Hey all! I’m a HS Junior graduating with CO’23, and after yesterday I have all but 5 of my decisions. Sadly nearly every in-state school has rejected me save for 4 (2 are a likely reject, 1 I applied to today as a backup, and CP Pomona didn’t give me my major to begin with), and I’m now looking to see what my next steps should be, whether that’s taking a gap year and re-applying, finding ways to cut these costs significantly, or alternate pathways entirely. I’ve attached a comprehensive screenshot of my current options (and stats in case someone needs that), though you should note anything that doesn’t have a green highlight in the FAID Amount column means I’m working off the NPC for that UNI.
I’ve scoured tax laws for college expenses, so I’ve factored in the AOTC and interest deductions into those monthly payments, and I’m also looking into using double PLUS consolidation as a means of lowering my parent’s payments into a swallowable amount. However, the 25 year term is obviously insanely long (though my dad keeps joking he won’t be here to deal with it by then to my horror). The actual loan amount remains, meaning if we were to fail in routing ourselves to REPAYE, we’d be stuck with unmanageable payments. I’m in process with appealing the schools on my shortlist, that being UWisc, UMN, UMD, and Purdue.
Here’s a few things to note:
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I have an EFC of 38213, but my parents since covid have had expenses that far outweigh our income, draining our savings and now making it infeasible to have monthly payments past $1,000, I’ve appealed my Fin Aid packages based on this but obviously most out of state will attribute it to mismanagement rather than a stagnant income coupled with massive COL in SoCal (I looked through our books since I suspected it had to be mismanagement but it really wasn’t).
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My parents are 68 and 58 respectively, and my dad still works though he’s filed to get his social security benefits
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I live in Santa Monica (doxxing but there’s a reason to it), so my local CC is SMC. While it’s the #1 transfer CC in California, CS transfer rates are so abysmal I don’t think it’s a viable pathway.
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I currently have significantly more in cash than my parents do (~$35k), though I’m planning on opening a Roth IRA and sticking it in there to grow instead, if you guys think divesting it towards college expenses is better or there’s a better overall strategy for that, please let me know.
I’m also considering appealing the rejections I’m allowed to appeal, if anything here throws up red flags on where something may have disadvantaged me significantly in an unfair way, please let me know so I can look into appealing based off of it, since getting an in-state school would solve the majority of our issues.
Ok…you are a HS junior so am I correct in assuming you are graduating a year early from high school?
If that is the case, I would urge you to remain IN high school for your senior year and take whatever steps you can to improve your admission application materials. AP courses, DE courses, better letters of reference. Whatever.
Are any of your acceptances affordable? It sounds like they are not.
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Not a possibility, my HS specifically stated that if I meet graduation requirements then that year is the final year I can stay. UMN is as close as it gets but it only is actually within range if we do 25 year loan
Do NOT do this. Please do not.
You would be smarter to take a well crafted gap year and apply to programs that ARE affordable.
You say you are not low income…so how much can your family actually afford to pay for college annually for you?
Did you get NO merit aid at Arizona?
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I got 12,000 in merit from ASU, which I’m trying to push to 15500 since I had originally applied test opt(I applied in aug before I took the SAT).
For how much we can afford, when I pushed my dad for a raw number to negotiate on he said 0, and still refuses to give me a number I can rely on. The same goes for payments but the range of numbers he’s given me basically puts 1k as the hard limit for monthly.
I’d really want to avoid a gap year if I can because it WILL destroy my work ethic and mental health heavily, but I can if need be. Finding actual affordable programs will be hard though as most CSUs are either so close in pricing to UMN that it doesn’t make sense to take an extra year to apply to them (especially since they don’t offer undergrad business nor a plus one program, which forces me to get an mba/mscs later on and double or triple my costs),
overall “affordable” programs for CS in Cali don’t seem to exist seeing how the ones that are good enough to be worth their cost are insanely competitive or just mean I have to spend more down the line
What is your gpa and unweighted and test score.
How much can you pay ? 12k??
Sounds like you applied to the wrong schools.
With time and geographic foexibilty, that can be corrected - maybe. Nothing wrong with the CC route either.
Edit. So you have a 3.95 and 33.
You’d get $30k at Arizona - so about $25k cost. That’s if UW is a 3.9.
$30.5 off at Alabama. So total cost under $20k. Same with UAH.
Western Carolina similar. There’s other schools too you can still get into in the 20-25k range.
If you do well at a CC you’ll have many great options.
Not sure if 1k/mo would translate to them being able to drop 12k as a lump sum (not being facetious I genuinely need to see how their cash flows), and yeah I def did, parents saw my list and decided not to be clear about how unable they were until I asked for a hard number, a month ago…
My GPA is 3.89uw, for UCs it was 3.95, and 4.4/4.7 uncapped/capped. 1500 SAT/33 ACT
CC route I’m personally completely open to, but everyone I know has told me it’s near impossible, and my HS counselor who normally shills our CC like it’s an ivy told me if I go that route I’d need to think about a new major.
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@Gumbymom - Can you comment about this? Is there a viable pathway to CS from CC for this student?
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CC to UC route is not impossible for CS but you do have to have an excellent GPA for the top UC’s. For most campuses you are looking at a 3.7+ or higher.
You can look up the 2022 admit rate and GPA range of each campus and major here:
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Where did you get the 30k number from for ASU? I thought their OOS merit capped at 15.5k, but if that’s the case I’d definitely be in a much better place
Thanks for this, let me take a look
Edit: my current CC gpa is a 3.87 with 46 credits + (currently 1 AP course credit, with potentially 6 more based on my scores in May), so that does put me in a pretty good position
If they don’t have the loot and you’re unwilling to invest your $35k in yourself, then you have no choice but to go to cc and live home.
If you’re a year younger than most entering college, that might be smart from a maturity POV.
You don’t have the cash. It’s ok. Take what you are given. There are pathways in CA from CC. Very good ones.
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We do have some personal experience with parents that are either retired or near retirement before a child starts university. You do need to be very careful with money at this point. One issue with having a parent who is close to 70 is that they probably just do not have a way to make money in any significant amount at this point. Given what you said about finances I am a bit concerned that your parents may have an issue long term even if they were not contributing to your education.
Yes, with a parent who is 68 they can take social security, keep working, and there is no penalty for doing both. However, you can’t count on them working for long. Even if they want to, nature sometimes gets in the way.
I am wondering if your best bet is to start at community college and get your associates. Then try to transfer probably to a CSU.
If I am reading your attachments correctly, you have very strong high school stats. Whatever you did to earn all of those A’s in high school is likely to continue into college or university. If you can get something very close to straight A’s through your associates degree, then at least to me this seems quite helpful in terms of transferring in to a CSU.
I did not see San Jose State on your list. Did you consider it? Is the Bay Area too expensive?
One daughter had a friend who was in a similar situation. She did two years of community college, got her associates, transferred to an in-state public university with significant merit aid, and graduated with something very close to straight A’s and relatively low debt and a marketable major. I happened to run into her and her boyfriend at a store near here about a month before she graduated and it seemed to me that her father must have been very proud of her (she lived with her father this whole time to save money, the mother was out of the picture). This was however up here in the northeast, a long way from California.
You had decently high enough grades to get a decent merit scholarship at University of New Mexico. And maybe University of Alabama.
I’m going to tag @tsbna44 about scholarships. Although…I will warn him that your screen shots are not the easiest things to read.
I’m also going to tag @AustenNut who probably can find you some more favorably priced options.
If your only option this fall is to take a 25 year payback loan…just don’t. You will have quite a high debt when you graduate…and if you think your finances are hard now, they won’t get easier with a lot of college debt.
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I think $30k is for University of Arizona
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If that’s the case…why didn’t this student apply to University of Arizona.
Perhaps one of the pending applications will come through and be affordable.
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like I mentioned earlier my parents kept their situation ambiguous and heavily underplayed it till I stopped accepting the answers they gave. I’d considered UoA in August but saw ASU was much better for CS so I elected to apply there instead. Currently filing an App for Bama though
I write earlier.
I think given the unknown but maybe $12k a year and parents needing to cover retirement, CC makes sense. That will lead to options at UC and CSU.
If he had $20-25k a year, there are schools.
OP needs more from ASU but it’s still out of his listed budget if he gets a bit more like he is hoping for so not really sure of budget.
I do know the ASU Net calc would have told him the # up front.
As for appealing, on what basis ? I didn’t get enough is not a formal basis for appeal.
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SJSU I’d actually never been told about until February, no one mentioned nor recommended it to me despite showing my list to countless people on A2C, in my family and at my school (incl counselors) so by the time I found out it was way too late.
Assuming $12k/yr from parents and adding his savings, he can get to the lower end of that.
