Dad of first kid through the admissions process for undergrad class of 2020. S accepted to state U honors & biz school with merit aid, good private with merit aid, and top LAC with no merit/aid. State U is 20 minutes from home, not especially distinguished, very familiar, and ~50 kids from HS class will attend.
Between savings, HE, and cash-flow (requiring significant tightening of household budget), S is looking at taking on significant debt with exception of State U. Obviously many families are in a similar funding situation, but am I alone in feeling that telling a kid that has worked really hard and excelled academically/athletically/service that, “sorry, to attend where you’ve worked so hard to get accepted, you’re looking at ~$100K debt”, is a pretty tough reality to digest? Meanwhile there are those fortunate enough to pay full cost with no assistance and those fortunate enough to be in a financial situation to be offered a much more affordable (much less or no debt) package. In between, it seems, families of qualified kids are being told they should be able to afford ~$250K for undergrad, which is outrageous in my opinion.
This has been discussed many times before. Those of us stuck in the realm of “making too much for meaningful financial aid, but not able to afford the EFC of privates”, have to make choices. Your son is not alone. Unfortunately, if he didn’t apply to schools that provide good merit aid, he is stuck with either going to State U or taking on debt. For any subsequent kids, it is really good advice to find a financial safety that the kid likes. It is frustrating to not be in the position to give our kids what they want and we think they deserve, but the reality is that he can still be very successful.
The reality is that being able to go away to college is a privilege and a majority of kids don’t get that opportunity. Most commute to local CCs or Us. Kids that get substantial financial aid often have not had the advantages that kids from higher income families don’t get.
One other option would be to take a gap year and apply to a wider range of schools, including some that may offer better merit money. He will be fine, try not to feel too bad about this.
@midcdad Everyone has to play with the cards they’ve been dealt. Lots of people here will advise posters to let your budget guide your application list. I’m sure lots of parents and kids get different advice and it primarily focuses on fit and getting accepted without regard to affordability.
For sure, my high school senior has had a lot of trouble accepting our financial restraints. When building our application list her junior year, she was not all that pleased with the schools I was adding, based on our budget. She felt like she “could do better”.
When she pressed to apply to some more prestigious schools, I warned her that I would not veto it, but that I was concerned she might actually get accepted, but we’d have to say no because we would not be able to afford it.
That’s exactly what happened. She got accepted. We had to say no, not affordable. She had a hard time understanding why we wouldn’t let her borrow in order to attend her dream school.
She will watch some of her classmates attend her dream school this coming fall. That’s life. She has some fantastic affordable options. She’s very lucky. But, she’s in the Bubble where there’s considerable distortion on how things really work. Plus, lots and lots of emotions and thinking that where you go to college is a measure of your self-worth and destiny.
I don’t know if I would consider a low-income situation fortunate.
It’s frustrating. I get that. But you also have to look at where you’re going to get aid, whether it’s merit or need. There’s always somewhere that will offer a good deal, you just have to find it and find what will work for your family.
Appreciate the feedback. So who ends up going to top privates these days - .1%'ers, super-needy, super smart, and super athletes? Maybe I just answered my own question.
OP, I am squarely in the middle class and my D is attending a school that meets full need. They were very generous with aid, but she had plenty of alternatives in case the aid didn’t come through. We ran the Net Price Calculator at every school she was considering, and if the cost was not in the ballpark of affordability, then she just did not apply. The key is to do this before applications are submitted, not after results come back.
Many students have other funding sources. This can mean parental employers, national merit money, outside scholarships tailored to a particular racial/national/geographic/occupational group, federal aid, and more.
Unfortunately, these are generally available to students with special circumstances, and many middle-class families will fall through the cracks. But attending a top private is anything but the norm - as a very recent thread reminds us, most students attend public universities or community colleges. That’s not to say there aren’t ways to make top private schools more affordable (our tuition dollars fund marginally useful costs, like climbing walls and lazy rivers, and total bonanzas like the promotional mailings and rankings voodoo every college has stepped up in recent years). What it does mean is that this question is a problem for the fortunate. Your daughter - like most students accepted to top privates - has some terrific options, and will succeed wherever she goes.
@midcdad It’s true that top schools will have a % of full-pays. According to the NPC at one selective school, we would have paid a bit over 1/2 the sticker price. For some families, that would be within reach. For us? It’s not smart to stretch and borrow that much $ for an UG degree, so it’s off the table.
Maybe if we hadn’t gone through unemployment and underemployment in 2008, maybe if we had saved more for college, maybe if we didn’t have those out of pocket medical expenses, maybe if we made $20-30K more per year, maybe if we had grandparents subsidizing, maybe if we were in a stronger position for retirement…
It is what it is. We are so fortunate to have other affordable, less sexy, but very good (and smart!) options.
We listened to Frank Bruni’s book on a long car trip junior year. I found it helpful to keep me grounded.
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So who ends up going to top privates these days - .1%'ers, super-needy, super smart, and super athletes?[\QUOTE]
If you are talking about the very top privates I think the answer is.1%'ers, super-needy, super athletes, and those whose parents planned for and saved for this for a very long time.
Note that I took out super smart. Super smart kids can get full rides but not to the very top schools (with a few extreme exceptions)
@suzy100 - 3 of 4 schools my son was wait-listed at are on the list, 1 where he was accepted (Lafayette) is not. But if need is EFC-based, I don’t believe the picture would look any different at the other schools.
Each school calculates what need means, so it could vary a lot.
Anyway, the current system is screwed up. The moral I draw from this is that each kid should do what they love and work hard for that reason. Not for extrinsic reasons like getting in to certain colleges.
Granted, tough to carry out with teenagers where perspective and maturity may not be in large supply and self-worth may be tied to extrinsic sources like peers or achievements.
I took a very brief maternity leave after my kids were born, and other than that have worked steadily since the week I graduated from college.
I have friends, siblings, other relatives who decided not to go back into the workforce once their kids were born- one took a lengthy “sabbatical” to write a book (which has not yet found a publisher) and others who were happy to pursue fitness, gourmet cooking, artistic interests, etc. in lieu of paid employment.
Is it “fair” that because I stayed in the workforce I make more money than someone who took 15 years off and is now making a fraction of what they were earning when they left their profession? Is it “fair” that I have health insurance and a 401K and many of them do not- because they are working 20 hours a week with a flexible schedule?
I don’t worry about fair. I made my own decisions and they made theirs. I realize that a mom working the cash register at Walmart just to keep a roof over her kids head doesn’t get to sit around and ask, “Gee, am I fulfilled at work or should I quit and take a class on Tuscan wine?” So we are all talking about first world problems from the git-go.
But people make choices. And staying in the workforce (if you have the luxury of making that decision) isn’t emphasized enough- particularly to young women- as a choice which will have consequences long after you’ve paid the daycare bill or the hefty price for an after school program.
It also means that, before application season, the parents must figure out their financial situation and what they can afford to contribute, and talk to the student about that, so that an application list that is likely to produce affordable admission offices can be made.
It can be a major let-down for the student to apply to a list of schools only to find out in retrospect that most of the applications (and the effort that went into them) were wasted, in that there was no realistic hope of those schools being affordable. Had s/he known beforehand what the cost constraints were, s/he could have avoided the wasted applications and the let-down of being admitted but being told only in April by the parents that s/he cannot go due to cost.
@midcdad The flip side of the coin is that those same kids are often capable of receiving high $$ scholarships at schools who are actively seeking strong students. There are schools which offer full ride or full tuition to NMF. There are schools which offer full ride or full tuition based on high test scores/high GPA.
Students who really excel have opportunities available to them if they are willing to go somewhere lower down the ladder. They can attend those schools and really shine and find lots of doors open to them.
Avg students with parents with limited funds have far fewer options.
10 years out…son went to state with his 20 closest buddies
Son had great choices 2006 Ivy at $180,000 … Duke and Swarthmore at $104,000… Case $45,000 … Penn State Honors free++ (they offered to pay him to go there…really)
Took Penn State. (Recession hits 2008 ) Graduated Phi Beta Kappa, 2 degrees, went on to top 10 grad school (free) . Left there. Went to work. Bought a condo. Work paid for his MS in computer science at Georgia Tech. Now looking around for other opportunities as he can afford it. He is 27 yrs old. Husband retired last year at 59.
I was worried back then that he was leaving good schools on the table…