<p>That is College Aid Mistakes- silly me</p>
<p>The first case is pretty much due to the lack of common sense. The other cases are noteworthy. For the one who took out an equity loan and put the money in the bank, he is just doing the opposite most other people would do (to pay off part of the mortgage and lower cash asset in the bank) before submitting FAFSA. That may be a common mistake but can be avoided. While getting an unexpected inheritance leading to less aid, should it be counted as a blessing rather than an out of control mistake? ;)</p>
<p>Well this seems to be a drive by article of sorts. The point that from Junior year to 12/31 Senior year of college, applicants, especially at the margins of the middle class, have to think through their financial decisions. That is a good message IMHO!</p>
<p>The first example seems to say the mother’s mistake was in getting married. I can’t comment on the mother’s marriage, but it seems to me a big mistake was in sending her son to a college she couldn’t afford. And she lives in East Brunswick, so the kid could’ve commuted to Rutgers, assuming he could get in, of course. Also, commutable were Kean and Thomas Edison. </p>
<p>That said, I do know several people postponing marriage until their kids get out of college. I think it’s yet another flaw in the financial aid system. The couples I know live together and share all their expenses, including college, but since they’re not married, the additional income falls through the cracks. </p>
<p>I have heard even parents went divorced on paper trying to lower the out of pocket cost for children’s education. I found it really ridiculous.</p>
<p>Parents who are not married and living together need to report this on the FAFSA – it is actually one of the “marital status” options on the application. Even if they are postponing marrige, they are still committing fraud by not listing the partner on the application. Shameful. </p>
<p>^ Is it considered “parent” if he/she is not related legally or genetically? Or that is for biological parents not married?</p>
<p>Here is from the FAQ:
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<p>It seems there is nothing wrong if the unmarried partner of a single parent is not counted even living together.</p>
<p>^^^Is that only if the couple are the biological parents of the student? None of the people I know strike me as liars, but I’m not familiar with the FAFSA. I know one same sex couple where one of the partners had a child prior to the relationship. And the rest of the people I know are divorced and have met someone new but will not marry until the child is out of college.</p>
<p>@billcsho and @halfemptypockets you are both correct, I misunderstood the earlier statement.</p>
<p>The whole system is a mess. And to a certain extent, you have to know how to play the game from very early on to be in the best position. Depending on how money is saved or invested, it can have dramatically different impacts on financial aid eligibility. This is not something most parents are thinking about when their children are young, and it can come back to bite them later.</p>
<p>What about this novel concept that everyone pays what they can afford via their taxes and then everyone can get an education!</p>
<p>You know, some people know how to live off welfare and other benefit programs, never pay taxes, collect a lot of tax credits for earned income, having a lot of children, farm subsidies. It takes a lot of planning. The fact is that the woman in the first example doesn’t make a household income of $50k, she has a much higher income because she’s married. She’s not supporting her son on her income, because her husband helps pay for lots of things like groceries, heat, cable, vacations. With marriage comes benefits and burdens. If she had not married and her son had filed FAFSA with a single parent making $50k, he might have received a Pell grant (it would have been close) but let’s just say he received the full $5600 per year. So instead of owing $90k, she only would have owed $68k. Still way too much to have borrowed. If the aunt hadn’t died in the second example, the student would have received an additional $25k for the last 2 years of school, but she still got $140k-50k for tuition = $90k for her inheritance. The aunt probably intended for her to use that money for college. Why should the government or the school pay for these kids to go to college? They have money.</p>
<p>How does buying an expensive car affect financial aid negatively? Please enlighten me. Thanks.</p>
<p>The loss of PELL and subsidized loans can be a real haymaker for a low income parent who marries, college child loses those awards, and the new husband/wife can’t or won’t pay to make it up. We are not talking about loads of money in most cases. It’s not as though these folks marry millionaires. They may marry and end up in an income bracket just getting them out of financial aid range and the new spouse has not had the years to plan to pay for someone’s college. It’s one thing when a parent has had 18 years to plan for college, and a whole other when one becomes a stepparent to a college student. </p>
<p>Where it can also hurt is when a hardworking single parent is truly paying what s/he can for a private school, and the fin aid policies there make it possible for the student to go there, and a marriage can quash that deal. </p>
<p>The simple answer is simply not to get legally married if fin aid is in the picture and one can lose it if a marriage occurs. </p>
<p>Was just thinking about this. What can be really sad about this is that often a parent is not involved in the student’s college. In many low income areas, the kid gets his PELL, state aid, loans and manages to go to college that way. Then the parent remarries and that goes out the window with the parent no more inclined to pay a penny towards the student’s college. This is where it’s a real blow to the student.</p>
<p>@twoinanddone - Saying they have the money when they have to go $100,000 in debt to pay for school just doesn’t make sense. I’m also not trying to focus on these individual examples, but the whole setup in the US where education is a pay-to-play game and your ability to get a quality education is tightly correlated to socioeconomic status.</p>
<p>But no one has to go $100k in debt to go to school. Pick a different school.</p>
<p>No one is guaranteed that their parents will give them money to go to school. Mine didn’t, and they weren’t divorced so there was no one ordering them to do it. It’s not fair in California that a family who makes $1 over the max for Cal Grants gets nothing. I get no AOTC because I make over the maximum, yet a coworker who makes exactly the same as me but is married can get $2500; same pay, same family size (3), but because I have 2 kids and he has 1 kid and 1 wife, he get a better tax break and I pay two tuitions and he only pays one. </p>
<p>Life is unfair. Taxes are very unfair. Everything in the US is based on your economic status - vacations, homes, medical care, cars, groceries - why should education be different? You must pay for the level you want. No one deserves a free college education and the US doesn’t guarantee it.</p>
<p>Why should education be different? No one deserves a free college education?</p>
<p>I agree that medical care in the US is based on economic status, but I also don’t think that it should be. Just like health care, education is not just about an individual benefit: it’s about helping and advancing society. It serves all of us to have a well-educated population. Instead of asking “Why should education be different?” I would ask, “Why <em>should</em> education be dependent on economic status?” Even down to the level of elementary school, access to quality education is hugely dependent on economic status. Why should students have to live in a certain neighborhood to have access to a decent school? And why should we stop providing free education after high school? As a college education becomes more and more vital to success, most economically developed countries have responded by making free or very cheap college education accessible to everyone. The US has moved in the opposite direction, as college becomes constantly more inaccessible to the economically disadvantaged.</p>
<p>The American dream is supposed to be about opportunity: everyone has a chance to succeed. Instead, the US has one of the lowest rates of economic mobility of any developed country. We are squandering our human capital by preventing bright young people from succeeding just because of the economic situation into which they were born.</p>
<p>Why would food depending on economic status? Why I cannot eat out in a decent restaurant everyday?
What the government needs to do is to provide a safety net. They do provide affordable education and offer loans. But the government would not give food stamp eligible people a voucher for a restaurant meal. Nor support anyone going to an expensive college. The real question is, “who is going to pay?”. Increase your tax or increase the deficit?
The current policy is already offering help to low income family. Not just the financial aids, but also the advantage for first generation student or URM. Bright kids also have many merit aid opportunity disregarding their economic status. I remember there were several campaigns trying to help the poor school districts, however, the problem is more in the family than in the school.</p>
<p>Nanotechnology said: </p>
<p>The US has moved in the opposite direction, as college becomes constantly more inaccessible to the economically disadvantaged.</p>
<p>If an economically disadvantaged student has the ability to do college work- enlighten me as to how they are economically disadvantaged? Granted this is anecdotal, but just about every example of economically disadvantaged capable students I know, and have heard about ,receive enormous merit aid and grants thus paying much smaller amounts in loans, almost minimal compared to their middle class counterparts. What am I missing here? If you say well --I know a student that applied to XYZ university and is fully capable yet received very little merit aid and so they could not attend. Then I suppose you will also say : Yet their peer middle class and upper middle class parents wrote a check so their kid could attend. I say then that the fault lies not with a backward social system in this case, but with a lack of diligence on the part of the student and their advisers. Anyone could look up the value of XYZ’s university /College endowment and if it is below $500 million dollars the odds are good that merit aid is paltry at that university or college. Sure there are some exceptions but this is the hard cold reality. </p>