My post wasn’t addressed to the OP. I don’t know the OP well enough to know if OP was serious. But that isn’t the point. And I think characterizing the concept as “incredibly cheap and void of common decency” is overly dramatic.
There are people who game the financial aid system. With the dollars involved (on an after tax basis) its naïve to think it doesn’t happen.
@saillakeerie “Colleges are not going through this analysis at all. As long as they are getting the quality of kids they want with the mix of full pay versus aid kids that works, they do not care how anyone is funding their portion of the cost of attendance. Saying they have these expectations would mean they owe something to people who apply but they don’t. And they shouldn’t. Assuming they are getting the kids they want with the amount of aid that works for the institution, whether they deal a family with $x amount of income or $y amount of assets as being able to afford full freight with current income, loans, selling assets, savings or a combination of all of the above won’t change how they approach aid.”
This is exactly what colleges tell parents about paying, and how to come up with the $, so whether you believe cynically they care how you come up with it is your choice.
And while no one spends $65k on travel, what the poster meant was, that $10k family trip may be cancelled or they will be $10k short to pay the bill that year.
@hrsmom You can naively believe everything that a business tells you as its your choice. But living in the real world, I know that isn’t the case. And I had no fewer than 5 colleges tell me and a group of other visiting parents and students “Don’t worry about sticker price because nobody pays it.” Now we know that statement isn’t true. There is nothing cynical about it. Its just a fact. There are plenty of people who pay sticker price. But they said it just the same.
Again, there is no reason for a school to care about the issue. Now there is a reason (a business one) to tell people you care. There are a lot of people who fall into the “they say it so it must be true” camp.
The $10k trip takes us down a path we have been many times on this board. There isn’t anything to be gained from going there yet again. But I will offer this suggestion which someone I know used which may well be as helpful: If you are worried about affording college, drive a 5 series BMW for a few years rather than a 7 series.
For the record, I work with someone who spends more than 100k annually on restaurants and leisure travel. When the time came, paying for college wasn’t an issue, but they still opted for a school where their child got merit money. If their child had gotten into her first choice (ivy-esque LAC) they would have happily paid full price, but they all decided other schools weren’t worth the premium over the good school where she ended up. Their kid is thriving and I totally respect their decision.
Why don’t the college deduct $40k tuition from the price tag if they claim that on average, a student get around $40k financial aid (no loan). The price tag is a game.
Average doesn’t mean that’s the amount every student gets – or even that most students get. If one student gets a full ride ($70k) and another gets $0 in aid, the average grant is $35k. The average doesn’t tell you much.
Complaining won’t help your daughter. You really need to figure out how much you can pay out-of-pocket. I don’t think any organization is going to give you $40k/year so your daughter can go to Yale. If your ceiling is $30k and your daughter is a senior, you might want to invest some time in finding schools that offer merit.
“Why don’t the college deduct $40k tuition from the price tag if they claim that on average, a student get around $40k financial aid (no loan). The price tag is a game.”
I think that there are a few reasons. One is that some students can’t afford “full price minus $40k”, and they want to give every academically strong student the chance to attend university. Whether it is fair or not I don’t know, but this does mean that parents earning $260,000 per year get to pay quite a bit more for the same education compared to the average student. I suppose that if everything were priced this way there might be no point in making $260,000 per year.
“If your kid is an A student as your name implies and has high test scores, there will be cheaper options.”
There are indeed many academically and otherwise very good less expensive options. There are great schools with very strong professors and beautiful campuses that your child can attend for less than half of the full price at Yale. They will get a great education, and end up with a degree that doesn’t say “Yale” on it. If you don’t want to pay $65,000 or $70,000 per year then you don’t need to. This might mean that your child doesn’t go to Yale.
My own opinion is that even if we can afford $70,000 per year, we would need to be very convinced that there was a good reason to pay that much before I would want to shell it out. For undergrad I am not convinced. Other people clearly have other opinions.
Come on. You obviously read a lot. You must have read that tuition doesn’t cover the full cost of a student, even when “full pay.”
You are on a Yale subforum. Let me be emphatic about this. Your daughter’s COA will be in the neighborhood of $70/year, if your finances are as you say here. Some people believe Yale is worth that (including me) and others don’t (that’s what makes horse races). If your opinions are what you present them as here, your daughter would be better served by your spending time looking for merit aid. And Yale, by Ivy League rules, does not award merit aid.
Grousing can be fun, but it won’t change your daughter’s COA.
@ParentofA_student
What exactly do you want…? Or are you just venting?
You have $260,000 a year income. This very likely will NOT net you a dime of need based aid at ANY college in this country. So…either decide you are paying the full price…or two your kid she can’t go to college.
She won’t get aid at Yale…or really anywhere else.
But she could get very very substantial merit aid at Ole Miss, or Alabama.
These applications are live…now. She could apply to Alabama and have her admission decision with aid in about three weeks. And it would certainly be a fraction of the cost of Yale…or UNC…or ND…or UVA…or any of the other schools you have named.
What bout your own instate public university? Surely it’s less costly than Yale.