<p>Finally someone who sees the root of the problem. College tuitions are too high. No one could have possibly envisioned 18 years ago when you gazed down into the eyes of your beautiful new baby that their undergraduate college tuiton would cost you a quarter of a million dollars. Unless you live next door to Bill Gates this amount of money is scarey as hell. Lets stop beating each other up.</p>
<p>Yeah, basically, the problem is that college is expensive. And it’s expensive for probably 95% of the population. My family’s household income is in the six-figures, and although we are relatively well off, I wouldn’t say that we are wealthy. Especially not in terms of being able to easily pay the 55k per year needed for college tuition. After taxes, we are left with around 75k. Yes, that is a lot of money, but not enough to be even close to able to pay full freight. Merit aid allows me the possibility of lowering the costs of college past what need based aid could.</p>
<p>It’s not the super rich who make a million dollars every year who get all the merit aid. It’s often students from middle class families. And there’s nothing stopping lower income students for applying for merit aid as well. </p>
<p>And I guess in a sense, it’s the school’s money, and it’s their choice how they want to spend it. If they want to offer only merit scholarships, then that’s their decision. If they want to offer only need-based scholarships, then that’s their decision as well.</p>
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<p>Agreed - it’s a bit of a success tax mentality.</p>
<p>Re: [Workbook:</a> pellprivates_test](<a href=“http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/pellprivates_test/Sheet1?:embed=y&:display_count=no]Workbook:”>http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/pellprivates_test/Sheet1?:embed=y&:display_count=no)</p>
<p>Not sure where they got the net price numbers.</p>
<p>It says that Caltech’s net price for a low income student was $310. I put in some numbers into Caltech’s net price calculator with parental income low enough to give an EFC = $0, and none of parental assets, student income, or student assets, and it produced at net price of $2,850 (including an offer of $1,350 work study, leaving $1,500 which is well below the Stafford loan limit).</p>
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<p>On an annual income of over $200,000? Harvard’s net price calculator indicates that the income levels to not get financial aid there are quite high. (Of course, Harvard’s list price is still pretty expensive for someone just at the threshold of not getting financial aid.)</p>
<p>[Net</a> Price Calculator](<a href=“http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/]Net”>http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/)</p>
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<p>I wonder how a school would determine that a kid has an “optimal acceptance chance”? If it is stats and they are mediocre then why do they pursue the low need kid when stats are so important to their numbers?</p>
<p>Hint to normal income people. Start saving for your children’s education when they are young. Find a way early, before you get used to spending your money. We took advantage of house cost inflation profit to roll house equity into a 529 fund for children. $10,000 in 1992 turned into a healthy quantity of money despite the great recession. It’s allowed us to be generous to our children now without the pain of parent plus loans we can’t consider now in our near retirement years. A little pain now will give your children financial options 15 years from now whether they are merit scholar candidates or not.</p>
<p>jtmoney - that’s the trick, put it away early, and keep doing so. If you don’t spend it when they’re younger, you won’t miss it when you still have to spend it to round out the cost of college. We didn’t do exactly as you did, but we paid our house down at an accelerated rate. Now our mortgage payments are available to pay tuition. We know many families trying to figure out how to squeeze $15-20,000 of out their household budgets without cutting. In most cases, it can’t be done. They will miss the top cell phone plans, the Cable TV programming, and the lavish vacations. We won’t because we never had them. If they have the same income, they will have to cut back to a level below what we enjoy, because we have savings to pay part of the price, and they don’t.</p>
<p>I’m not ecstatic about D’s financial aid offers, but they are workable. Many of her classmates have few options, and will end up in debt because their families didn’t save. And I see it being much worse, because when they graduate they will have loans to pay off, but will expect to still live the same lifestyle. I hope their parents don’t downsize, because they’re going to need those bedrooms again.</p>
<p>JT, your advice is unworkable. You must be REALLY OLD, for one thing. My kids weren’t even born until WAY after 1992, and we bought our houses at the height of the market, as most folks on here did. Telling us we should have done something when we were still in our 20’s isn’t exactly useful. The people feeling squeezed here are the people who didn’t get any home equity in the first place. Our house is now worth considerably less than we bought it for.</p>
<p>Momzie, JT’s advice is spot on. His advice was to save. His personal example was that he saved out of home equity. If the housing market wasn’t cooperative in your building years or your market-- because even in the great recession, people with home equity in NYC didn’t see the declines many of us did-- that doesn’t negate the basic fact that people fail to save. </p>
<p>For most people who are truly middle income ($40-$60K), saving sticker price for a private live-away college is probably not realistic. But most of them could save something. I am ecstatic about my kid’s scholarship and financial aid offer. It is very generous. That said, it doesn’t meet FAFSA efc but I never expected it to do so. If parents expect their kids to go to college, they need to realize that they will probably have to help that happen and if they can save <em>something,</em> that something may make a difference.</p>
<p>Ouch. I guess I was old even in 1992. Obviously I got lucky to suck out some money from a house sale back then, not likely to happen now. The point is that when we had children, we planned for their college by starting to save some money for it. We were not and never will be rich, I have plenty of debts, but the kids had some options for college. At the time I thought they had a ton of money, with tuition inflation it wasn’t as much as we thought. Momzie you are right, and my advice is aimed at people who probably are not reading this. However, for those of you with small children, look again at your budget and use some of that disposable income and start a college fund, you won’t regret it.</p>
<p>So many times I have heard both young people and parents rant about the “lucky poor” when it comes to college financial aid. We are solidly in the middle class, but I was interested to see how this would play out in my daughter’s graduating class & who would end up where.</p>
<p>One big surprise for us turned out to be a girl who was one of the top students, a true academic powerhouse, near perfect SAT scores, and solid extra-curriculars. But, her high-tech dad had been unemployed for over a year, and they were just scraping by on unemployment plus the mom’s part-time salary as a librarian. She wanted a small LAC & applied everywhere, including Ivys, places with good merit aid, colleges her parents had gone to. Guess what? She wasn’t accepted at any of them, including Pomona College where her parents were alums. Because it was clear she would need a full ride. She ended up in some college I have never heard of, in a very cold harsh-winter place, and she was offered a lot of loans, to boot.</p>
<p>College Confidential grumbling always says – “oh, if only we were poor… we’d have it made… we’d get more aid…” </p>
<p>Well, that certainly wasn’t what we saw with the graduating class at my daughter’s high school. Most high achieving low-income students ended up at community college, local state colleges where they could live at home to save money, or for the tippy-top academic students, small colleges in harsh winter climates that no one from our area had ever heard of. </p>
<p>Our personal EFC was much higher ($40,000, not that we could afford that), and my kiddo who was not in the valedictorian circle with some of these 4.6 gpa kids, was accepted almost everywhere she applied, including 2 Iveys, Vanderbilt, WashU StLouis, etc. I remember chatting with the mom, who obviously was very hurt & dissapointed that near-perfect SAT, valedictorian, extra-curriculars etc. had not gotten her daughter the college offers they had expected. She said, “Well, I guess they can only afford to give out so many full rides.” Which, I guess does make sense when you think about it.</p>
<p>So, those on CC whining and complaining about those “lucky poor people”
I say… the grass may look greener on the other side… but its not easy to get those full rides, even for the academically gifted and POOR!</p>
<p>I have never heard that myth, but I have heard about colleges not giving a dam about poor kids.</p>
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<p>According to ipeds, the federal db, Univ. of Southern California serves just as many (on a % basis) Pell grantees as does Amherst (22%). NYU is close at 21%. (Of course, NYU doesn’t meet full financial need.)</p>
<p>And each UC campus easily beats that number, with ~33%.</p>
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<p>Cornell does indeed have a merit scholarship.</p>
<p>@tugtraveller: I thought need-blind schools evaluated applications without ANY of the FA application stuff…so how would they have even known about her financial situation? Of course, there’s a very good chance I’m just completely mistaken about how things work. Rejecting based on need though…doesn’t that just completely go against the whole need-blind thing? I’m surprised no one has kicked up a fuss about it happening. I’m still a bit hesitant to believe that this is happening on a widespread basis since this is just a few anecdotal cases, and admission to top colleges is very unpredictable.</p>
<p>Note: I’m NOT saying in any way that I don’t believe that it’s hard for lower income students to get into top schools (especially with many of the other challenges they face), just that I’m not convinced that open discrimination is happening against them.</p>
<p>I certainly haven’t read every post on CC, but I have never seen anyone complainng about the lucky poor. I have seen many complaining about the lack of financial aid they were awarded, almost as if it were somehow owed to them.</p>
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<p>Not buying it, sorry. </p>
<p>btw: legacy only works if a student ED’s. Did she submit an early app to Pomona? If not it is a clear indication to them that they are not her first choice.</p>
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<p>Translated: she applied to all reach schools (including the one that was a financial reach due to being really too expensive with too much in the way of loans) and get all rejections except for one acceptance at a school that was really too expensive. She should have included an affordable safety, possibly from this list of <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-18.html#post15895768[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-18.html#post15895768</a>, or an in-state public if she lived in a state with in-state publics that meet need and are assured admissions for her stats.</p>
<p>@bluebayou
Cornell does indeed have a merit scholarship.</p>
<p>Can you provide more information about Cornells merit scholarship? Thanks. I’d like to know.</p>
<p>According to the school web site, it offers need based aid only.
[Grants</a> and Scholarships | Financial Aid](<a href=“http://www.finaid.cornell.edu/types-aid/grants-and-scholarships]Grants”>Grants and Scholarships | Financial Aid)</p>
<p>None of the Ivies or NESCACs give merit scholarships, although some have named scholarships as part of their need-based financial aid packages or merit based funds available for things like summer research.</p>