Our daughter is supposed to start her Freshman year at Baylor in August. We are having trouble securing loans for her. She is only 17. My husband and I filed Ch 13 3 years ago and will have it paid 100% in April. They will not discharge it until after that. We are being denied for every loan we cosign for for our daughter. I know she will get an extra $4,000 in subsidized or unsubsidized, I can’t keep those straight, but this will still not cover everything.
We are new to all of this and due to ongoing medical bills, hence the reason for bankruptcy, we just can’t afford to pay for college for her.
Does anyone know what else we can do to try and get her financially covered so she can start in August as scheduled?
Any help AT ALL will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Since you can’t get the money together for this fall, your daughter needs to contact Baylor, and ask what the steps are for deferring enrollment for a year.
Then during her gap year, you, your husband, and your daughter need to think very carefully about the best way to pay for her education. If the only way you can meet the costs of Baylor is to take out a whole lot of private loans, then it probably is not really affordable for your family. I know this will make your daughter sad, but setting her up to have a whole lot of debt when she graduates college is even worse.
Just to confirm, you were denied for the federal Plus loan? How much are you short after her 9500 loan? It does sound like you could pick a more affordable school.
^or appeal to Baylor for more aid (work study maybe)?
You’re getting out of bankruptcy in April, but you seem to be starting a new debt with the loans. Please listen to @happymomof1 and previous posters.
Your daughter’s Direct Loans will be $5500…plus $4000 unsubsidized because of the denied Plus Loan. That’s already a LOT of loans…$9500 for JUST freshman year (and most of THAT will be unsubsidized!)
In ADDITION to the $9500 in Direct Loans, how much more loans are needed for freshman year?
How much will be borrowed, in total, for ALL four years?
Who is supposed to pay back all these loans?
What is your daughter’s career goal? How much will she likely be earning upon graduation?
Please understand that the readers here are a bit shocked that a family who’s going thru bankruptcy would have even permitted their child to choose a school that would require more debt.
This school is not affordable, and (sorry for the harshness) was obviously not affordable months ago. It’s very sad that your D was not told a long time ago that this school will not be affordable so that she could have chosen another option.
I feel badly for your daughter. She’ll likely have to ask for a deferment (but even that’s a bad idea if a bunch of loans is still needed), or reapply to other schools this fall which will be affordable.
My son has a good friend who went to an unaffordable private undergrad…parents co-signed the loans. Now that newish grad is facing $120k in debt …for NO SANE REASON. That young person is going to be living a very miserly existence for many years while trying to pay back those crazy loans.
Too bad that the parents hadn’t just said “no.”
How much in loans does your daughter need? If it is in excess of the Direct Loan amounts she can take, than this school is not an affordable option.
It is likely the Plus loans will not be available to you for 5 or more years after your bankruptcy, private loans will be hard to come by too. I think you need to discuss this with the school and see what aid will be available to you. Better to get this clear before she starts.
<<<
Does anyone know what else we can do to try and get her financially covered so she can start in August as scheduled?
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
Are both spouses working full time? If not, then can the “non-full-time” parent start working full time and put the income towards college?
If both parents are working full time, can one (or both) take on some over-time or another job and put that income towards college?
Wow - COA is $54k!
When did your daughter get accepted at Baylor? When did you receive her financial aid package?
Did you get ANY aid from the school? How much do you need in loans?
This must be a stressful time for you all. Medical issues AND college finances is a lot to take on at once. You have my sympathies. Sadly, outside of having another family member with strong credit co-signing loans (which I wouldn’t recommend at all,) I can’t see her coming up with the money in a month. As difficult as it is to accept that she can’t attend Baylor this year, this may be one of those moments she looks back on with gratitude when she doesn’t have 50K+ in student loans.
The way I see it, she should either head to the community college for 2 years and then transfer as a junior or she takes a year off school and works while applying as a freshman to more affordable options. She could “defer” if that makes taking the time off easier but it’s unlikely she’ll make enough to fill the gaps all 4 years at Baylor.
What kinds of schools did she apply to? Did she look into any of the “meets full needs” LACs? How were the state options financially? Is she a good candidate for merit?
If she has the stats to get good sized merit elsewhere, then she should apply elsewhere this fall, BUT NOT take any classes anywhere during this next school year to preserve her "incoming frosh’ status.
The family filed for bankruptcy but this does not mean that they are eligible for need based aid. Their income could actually be sufficient to NOT be eligible for need based aid. We don’t know that.
We also don’t know how much in loans the family hoped to take.
But my caution would be…the parents are just now coming out of a bankruptcy situation. Taking loans…at all…in their name has the potential to put them right back where they were…in debt. The difference is these loans likely won’t be able to be discharged in a future bankruptcy filing…if it were to come to that. I would advise against parent debt.
If the school is not affordable with what the student alone can get in Direct Loans…then the school is not affordable.