EFC

It’s lovely you pay for your nephews.

But you made "a sentimental decision " to pay for theirs, and now you can’t pay the Amherst calculated cost for your own 2nd son. Seems pretty simple to me. “Son, we can’t afford it and continue to support others in our extended fanily.”

Or will the nephew’s graduate soon, freeing some money? Maybe son2 takes a gap until then. Or goes to the college you can afford. What collegeis that? Maybe all this hand wringing isn’t necessary.

“If you have assets that can be sold to finance an education schools expect you to do so before they will give you needs based money.” Nope. One could get some fin aid. But you are responsible for your part, the family contribution. If that means selling assets, you do that or choose a less expensive school. Depends on your particular situation.

@CupCakeMuffins The vast majority of kids have to compromise for one reason or another. They not only survive it but most are better for it. It sounds like your child has another, more affordable option and should take it. He’s taking it so his family can be stable and hold onto their assets, so his siblings and cousins can go to college… don’t you think in the long run, his world view will be better for it? Don’t you want a kid who knows that sometimes you give up the dream so that the people in your life can have a chance? Besides, this sounds like “compromising” between multiple great options. That’s a problem most kids would be grateful for.

What you call “compromise” is what the rest of us call “real life”. Choices need to be made, and finances factor in. Would I like to seat in one of those seats in the front of the airplane with the fold-down seats? You bet. So why am I walking past them and sitting in a cramped seat in the back of the plane? Because of $$$. Either way I am going to get to my destination in the same amount of time.

What is Amherst going to give your 18 year old kid that his other choices won’t? A feeling that his parents love him so much and think he is so special that they are willing to give up whatever assets they need to sell to make it happen? I suppose you can decide that part is worth it. (But then, why is S2 favored over his older sibling at the $30K college? If the older sibling sees you making a financial risky decision or significant sacrifice, will that lead to feelings of resentment?)

But if you are looking for objective qualities that will guarantee Amherst to be a better college experience for your son than his other options… I think you will be hard put to find them. If your son were to make a list of the 5 qualities he thinks are most important in his desired college experience… what would differentiate Amherst from the others? Is Amherst the only LAC vs. large U’s? Or the only private college vs. public options?

I think you are wrestling with emotions that really shouldn’t be governing the important life decision being made right now. It’s like wine buying—are you going to buy the $75 bottle or the $10 bottle. Blind taste tests would show that chances are you really can’t taste the difference… but if it’s a special occasion and you have the money, your emotions are telling you to go for the fancy label. But it in the end… it’s a bottle of wine and after you serve it and drink it, it’s gone.

It wouldn’t even be a discussion if it was another college but Holy Amherst with commitment to make it happen for all applicants. Isn’t this need if an applicant can’t attend Amherst due to money which he himself doesn’t have and can’t borrow or force parents to pay up? I’m sure many who receive full aid from Amherst can get free rides at other good colleges as well so Amherst isn’t their only shot at education either. Why one applicant’s need is different than other?

You don’t have financial need according to the Amherst calculations. You on,y have need because you are choosing to pay college costs for another family member…not one of your kids. The college doesn’t care one bit about that.

Simply put…would you be able to afford to pay for Amherst if you were not funding your nephew’s college costs?

You can call Amherst and ask them point blank – I’m paying for my nephews to attend college. Will you consider their expenses as part of a financial aid appeal to increase my child’s aid? If they say yes, they will ask for proof of this, so have your payment records available.

Either they will or they won’t.

And no – kids with EFC 0 can’t get a free ride anywhere because most schools do not have the financial aid budget Amherst does. And if all it took was for kids to say, “my parents won’t pay” to get more financial aid, every kid would say that.

The difference between your child’s need and another is that paying for a nephews tuition is not in the financial aid formulas. Expenses that are not in the formulas are considered on a case by case basis by each college financial aid office.

The nephews aren’t immediate family. Paying for them is discretionary. If Amherst allowed this as legit, they’d have to do that for every family that wanted to spend the college fund on relatives.

@lookingforward Perhaps, but how many people really want to spend their college fund on other relatives?

The fact that it is discretionary doesn’t mean that it definitely won’t be considered. Some Profile schools consider sibling’s private school costs, for example. Many immigrant families also send funds ‘back home’ to their extended family in impoverished countries. These remittances are also discretionary (though who wants their grandma homeless on the streets somewhere far away?) and are also sometimes (I’m not saying always!) taken into consideration.

The only way for OP to know for sure is to ask.

The OP can ask…sure. But really…the funding of an extended family member college costs is discretionary.

The only time I’ve heard of money being sent to relatives in the old country being considered is when this was essential for medical or other reasons like preventing homelessness. Not just because someone felt like doing it.

How is this any different than someone saying they spent their money on anything…beside college costs for immediate family.

The OP knew his own kid was going to be applying for college when he decided to help out the nephew. It was a nice thing to do…but the OP knew…up front…that it would limit the amount left to spend on his own kid.

Merit aid would have been a good choice…Schools with merit aid. That would not have been affected by the income or lack of it…or assets or anything else financial. This sounds like a smart kiddo who could have gotten merit aid at some schools…hoping that is what happened!

My husband’s mother has a full-time home health aid. She can’t afford it. My sister- and brother-in-law pay for it. We don’t split it with them because we have eight straight years of college to pay for. They’ve finished paying for college for five years ago. If we split the cost of the aid, we would not have enough to pay for college. It would never occur to me to ask the college for more financial aid because we are paying for a home health aid for a parent. This is analogous to paying for nephews’ college. If sister- and brother-in-law couldn’t pay, then MIL would go on Medicaid and go into a nursing home OR H and I would pay for aid and our kids would go to state colleges.

@CupCakeMuffins – You are angry over a false premise.

Amherst isn’t “Holy” and it doesn’t have a “commitment to make it happen for all applicants.”

Like other elite colleges, Amherst promises to meet “full demonstrated need” using a “need analysis formula”.

If your son’s FAFSA EFC is less than Amherst’s full COA (~$70K), then your son would be eligible for a subsidized direct loan of up to $3500 if he goes to Amherst. That amount will go up to $4500 the following year, and $5500 for the following two years. “Subsidized” means that there is no interest and no payments due until after he finishes college.

Additionally he can take another $2000 per year in unsubsidized loan amounts – “unsubsidized” means that interest would be charged immediately, even though payments could be deferred until after he graduates. I would not recommend the “unsubsidized” loans – but it does mean that your son could borrow up to $27,000 total for the four years he is in college. He can borrow that amount even if he is not eligible for the subsidized loans-- the subsidized part just gives a break on interest.

Many parents in your situation would ask their child to borrow to pay for their top choice college, Becaue if a young adult really wants something, it makes sense for them to take on some of the financial responsibility.

You can find more information about federal direct loans here:

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans/subsidized-unsubsidized

Like most other colleges that meet full need, Amherst uses the CSS Profile that asks for financial information that is not included on the FAFSA. The most common thing that pushes up family’s costs is home equity – that’s an asset that is excluded from the FAFSA but is something that many families have-- and no one wants to sell their home in order to send their kid to college.

At the same time, however, there is a difference between financial status of families who own homes and families who rent. So most colleges do see it as fair to consider, although some may cap the amount they wll consider in relation to famliy income.

But Amherst-- and every other college – will consider a variety of other assets as well – the more complicated your financia situation, the more likely that the CSS “needs analysis formula” will deviate significantly from FAFSA EFC.

Here is more info from the Amherst web site.

Link: https://www.amherst.edu/offices/financialaid/firstyear_transfer/faq

@CupCakeMuffins — You wrote in post #8 above:

That implies that you have an asset that you can sell or perhaps borrow against to raise the funds. If you have an asset you can sell, then the value of the asset does reduce your “need”. Other families getting need-based aid usually don’t have disposable assets.

You seem to be frustrated because with your nephews in college, you can’t pay the full cost of Amherst out of current income or cash on hand… but that is not how need is calculated.

Here is what Amherst says about it’s view:

From: https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/General%2520Financial%2520Aid%2520Information%25202.pdf

So Amherst isn’t looking at what discretionary money you have on hand for the current year – they are looking at the big picture. They assume that some parents may choose to borrow --and federal parent PLUS loans are available for you to borrow up to the full cost of attendance. So in addition to selling “some asset” – you could consider taking a loan. If the asset you would sell is income producing, then taking a loan may be the better option. Taking a loan would also allow you to increase the buying power of the cash you have on hand --so it may be one option for you.

Please try to understand that we all have the same system. You are feeling frustrated – but when my kids were in college I was a single parent struggling to get by on an income of less than $40K. Even though I had refinanced my house in order to buy out my ex-husband’s interest during our divorce, and owed more on the house than when oriiginally purchased – the home values had skyrocketed so much that I had a large home equity that drove up our numbers for instituational aid. My ex-husband wasn’t contributing a dime, but his income was considered. So when my daughter started colleges she was eligible for a Pell grant , but the college wanted us to come up with around $10-$15K annually over and above the federal EFC. You may not think that’s a lot of money… but for me, it was, and I managed by spending down all of my savings and by taking out parent PLUS loans for half of the cost.

I think you should look deep inside yourself because your resentment toward Amherst is misplaced. Maybe you are really feeling angry at yourself for promising to pay for your nephew’s college because now you see that promise is taking away money that could be used for your son. So you are stuck in a place of feeling anger and resentment, and maybe its easier to blame the college for not giving you money than it is to blame your nephews for their life circumstance or to acknowledge that you made a financial choice that impairs your ability to fund your son’s college.

I think you will be happier in the long run if you come to terms with this now. We all make decisions along the way and most of us do not have the sort of discretionary income to even allow us to make the choices you did. So you are actually very fortunate, as is your son who has an array of good choices for college.

I understand all that but here college is holding kids responsible for choices of their parents. Every student who can make it into Amherst is able to get free education at many other colleges so in that regard all students are equal, none of them will stay uneducated if Amherst didn’t help them and none of them has any control over what their parent earn or spend. They are teens with no money of their own, just their love of learning. These teens are getting judged and sentenced for having mediocre parents instead of having rich or poor parents who could either easily pay or make college look charitable by helping them. Its not about any of these kids, just about college’s needs.

@CupCakeMuffins

Choices…choices…we all make them.

You made a choice to fund college for nephew(s), which was a kind and generous choice.

But that was a choice you made…and unless I’m reading this wrong…if you weren’t paying those nephew college costs, you would be able to afford Amherst.

Luckily your own kid does have options of colleges to attend…right?

You are right. My choices. I’m not the applicant. Applicants don’t get to choose their parents or decide how much parents should earn, save or spend. Amherst should judge apllicants on their choices and for things they can control not for conduct of other people. No? If Amherst was a for profit college with no endowment then we wouldn’t be having this disscussion but they are not.

NO!

In this country, the first in line to pay for college are the PARENTS. If the parents make choices that prohibit funding college…that is the way it is for the student.

The college isn’t going to give the parents a “bye” because they chose to spend their earnings and savings elsewhere…when they could have chosen to fund their kid’s college.

@CupCakeMuffins - Amherst did judge applicants that way. And your kid got in. Because your kid is a dependent, Amherst then has to judge you, the parent, on your ability to pay. It has judged that you have x amount available. That has nothing to do with your kid, nor should it.

Are you seriously carping because you might have to sell an asset or two to send your kid there? You have that choice and you’re upset about it?

My kid isn’t a candidate for a top-tier school. But she could probably get into something a bit down the prestige line. She isn’t allowed to apply to those schools, however, because we have no way of paying for it. Because of the choices her parents made. That’s reality. In that sense, kids always pay for the choices of their parents.

“I understand all that but here college is holding kids responsible for choices of their parents. Every student who can make it into Amherst is able to get free education at many other colleges so in that regard all students are equal, none of them will stay uneducated if Amherst didn’t help them and none of them has any control over what their parent earn or spend. They are teens with no money of their own, just their love of learning. These teens are getting judged and sentenced for having mediocre parents instead of having rich or poor parents who could either easily pay or make college look charitable by helping them. Its not about any of these kids, just about college’s needs.”

This gets a big “Huh?” Of course kids end up paying the price for their parents choices. Parents spend every penny they earn, have a big income but no savings, colleges don’t subsidize those parents ski trips to Aspen by giving the kid aid. Did the kid choose vacations over college savings? Of course not. That’s a parental choice but the kid pays the price. Parents own a vacation home, and due to that asset, their contribution to college costs is a lot bigger than it would be just on the basis of their income and other assets. Is it fair to the kid? Of course not- kids don’t buy condos in Myrtle Beach or Hilton Head.

This is life. What exactly is your beef with Amherst? And what does their endowment have to do with it? If you don’t like the way Amherst uses its financial resources, then send your kid somewhere else. Your posts are starting to sound illogical. Have you told your kid you can’t afford Amherst yet? A lot of your angst will go away once you have that discussion.

MODERATOR’S NOTE: I don’t think there’s anything to add. Closing thread.