<p>@pizzagirl I do feel pressured by myself. Not by others. My parents don’t care, as long as I’m happy. I know I won’t get in and I chose this username because I had that “I want candy” song in my head at the time. I chose to create this thread because I wanted to know about how the lives of kids who were admitted to elite schools were. I was curiosity that if my life were like theirs, if I would have a better chance of being different from what I am now. I had no guidance at all and I started thinking about colleges at a very late stage. I’m at a loss because I feel like I’m cramming everything to try to make up for my wasted time. </p>
<p>“Unfortunately, I started late (end of freshman year) so I had a rough start” </p>
<p>OP - That makes me a little sad. Students should apply themslefves in high school but not be fixated on college acceptance factors. Hopefully you are learning what most families here have learned over the years… good fit, not prestige, is what matters. Good luck! </p>
<p>@colorado_mom Yes, you’re right, they should. But the thing is that I always did well in school when I was confident. In elementary school, I was like in the top 3 students there and there were many intelligent kids. Actually that’s a bad example. Anyways, my point is that ever since I was bullied, I became insecure, and I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t try before, but I was a happier person. Now everything in my mind has to do with the way I look (even though I out no effort into my appearance) I still always think that people are making fun of me on the train or in public when they look at me or when they laugh. Insecurities and my glasses issues really affected me and right now I’m still climbing out of that abyss and improving. However, it’s still too late and that just feels horrible because these things are uncontrollable. </p>
<p>No. </p>
<p>Not at all. We attended elite universities for undergrad and grad school, but we know now what our families didn’t know then–that there is a huge range of great schools out there, including many that are better fits for our own kids.</p>
<p>I pressured my daughter to be the best that she can be. Being admitted to an Ivy (and attending) is just a bonus.</p>
<p>Amen Sally. Although I was an elite college brat (as we used to say back in the day), I’ve always stressed to Lake Jr. the same sentiments you expressed. I am very happy to see that Lake Jr. is having an absolute ball at his absolutely non-prestigious university. A school that is far from non-descript, but infrequently remarked upon here at CC. He’s working his caboose off, getting good grades in a quite difficult STEM major, actively participating in clubs etc., receiving internship offers, and just loving college life in general. AMEN!</p>
<p>I just hope all the posters who say that they are avoiding Ivies and “top elite schools” because they can’t afford it actually ran the NPCs.</p>
<p>There are several Ivies that are among the five cheapest schools that my son could attend, excepting where I work and a very inexpensive school. OOS state schools are mostly more expensive than Ivies for us.</p>
<p>@rhandco
For upper middle class families with around 180K+ HH income, most Ivies/S/M are full pay or near full pay. Only HYPS can give you considerable FA at that income level.</p>
<p>My spouse and I make between 150K and 160K per year. I cannot believe that the extra 20K is the difference between my family’s 35K EFC and that of the situation you list.</p>
<p>However, we have almost zero savings (less than 5K), his college payments will all come from 401k and HELOC loans. That may be a major difference, if you have savings or college funds in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.</p>
<p>Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, and Penn are all near 36K net price for my son, UMCP is 34K net price. Syracuse is 52K, Brown is 56K.</p>
<p>@rhandco do you happen to know - is the Fin Aid that Penn, MIT, HYPs actually award more generous than what their net price calculator predicts, or is the calc pretty accurate?</p>
<p>No, I don’t know how accurate the NPCs are. I would love to know that, not just for those schools but for others. To be honest, my son is looking at WUStL which is 53K net price for us, and it is likely he would just apply and see what their FA looks like. But some iffy schools he definitely won’t apply to because of outrageous NPC results, all based on the same data from us.</p>
<p>We sent away to get a better estimate of CMU’s net price for my son, because College Abacus had the net price at 15K! When we ran their NPC on CMU’s site, we got 44K. I will let CC know when we get the FA estimate in the mail, and how it compares to the other two estimates.</p>
<p>Here are some sites I found:
<a href=“How to Spot a Lousy Net Price Calculator”>http://www.thecollegesolution.com/how-to-spot-a-lousy-net-price-calculator/</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/npc/NPC-tipsheet-parents-students-011312.pdf”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/npc/NPC-tipsheet-parents-students-011312.pdf</a></p>
<p>This is very interesting, about a year (2011) after NPCs were first required:
<a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org/events/2012/sessions/Documents/C5.pdf”>http://www.nacacnet.org/events/2012/sessions/Documents/C5.pdf</a></p>
<p>One point they make is that unless the family is inaccurate in what they list (they forgot a huge pot of money or source of income, conveniently or by mistake), colleges said they had no issues with people saying the NPC and the actual aid did not match.</p>
<p>My son’s on-again off-again top choice is RPI, and they have a net price just above 33K. If it ends up 35K, I guess I won’t freak. But if it ended up 50K, yes, I would freak. And there are many schools with the same overall cost of attending that are 50K according to their NPCs.</p>
<p>
I would not recommend taking HELOC and raiding the 401K for college, but that’s me. We have higher income than you with savings and some 529. When D was applying last year, all NPCs indicated full pay or near full pay. Only HPS with 5K or more of FA. D is attending full pay at Cornell. We have a family friend that’s also full pay at Cornell with the same income as yours. They probably have more savings though.</p>
<p>I think if your kids are legacies (or double legacies, like mine), a certain amount of pressure is built in. My kids certainly felt it. We tried very hard to talk up the other colleges on the list, because we didn’t know where our kids would get in–and we also wanted them to decide what was the best fit. As it turned out, they got in early to the legacy school and withdrew all the other applications. Whether that was because of indoctrination, I can’t say for sure.</p>
<p>Yes, I’d assume they probably have more savings. Our income is between 150K and 160K gross.</p>
<p>We made the gambit to buy a decent house in an excellent school district. We had to move in the past few years because of family issues (my parents), so that took some money.</p>
<p>We aren’t going to “raid the 401k”, we will be taking out 401k loans which are limited to 50K from each of our accounts. No penalties, and interest is paid back to us. On another thread, I mentioned that we have more than enough available in an open HELOC to pay for each of my children’s college educations.</p>
<p>Having savings in an 0.5% account doesn’t thrill us, nor does taking money from our HELOC to set it aside for college.</p>
<p>If someone has a 500K mortgage, and 200K in savings, they are worse off than a person with a 300K mortgage and an open 200K HELOC. According to many NPCs, anyway. It’s like the 200K savings is magically accessible to colleges and the open HELOC is not. I guess if you take from your 200K, you aren’t creating a debt, but that 500K is real and present debt, 200K of which you could have not been paying.</p>
<p>We refinanced from a fixed rate mortgage (over 6%) to a HELOC (only, prime - .25 = 3% since then usually) right after we moved. And paid it off instead of saving.</p>
<p>If our society including all financial institutions collapses tomorrow, my face will be red though. But then again, sending my kid to college won’t be a priority at that point.</p>
<p>Hunt, my kids applied to the double legacy school, but both were not really fans. They’d seen it during reunions and were not overly impressed. Older son wanted a specific academic strength, younger son just thinks the campus is ugly and too citified. (But also knew he was unlikely to get in, which was fine with all of us.) We have mixed feelings about the pluses and minuses of Harvard, but both we and kids knew plenty of current students who were very happy there.</p>
<p>Thanks rhandco. Those links are interesting.
So your pov is that your savings are in your house, and you’re using HELOC to leverage them. That does make sense since you have a high income that you can pay the loan back from.</p>
<p>Rhandco…you have a whole thread you started about how you plan to finance your kid’s college education. Is there some reason why that needed to be interjected in THIS thread? It’s way off topic.</p>
<p>@Hunt, what do you mean about “withdrew other apps”? Is that because Harvard doesn’t have ED?</p>
<p>My kids are Ivy legacies, and as far as I know, for their school, you have to only apply to them because it is regular ED.</p>
<p>But if my son applied to that Ivy and another school ED, and he got the other school to give him a decision first, does that mean he could/would have to reject the Ivy?</p>
<p>It’s confusing, I almost would want him to apply to both ED if he could, but I have no idea how that might pan out.</p>
<p>(and is there a list of EA schools on CC somewhere?)</p>
<p>@thumper
I probably contributed to the off topic discussion. Sorry. Back to the OP’s topic.</p>