Change in family circumstances.

Paying for College
1

I applied to a few schools EA, submitting the schools’ own financial aid forms. My EA schools include one that pledges to meet full demonstrated need for all applicants.

The broad strokes of my family’s finances are these:

Parental income totals ~$250,000
Assets (minus money owed on a mortgage) are about $125,000
I’ve got about $3000 in savings and made $500 from an internship last summer

However, one of my parents just got a job in a different country, starting in March. This’ll mean an increase in living expenses, due to the necessity of renting a house (while the rest of us remain in our current home) and other expenses associated with the specific position.

To this, one can add the fact that we live in a very high cost-of-living area (outskirts of a city regularly ranked among the 3 most expensive globally), so a parental income that seems very high at a glance is actually close to the local median.

Because of all this, I’m concerned that FA offers won’t be enough, since my family will be paying rent for a house in another country and repaying our mortgage, in addition to some of the world’s highest non-housing expenses. If this is the case, might an appeal lead to an increased FA offer? Does anyone know how applicants in similar circumstances have fared?

2

IF your family makes $250,000 it is highly unlikely that you are going to receive any need based aid anywhere unless you currently have multiple siblings in college or some really extenuating circumstances.

You parent choosing to take a job in another country and the cost associated with taking that job is a choice and a school will most likely not increase your aid because of it.

3

Why would your parent accept this job if he wasn’t being compensated for it? Who takes a new job that requires a large new expense unless the new salary is much higher or the company is providing some sort of housing subsidy.

If your family can’t afford this new expense, then why not stay with the current job?

How much of an increase in salary is this new job? Wll the parent receive a housing subsidy from his company?

4

@sybbie719 Sorry if I wasn’t clear about this, but this new job is a transfer within the same organization. My parents’ employer will assign people to various countries - it isn’t much of a choice if you want to keep your job.

So colleges won’t generally take cost of living into account with FA offers?

5

When employers assign people to other countries, then often they give either a housing subsidy or an increased wage.

Are you saying that your parent won’t be getting any sort of income adjustment or housing subsidy? Is this a long term assignment?

Cost of living isn’t a consideration.

How much aid were you expecting or needing to get??

6

Unfortunately they don’t and also as was noted, with that income, they expected family contribution is pretty high unless there are multiple kids in school. In that case it’s still high, just divided up between kids. Good luck to you!

7

Our family income includes a housing subsidy, but that’s linked to the job of the parent who’s staying put, and won’t change with this move.

Both brothers are in English schools. As those are all private in our region, tuition expenses total about 10% of parental income. Elder of the two will likely be in college come 2017

8

The CSS profile does ask about expenses for younger kids’ education and some schools take that into account. You can also get merit based aid and if your parents cannot pay the full amount, it would be a good idea to focus on schools where you can get merit aid. Many many people cannot pay the high EFCs that are computed. The way to deal with that is find merit aid. There are a lot of good resources for research on that here.

9

Are you an American citizen or an international?

10

I’ve got a school lined up that should serve as a financial safety, as one of my EA schools offers a $30,000/year scholarship to NMF applicants, and I expect significant merit aid from that college even if I fail to make NMF. If I get no merit aid, I’ll send an application to one of the automatic full tuition schools someone helpfully listed elsewhere on CC.

Unfortunately, I’m not in-state for any public college, so that’s about as close as I can get to a “true” financial safety.

11

@Madison85 US citizen living abroad

12

How much will your parents pay each year for your college related expenses, including travel, personal expenses, and health insurance?

13

@mom2collegekids Parents live far enough from the US that I’m unlikely to be travelling back home all that often. Their employer covers flight tickets for one visit a year, and most of the family is back in the States, so no journeying back for Thanksgiving or Easter. Beyond that one visit (likely around Christmas), travel-related expenses should be limited to a yearly public transport pass and a contingency fund for about $500-$1000 a year. We’ll use the $3,000 I have in a savings account to cover the latter.

We’re still trying to figure out what to expect with regards to personal expenses. With on-campus housing mandatory for most schools I’m applying to, room and board aren’t going to cost much during my first year (budgeting an average of $5 a day for snacks/eating out/etc). I expect various incidentals, like cleaning materials, clothes, telephone costs, museum visits/outings, the odd train/coach ticket, etc. to add up to $5,000 a year or so.

Health insurance shouldn’t be an issue - I’ll be on my parents’ plan until I turn 26.

All told, in addition to the cost of attendance, we’re projecting perhaps $7,500 in “other” expenses (if this is ridiculously low, say so).

This’ll be offset, to an extent, by the fact that some of those expenses are the same as costs we’re already paying right now (clubs, public transport, clothing) and, although university tuition isn’t cheap, we’ll be shedding the cost of my current school.

I’m expecting to work over the summer - I’ve got the skillset for some jobs that will pay above minimum wage - to cover about half of this, and my parents are willing to take on the rest.

14

What I meant is: How much will your parents be paying each year towards college?

If a school’s COA is $65k…then how much of that will your parents pay?

With that income, schools are expecting your parents to pay ALL of that. How much are THEY expecting to pay???

As for insurance…you will need to see if your parents’ plan works in the state that you’ll be going to school. MANY find that their plans don’t work.

15

You can always write a letter to the FA office explaining the circumstances of your situation. In particular, the need to maintain a second residence for one parent’s job with apparently no per diem or expenses paid for it. They probably won’t make any adjustment, but you can ask. The “we live in a high cost area” won’t cut it. I personally would love to live in San Francisco, but choose not to die to the high cost of living. Colleges figure you could move, but your parents have made that choice.

16

Wouldn’t you already know if you are NMF?

17

I don’t think the NMF notifications have been made for this year, so the cutoffs are not known.

18

@Madison85 I know I’m a NMSF, but finalist status is announced in February.

http://www.nationalmerit.org/steps_nmsp.pdf

It’ll be a while before I have certainty in that respect.

@intparent I suppose I’ll send the FA office a letter outlining these particulars.

@mom2collegekids Ah, I see. Wasn’t sure if by “expenses” you meant tuition+room&board or incidentals.

Given a COA of $65K, our out-of-pocket expenses would be around $30,000 due to a third party contributing towards the cost of college given a certain tier of selectivity - it’s a very specific scholarship. Going into the details would make it too easy to identify me, but it’s a program whereby this third party pays for as much as $35,000/year towards college expenses. The idea is to allow students fitting my profile to attend colleges that are otherwise unaffordable - as a $65K/year school would be for me.

That’ll reduce the cost to my parents to $30,000, and if I make NMF then it’ll be worth $4,000/year at my top choice, or $30,000/year at my safety. Parents have set $25,000 as the upper limit of what they can pay, meaning I’ll be taking on the remainder in the form of loans.

Health insurance will be OK anywhere in the US - we’ve confirmed this.

At the moment there are two wild cards in this process. The first is rent, for reasons detailed above. The second is my brother - he may choose to attend a local university, where he’d pay low tuition (below $5,000) as a citizen of our country of residence. We’ll have more certainty on both those points in a month or two - when a residence has been rented and my brother has made some decisions with regards to school - but barring any large and unexpected medical expenses, the $25K figure won’t change too much. At worst, it might go down to $20,000.

If given the choice between taking on a six-figure debt for my bachelor’s degree and attending a financial safety, I don’t intend to make any foolish decisions. Ideally, I’d like to avoid that scenario.

19

Are you aware of the loan limits for students?

Interesting - mysterious $35k/yr scholarship for people of a certain profile which includes having parents with $250k+ annual income and desire to attend unaffordable $65k/year schools!

20

@Madison85 It’s a private fund aiming to sponsor attendance at top US colleges for descendants of a particular nationality. The pool of eligible students is small enough (100> a year) that the scholarship has been solvent even though it’s awarded automatically, largely because the trustees have restricted it to a list of about 25 schools in recent years. A lot of overlap with the top 20, though you’ll find a few surprising names on the list.

I’m aware of the usual loan limits - I gather the cap is $27,000 over 4 years. My parents are perfectly willing to cosign for another $10-20K in loans, and beyond that it’s likely I’d be choosing a financial safety.