p>I think I found where a discrepancy or two may lay…
~ when I priced out tickets for the various flights - I accidentally made the one in August was a round trip ticket for D!!! freudian slip? maybe! hahahah
~ for freshman year travel expenses, I included the price of a ticket for me to fly up and back for move-in day… an experience I really do want to be there for.
~ this first year will have one additional trip - for freshman orientation
~ if the money’s managable, I’d like to go up for Parent’s Weekend freshman year</p>
<p>Having said that though…</p>
<p>Although I totally appreciate mom2’s sentiment of my D and I being two-peas-in-a-pod and not wanting to not see each other from Aug to Dec, that’s less true than just wanting to be supportive during freshman year by doing things like flying up for Parent’s Weekend and making sure she can come home (if she wants to) for her first college Thanksgiving. </p>
<p>Help set up her dorm in Aug. and pick her up at the airport in Dec. is totally doable… and if that’s the case, then why borrow money for unneeded trips? Silly. That’s a valubale thought that wouldn’t have occured to me without your helpful insights. Thank you!</p>
<p>mom2 - FSU & GWU</p>
<p>So sorry, am not secretive by nature, but I’m not sure what the protocol is for sharing details of financial aid packages in a public forum? But since I’ve shared the school names on other forums (not w/ aid details), it wouldn’t be that tough to figure out. </p>
<p>Hope sharing the details of the aid packages isn’t a break in decorum… just trying to figure things out. :)</p>
<p>JRZ - </p>
<p>Thank you for your response. Yes - she has several in state options - public and private - for which we are very grateful. </p>
<p>None of them seem to have the total package of what she’s looking for - academically, socially, environmentally, extra curricularly - but, like the song says, “we can’t always get what we want” and she’s capable of weighing her greatest “needs and wants” and is free to choose from among the state schools. </p>
<p>Although I likeyour idea for the appeal method, I have already sent in the request and D has followed up with a thanks you for reconsidering email, so it’s probably best to leave things alone - for fear I’ll bother them too much. </p>
<p>Unless the OOS appeal has amazing results, she’ll have to forego the joys of the dream school in favor of less debt at a perfectly-fine school. :)<br>
An important life lesson, yes?</p>
<p>Trin - </p>
<p>Thank you for posting yoru question - I jsut went to the PLUS Loan website to get a definitive answer…</p>
<p>When do I begin repaying a PLUS Loan?
Parents now have the choice of making payments while the student is in school or deferring payments until the student graduates. If you choose to pay after graduation, interest will accrue from the time of full disbursement. You can choose to pay the interest monthly, or you can defer both interest and principle until the student graduates. If you choose not to pay the interest monthly, it is capitalized no more than four times per year.</p>
<p>Thanks for helping me to clarify!!!</p>
<p>No problem with sharing aid details.</p>
<p>There are kids here who literally copy/paste their aid packages to have parents help them “sort out” what it all means for them. No protocol breaks. :)</p>
<p>I don’t know if this is a consideration (my memory is foggy…LOL)…</p>
<p>What is your D’s likely major and likely career? What kind of income do you expect her to be earning during her early years? Those are all things to consider when weighing student debt.</p>
<p>Oh…and I am in total agreement that you want to be supportive for your D’s first year - hence the airfares! :)</p>
<p>TrinSF – yes, payment on the PLUS loans CAN be deferred. One advantage to PLUS loans is their flexibility. The reason that this isn’t mentioned is because of the running of interest – but if you think you can manage the interest during the deferral period, it may be an option. But keep in mind that more than half of the payment IS interest during the early period of the loan. So, for example, if you borrowed $10,000 at 7.9%, a monthly payment if amortized over 10 years would be roughly $125, and an interest-only payment would be almost $70. So over 4 years you would pay more than $3000 just to stay in one place.</p>
<p>It might make more sense to opt for extended repayment (amortized over 20 years rather than 10) – then your monthly payments would be roughly $85, but you would be very slowly reducing principal, and at the end of 4 years, a couple of hundred less would have been charged in interest. You can always accelerate payment later on – another advantage of PLUS loans is that there is no penalty whatsoever for prepayment – so if your income is low now but you expect it to go up in the future, then you can just start paying more whenever you feel you want. (No need to renegotiate terms with the lender – interest is only charged on the outstanding balance whatever it is, and anything beyond interest is automatically applied to principal).</p>
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<p>But your travel is optional, not covered by your daughter’s financial aid. And while you can do what you want, I’d actually recommend visiting your daughter any weekend but Parent’s Weekend. Unless you have your heart set on meeting other parents. I actually waited to visit my daughter until spring of her first year and I’m glad I did – by that time she was very well settled and I was able to meet her friends and attend some classes with her. I felt I had a much better sense of student life visiting at a time when the campus was relatively quiet and there weren’t any events specifically set up with the goal of impressing or entertaining parents — that is, I saw the real deal. </p>
<p>In my case, because my daughter didn’t come home for spring break, that visit also satisfied the desire to see my daughter in roughly the same time frame. (I didn’t visit during break, but it was within a few weeks of that time). </p>
<p>Is your daughter’s separate freshman orientation mandatory? If so, and if that will involve an added travel cost, you might ask financial aid whether the COA includes that amount – and if not, to allot more to cover that added expense.</p>
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</p>
<p>I’d add that when my daughter was a freshman - I did pay for a special added gift for her: a web cam (less than $50). That was before they started including them as a standard feature on all laptops! Between the web cam and facebook, I’ve always had virtual tour of my daughter’s dorm room and the opportunity to meet her friends, even “friending” some of them myself.</p>
<p>
I know I am stating the obvious, but I just want to remind people that “capitalized” is the point at which you start paying interest on the accrued interest. </p>
<p>I think it is a huge mistake to let interest accrue on any loan unless there is a very, very strong reason for doing so. (For example, if you were very short of money now but knew for certain that a large sum of money, like an inheritance or proceeds of sale of real property, was coming your way in the fairly near future - and you just needed to bridge a gap of a few months). </p>
<p>I feel the same way about unsubsidized stafford loans. If you (or your kid) have limited financial resources, I don’t see how it can possibly help to accumulate debt for NOTHING – which is exactly what interest is. Rather than being the beneficiary of financial aid, you become the donor – that is, you are giving financial aid to the lender. (or the federal government, as the case may be). </p>
<p>Anyway, I think the cold hard truth in many cases is that if you can’t afford to start paying down a loan in the near term… then you can’t afford whatever it is you are borrowing for, whether it is school or a house or any other major purchase. </p>
<p>It may seem like financing a kid to attend a prestigious college may be just the ticket for the kid’s future – but the reality is that its not all that easy for a newly minted college grad to find a job that pays all that much better than what someone who does not have a degree but has 4 years of full time work experience would be earning. Down the line there is no doubt that the degree opens more doors – but being saddled with debt early on really can be very limiting.</p>
<p>calmom - </p>
<p>quite right - why i put MY travel expense in HER loans, i do not know - just fell into grouping all college-related money together in one heap… sloppy thinking, that. </p>
<p>visiting not on Paren’ts Weekend but at another time - great idea - thanks! more bang for the buck!</p>
<p>love the webcam… i hope to be a skype expert by then!</p>
<p>
1sttimemom said her daughter plans to major in journalism. Unfortunately job prospects and rate of pay are rather bleak in that field.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Thanks…I forgot the journalism major. </p>
<p>And, you’re right, the income/job prospects are not good for that field…minimal loans are needed.</p>
<p>
It works both ways. I have often been asked to aim the webcam on my end at the dog. (Unfortunately, kids away from home seem to miss their pets more than their parents)</p>
<p>she would love to major in theatre/acting, but since job prospects are terrible there, I;ve said that she can double major in theater and something else or can minor in theatre, but not just major in theatre alone.
so what does she pick? journalism - a field with job prospects no better than acting! (no offense intended to journalists or actors… i’m just amused by the choice of 2 majors with low prospects… yikes!)</p>
<p>Keep in mind that both of those are fields that people can succeed in without college degrees, and certainly without degrees from prestigious colleges. These are fields where experience and specific accomplishments are valued far more highly than the name of the school on a diploma. </p>
<p>I don’t want to diminish the value of a liberal arts education – I’m just suggesting that your daughter think long and hard about what her career goals are and how her education (and future debt) could impact that.</p>