<p>Where to start...
I will be a senior high school student in Nebraska this school year. I am considering a few regional schools, almost all of them public. I think I am beginning to really take a liking to Iowa State. I plan to major in biology with the expectation that I will go to medical school.</p>
<p>My statistics (currently)
ACT: 34
GPA: 4.2 (weighted - but my school only weighs AP classes and not honors classes), 4.0 unweighted
I will take 8 AP classes over the course of my entire high school career (so far all A's and 4/5's on AP exams)
PSAT: 206. Don't know yet if I will qualify as NMSF
Extracurriculars: 3 years of golf (don't plan to play in college), participation in a few clubs, membership in National Honor Society, will complete more than 300 hours of volunteer work by graduation (already have 200ish and counting)</p>
<p>Financial status:
My parents make between $90 and 100k gross income annually, and using FAFSA estimates I am not surprised we are not eligible for federal need based aid. I have a job but I make very little (well under $2,000 annually).
My parents have no college fund for me. I don't know much in the way of specifics but it sounds like I am pretty much flying solo as far as funding college. Instead of a college fund, they chose to invest in their retirement because that will probably give me stability in the long run and I feel that is a wise decision.</p>
<p>HOWEVER:
If I am looking at an additional 10+ years of training (med school, residencies, internships, fellowships, etc.) I see taking on significant debt as an undergraduate to be a poor decision. It looks like, when comparing UNL and ISUs' tuition rates, there is a difference of $11,000 at ~$18,000 and ~$29,000 per year respectively. I have heard of people getting near in-state tuition at Iowa State from merit-based scholarships but I am not sure that is enough. I should be eligible for at least a Regent's scholarship at UNL which would cover the cost of tuition for me making my tuition more like $10,000, making it the obvious choice.
So I guess this is a heart or head kind of question (and I haven't even completely narrowed it down to just UNL and ISU) but can I afford to pay more for OOS tuition, leaving me in deeper debt? Or is there a way that through scholarships from ISU this entire question can be avoided and it can be just as affordable to go to ISU as to UNL?
Sorry for the long post. I got a little carried away.</p>
<p>Do some reading in the premed forum while you are here.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make sense to pay OOS tuition when you have an instate option and plan for med school, imo. If you parents planned to help you it might make for different options but you are in a tough place of borrowing if they won’t. Kids whose parents aren’t paying a portion have fewer options. </p>
<p>You yourself can borrow
frishman 5,500, soph 6,500, jr 7,500, sr 7,500</p>
<p>The rest of any borrowing has to be done by your parents.</p>
<p>You will have to apply to see what package you will get unless you apply to a guaranteed scholarship college like UA. You can try running Net Price Calculators but they won’t usually show merit aid. Read the threads pinned to the top of the forum regarding automatic and competitive large scholarship colleges.</p>
<p>You can only borrow 5500 for your frosh year, so even if you get a free tuition scholarship, you wont have enough to pay for room, board, books, etc.</p>
<p>You need to allow about 15k per year to cover room, board, books, fees, travel, personal expenses, etc. </p>
<p>I dont think you will make NMSF. I think NE cutoff has been several points higher in recent years. </p>
<p>talk to your parents to see if they will contribute at least $5k per year towards college. Then plan on working during summers to bring in another 2-3 thousand. And, work part time during the school year for pocket money.</p>
<p>My parents would not leave me dead in the water without even enough money to go to my in-state school of choice, so the borrowing will at least be covered. However, I will need to pay them back in the future. I would love to go OOS but I think I may need to face facts and see that it is just unrealistic.</p>
<p>OK that’s good to hear. Did you read the automatic tuition thread, last post has a link to current info? I think you’d get a full ride a Univ of Alabama and certainly at a few other colleges. </p>
<p>I did! I will be looking further into those. Unfortunately none of them seem to be very close by, but I should still look into them with an opportunity like that.</p>
<p>Here is the thing: A lot of parents just don’t sit down and think about what they can and want to pay for college. For those kids who have parents actively involved in the process, usually, though not always, the whole thing of college choice is also very important to them and they are will to extend themselves to make things work out the way the kids want. </p>
<p>In my experience, the parents who pretty much let their kids do the work and don’t get involved in the nitty gritty, particularly the annoying thing of COST, don’t focus on that cost until it’s time to put the money down. Then that becomes the focus. Many parents hedge their bets on what they will pay, by waiting to see what’s on the table, and then decide that the kid can just commute from home to a local state school or some private offering a discount, rather than going to State U which would cost them an average of $25K a year. For those parents I know, there isn’t going to be ANY financial aid, particularly for State U. Kid can take out $5500 in loans that first year, and that’s it. No work study offers, no scholarships, nothing. This often is a big shock to the parents when they have a good student in that kid, reasonable test scores and they have been drinking the scholarship and financial aid kool aid saying that no one is deprived an education at XYZ College due to need. I’ve heard a number of Admissions folks out and out say that at parent/school presentation without explaining that need is defined by that college, not by the parent/family or even FAFSA. </p>
<p>My son’s friend was basically told to apply where ever he wanted to go, and things would work out. He’s now commuting to a local school that offered him a full tuition award, not what he wanted, but he did not qualify for financial aid nor did he get much in other scholarships. His first choice school would have cost $60K+ and, horrors, his parents were not about to pay that, could not afford it. Nice if they had said this at the onset and looked more carefully into what they would have been expected to pay at such schools so the kid doesn’t have an array of such acceptances that are not choices for him. But that’s what often happens. </p>
<p>If they had told him during application season, then he could have built an application list where the schools all had a good likelihood of being affordable, possibly leading to more or better low cost choices available in April. Applying without knowing the cost constraints risks a financial shutout where all admissions are to schools which are too expensive (and applications to schools which have little or no chance of affordability tend to be wasted time and money).</p>
<p>Well that is not what nebgal’s parents are saying. But it is a good point to cost out her instate safety and make sure the parents know they are going to pay that amount. To tell a kid they have to pay it all back is pretty crummy. I’d probably stiff my parents if that was the case. </p>
<p>So it is a good idea to have the automatic safeties. I don’t know why it is ‘too far’ what with skype and phone and these newfangled airplanes and all, but that’s up to you and if you want to spend years paying back your parents. I’d rather be putting the money into my own retirement account, and emergency fund and all–, how come their nest egg matters so much more than your nest egg?</p>