<p>Oops. Sorry. My post was in response to ohakkila who wants to attend Cornell and wanted to know how to afford a $7000 student contribution.</p>
<p>First time down this road and am somewhat mind-boggled by the whole thing. We just received FA that meets 100% of need at a $35K COA school. Didn’t qualify for any merit, though. About 40% of the COA is in the form of grants, while the balance consist of a variety of low-interest loans and work-study. We’ll be looking to split the final loan debt with the student himself! I guess all-in-all, it’s a reasonable package? I honestly don’t know. It worries me a bit, but after reading mnay of these posts, perhaps it’s not so bad…?</p>
<p>Man, reading through this thread is very very depressing</p>
<p>I feel for you guys </p>
<p>I got into BC’s business school but it’s $52,000 a year (I got no aid of course)</p>
<p>My parents make close to $200,000 a year combined, but it’s still overwhelming and my dad questions whether or not it’s worth the money</p>
<p>lil<em>wayne</em>fan: Is BC your only option? If not you should consider other comparable schools with better financial aid packages.</p>
<p>get loans, don’t settle for a mediocre state school</p>
<p>the only people who will tell you that the experience is just as good go to these schools</p>
<p>afruff23 - I agree with you. I know that while a prestigious undergrad. may help those get placed into medical schools, that I can achieve the same ultimate goal. I figure if I work hard, and really try to do well in the bit state university I plan to enroll in, then perhaps medical school will be an option come fall of 2012.</p>
<h2>lil<em>wayne</em>fan: Is BC your only option? If not you should consider other comparable schools with better financial aid packages.</h2>
<p>Rutgers - $20,000 (state school, it’s at home cause I live in New Jersey)
Penn State - $34,000 (state school)
Lehigh - $49,000
BC - $52,000</p>
<p>All for undergrad business (finance)</p>
<p>For some reason I don’t think my dad is being truthful with me (which is pretty common)</p>
<p>He keeps saying how he can’t pay for it, and that it will be tough if he does</p>
<p>But how is this possible when my parents make $200,000 a year?</p>
<p>What does it say about other kids whose parents make less and don’t get adequate financial aid?</p>
<p>I think he just wants to save the money so I go to Rutgers for 20 g’s so he tells me he can’t pay for the 50 g’s at BC when he doesn’t want to pay it</p>
<p>I don’t trust my dad AT ALL</p>
<p>Lil Wayne Fan,</p>
<p>My parents make half that and I also get no aid. I’m still figuring out how I’m going to afford Middlebury at 50K a year…how do they possibly expect us to pay half our income especially with retirement coming up for my parents?</p>
<p>I’m committed to finding a way to go for it even if it means taking out a large amount in loans…I just refuse to settle for less than my full potential. I’ll have about 40K in loans from what it’s looking like right now.</p>
<p>My plan at this point is after college to basically live in squalor for about four years while I pay back around 10,000 per year and then rack up stupid amounts of loans for grad school.</p>
<p>I was so very terrified when i applied to Creighton U in Omaha. I was sure i wouldn’t get it, nothing about my schooling is above average. I got a bad ACT and my GPA is terribly low. However i got it. I have an awesome admissions counselor though. She got them to accept me. And further more since i have a low-income single family home, and can’t work full time and go to college she had then revise, and re-revise my financial aide. I went from getting 14,000 a year up to 36,000 a year. It costs 40,000 a year to go there. </p>
<p>I suggest talking to your admissions rep about getting a revised financial aide package.</p>
<p>My situation’s pretty bad right now too. I’ve done pretty well in school, all things considered, and I assumed because of my high test grades and pretty bad family financial situation that I wouldn’t have to pay for school at all. Taking all AP classes, got a 2360 on the SAT, and I live with my mom, who’s currently surviving on unemployment, just to give you an idea.</p>
<p>Anyway, I only applied to three schools, partially because of application fees: University of Minnesota, Indiana University, and MIT. Of course, I didn’t get into MIT (sigh), and University of Minnesota’s pretty much only got scholarships for Minnesota state residents, from what I can tell. Choosing between $30K loans at one state school and a free ride at one of the nation’s top party schools is not what I had in mind leaving high school with an International Baccalaureate diploma. :(</p>
<p>I don’t get why you have to worry about money when you’re thinking about prestigious places like MIT, Harvard, Princeton, or Williams/Amherst/Middlebury. Don’t they assure you that they will meet any need you may have if you’re admitted? My parents literally do not have any money for my college expenses, I do mean $0. But not for one moment did I worry about the money. Moreover, I am int’l. All I worried about was admission. In the end, am I proved a fool for hoping to go to a US college when I have no money? Amherst College has in fact accepted me, and my proposed parental contribution has remained steadily at $0.</p>
<p>@shoopdawhoop, why the low self-esteem? having 2360 in SATs, you were shoo-in for at least one Ivy League place. You should have applied to as many as possible(by possible, I mean all of them). Don’t you know about the app fee waivers? I applied to a lot of places, without spending a single dollar.</p>
<p>I am really sorry, I know I am sounding patronizing. But it hurts me to see really qualified people(even americans, who have so much support from their govt, unlike us internationals) complain about their low financial abilities, even go vindictive on their own parents. If you can’t afford college, do not apply to public universities, they are quite poor themselves. But if you’re good enough to get into a top private college, why worry about the money?</p>
<p>CaliforniaLife, how much money do you think you’re going to make as a brand-new attorney?</p>
<p>You said “Many people in our professions end up making more money than they can rationally spend.” </p>
<p>While that may be true that ‘many people’ make lots of money, the truth is that many people don’t. I worked as a paralegal for many years and new attorneys made less money than I did. And my boss, while doing ok financially, was not ‘rich’ by any means. I have a friend who put herself through law school and ended up with $900 a month student loan payments. That’s a LOT of money, especially if your starting pay is low. At one time so many people were going to law school that lawyers were taking paralegal jobs just to have work. I don’t think that’s still the case, but I think lots of new college students have VERY unrealistic ideas about how much money you’re going to make when you graduate. You look at what a few stellar people make and assume it’s what EVERYONE makes, and you’re wrong.</p>
<p>There are ‘many’ people in my field who make well over 100k a year. But I don’t. I don’t have some of the experience that would be required to earn that kind of pay. But if you look at the field as a whole you can make some very unrealistic assumptions about your salary.</p>
<p>Jude_36-how correct you are.</p>
<p>I see a book in the making “Realistic College Planning for Your Child”. Unfortunately the only detailed material available now is on how to craft a winning application. I did not begin having the realistic conversations about college costs early enough with D. Looking back, I should have begun them when D was in 7th grade.</p>
<p>As a parent, I feel horribly about the dilemma my daughter is now in with money for college and feel guilty. I naively told her when she was quite young that if she worked hard there would be doors open everywhere and, indeed, there were open doors to all of the wonderful schools she applied to. There was a catch I did not foresee-passage through these doors would come at the sum of 45-50K a year. </p>
<p>We had prepared to take on the cost of a state school and assumed her hard work would pay for the rest. Obviously it was not to play out this way. A 15K scholarship combined with the 15K per year we saved still leaves us 15-20K short.</p>
<p>I hope my child is forgiving my error (she seems to) and I ask all of you to work through your anger and have those honest conversations with your parents/children. It is not worth going 80K in debt for our family or for D. We have no loans or credit card debt; our home is modest and almost paid for. We are short in the retirement funds department. My husband (D’s father) is 59 years old and it is unrealistic for the two of us to take on a debt of such magnitude this close to his retirement. We have joked with daughter and told her that if we did assume this debt, we might be living with her in old age! </p>
<p>At 18, it is hard to grasp the complexities of financial planning. I have used the “rule of thumb” for college debt with D: don’t borrow more than you could make with your end degree the first year out and assume that you will start on the very low end. A newly minted attorney with a degree from average U might start out in the 45K range (if lucky-there are more attorneys than jobs it seems); a jr PhD faculty member at average state U might start in the 40-50K range (and it is hard to get university jobs-the local community colleges are full of PhD faculty who are thankful to have these jobs). The estimates I suggest are low end but solid financial planning involves thinking modestly. Can you live without rewarding yourself in order to quickly pay off loans after 8-10 years of hard work? I wasn’t able to. </p>
<p>For those of you who feel your parents are not being honest: 1) your parents may be embarrassed about the finances and family debt load and see it as a personal failure, 2) 18 years goes by quickly and I always seem to be a little behind on recognizing how old my children are. Your parents may need a bit of time to catch up and see you as the capable, rational adult you have become. Good luck everyone. Be flexible (that is the best adult thinking skill I have gained) and it will work out.</p>
<p>often times when it comes to the college process parents get a bad rap
They are discouraged from participating by the high school, the colleges
and sometimes the kids. yet, the process has become so complicated
with big time financial stakes (a top LAC will soon cost a quarter million
for 4 years), it’s crucial that parents get involved early and realistically.
It’s not how much can they afford, but how much are my parents prepared
to pay that is the cucial question. The whole process from visits to apps
to acceptances need to be built around that answer in combination with
the students stats - and even then you can still end up screwed.</p>
<p>Lil<em>Wayne</em>Fan, please remember the graduated income tax. Your father loses fully 1/3 of his income in taxes. Coupled with other possible expenses like insurance, retirement savings, mortgage, healthcare, other siblings, elderly parents, etc, he may not actually have an extra $50K floating around each year.</p>
<p>hornet, I too am worried now that I didn’t do the best job for my children. I am fairly well-read, but I assumed that what worked when <em>I</em> went to school would work for my children, and I was wrong. So at this point I’m reassessing. </p>
<p>Sites like this are a huge help, but unfortunately I think many, many parents and students don’t find it until they are too far along in the process.</p>
<p>anyone who is making 200K+ a year has a income in the top percentage of ALL households. Assuming he has been making that for several years, there was plenty of time to put aside 10-15K a year to get a nice amount saved. </p>
<p>I pay 1/3 of my income in taxes also, but I’m starting with less than 1/3 of 200K. </p>
<p>Nobody’s EFC is meant to be paid only from current income, whether it’s 10K or 50K</p>
<p>I’m not gonna read all the responses, so I’m not sure if someone already said this…but…WRITE THE SCHOOL A LETTER!!! plenty of students have done that and gotten more financial aid…trust me!</p>
<p>You shouldn’t give up yet. Here is a good letter that a girl wrote from the book “Get Into Any College” by Gen and Kelly Tanabe. It probably won’t apply to you, but you’ll get an idea.</p>
<p>Dear Sir or Madam:</p>
<p>I am writing to request that my financial aid package for the fall semester be reconsidered. My family and I were disappointed wih the amount we were offered because in addition to my father having been unemployed for over a year, my sister will be a sophomore in college; and my mother, a part-time teacher, has received no income since June because of Summer break.</p>
<p>We understand that every family must undergo an amount of hardship to send its members to college. However, because my parents wish to continue financing my sister’s and my education, they are worried about how they will pay for their own expenses. They have been using my mother’s income to basically cover their mortgage payments and their savings to pay for everything else. In February, my parents had $33,000 in savings. In the last six months, their savings has decreased by about $15,000. They now have about $18,000 to contribute to my sister’s and my college expenses as well as to spent on their and my younger brother’s food and basic necessities. They don’t know how long their savings will last without an change in the amount of aid I will receive.</p>
<p>At the end of this month, my sister will begin her sophomore year at USC. The cost will be $26,998, and she has received $18, 758 in financial aid. This makes my parents’ contribution about to $8,240, of which they will borrow $2,625. One of the things you might be able to address is why my sister’s financial aid package was dramatically higher than mine. </p>
<p>Since July of last year my father has been unemployed. His severance pay ended in October, and his unemployment benefits have been depleted since February. Although her has applied for over a dozen positions, his prospects for finding a job in his speciality are slim.</p>
<p>My parents and I have discussed the possibility of having me take a year off so that I may work to help pay for tuition, but we’d much rather that I finish school and work after I receive my degree.</p>
<p>Please contact my parents or me with any further questions you may have. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. I hope that this information is helpful in your review of my application.</p>
<p>Sincerely,
[Name Withheld] </p>
<p>That took my a long time to type …SO WRITE A LETTER!!!</p>
<p>L’ll Wayne,</p>
<p>Maybe your dad can find the money, maybe he can’t. But in any event, except at VERY high income levels (where the marginal value of money to the particular person is far less), no way is BC worth 30K per year more than Rutgers.</p>