If we do not qualify for any financial aide according to Penn Harvard Yale and Brown financial calculators, does that mean that there is NO chance for negotiation on this if son is accepted to these colleges?
Should I pretty much assume I am on the hook for full cost and if my daughter gets accepted to one of the above IVY’s in 2 years then I may be on the hook for maybe 75% of both of there tuition?
Is that the best that the Ivy’s will do for parents with higher incomes?
Thanks for your help.
Any financial aid officer at these colleges will be happy to talk to you if you have a material change in family circumstances from the time you apply until your kid shows up/you have to pay the bill. What is a material change? Parent loses a job. House is destroyed in a hurricane. Parent is disabled in an accident and disability insurance covers 40% of the previous salary. That sort of thing.
If the NPC’s show you at full pay, what will you be negotiating about? If you have huge unreimbursed/out of pocket medical expenses, draw up a spreadsheet which shows that. You may or may not get financial aid, but you will find a sympathetic professional to talk to. If you get aid at Yale but not at Harvard, that’s worth a phone call. Harvard will likely want to match (or not, but at least they will talk to you). Your kid gets a 30K merit award at Drexel and you want to use that to negotiate for aid at Penn? Doesn’t work that way.
First you say that you do not qualify for ANY aid at these colleges. If that is the case, you will be responsible for 100% of the cost of attendance…not 75%. Your kiddo can take a $5500 Direct Loan at any of these colleges…but your family will be paying the remaining costs if you qualify for NO aid.
These schools will reconsider your financial aid award ONLY if there is a material change to your financial situation…lost job, death of breadwinner parent, a medical crisis requiring you to pay a substantial unreimbursed amount out of pocket…things like that.
But if your only reason for asking for reconsideration is that you can’t meet the family contribution…and there have been no substantial financial changes downward…then no…these schools are won’t increase your need based aid.
And they don’t give merit aid.
ETA…when you have two in college you might see some aid…but there is no way for us to tell you if that is the case for you. The net price calculator gives a net cost. That net cost doesn’t exceed the COA.
It’s very possible you will receive no additional aid if your income and assets are very high…even with two in college.
I think the 75% comment was based on two in college a couple years down the road, after the first one has been paying 100%. Certainly if they are really really full pay, then two in college will be 2 times 100%.
I guess what I mean by if both of my kids are accepted to the school is that when I ran the numbers the tuition went from full cost to 75% cost. From for example $72,000 for one student full to say $52,000 for each student if both kids were admitted.
Yes you guys are right. I ran the numbers for 2 in college on the Harvard site and they have me paying full price for both kids. I don’t know why the others said I would be paying a lower amount for both kids but its probably wrong.
For my D19 if she got into one of the ivy’s we would not be full pay but it would be a large number. One that we probably aren’t too comfortable with. Not say my D19 will get into one, but at least she has been told. I have run the NPC on many of the schools and even if they are off by 15% the number is not appealing.
I have a friend that went through this process last year with a high stats kid. Said kid got into Princeton, CM and one other. The kid had big merit offers at some places as well. The family is full pay. So they went to one of the state schools. The student enrolled as a junior because of AP and clep I think. She will be done with undergrad in 2 years. The family told me their strategy is to have undergrad be as cheap as possible and if they have to spend money do it in grad school.
We will probably go the same route when it is all said and done. My D19 won’t be a junior when she enrolls. Luckily we already have 2 schools with initial offers that bring down the COAs much lower than any of the ivy’s NPC. One of the offers would sign on the dotted line right now if it was from her number 1 choice.
If you ran the NPC for Harvard for 2 kids, and yet you are full-pay for both, then your income/assets are very high… Harvard and Princeton are supposedly the most generous of all, and if you do not qualify there, then you will not qualify anywhere. There are many families in your situation, who cannot/do not want to pay their NPC, so they look for alternatives - merit at lower rung privates (T20) or flagship state school. I know of kids who got into Princeton or MIT but went to Vanderbilt on a full tuition scholarship or full ride to their state flagship. It really is a personal decision, whether or not to be full pay at these elite schools. Search for tons of threads on “doughnut hole” "families.
We chose to send S17 to an Ivy because of the opportunities and for a good fit. It is tough but we are managing so far, because we are quite frugal and it is very important to us as a family. No regrets so far. But we are on the fence whether we should do the same for D20 or be more practical and go instate. Tough decision.
If you can’t pay you family contribution…and your kids are really competitive applicants for Princeton, Harvard, Brown and the like…they might garner some merit aid at other colleges.
Your state flagship is likely a lot less costly than the Ivies…and many flagship Us have terrific honors colleges.
Some states have highly competitive flagship universities…UNC, UVA, Michigan, for example. OR they have excellent flagship research universities like the Big Ten schools. If you live in CA, there are some excellent public universities at a great cost. And there are public universities with a tech emphasis that are also great…Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech for example.
Then there are some public universities that do give excellent aid to very high achieving out of state kids…Pitt, for example.
If you can’t pay $70,000 a year for two kids to go to college…there are plenty of options that are a fraction of that cost. And that’s without any aid.
Thank you all for all of your great comments. I really appreciate it. It is a very tough decision. We also have 2 other younger kids in grade school. We are paying for parochial school for all 4 now. We just don’t know if its worth it to burn alot of our income on the first one at the expense of the other 3 plus also our retirement. Very tough decision. Thanks for all of your insight. This is a great site. I will search the other forums also and continue to think hard about this important decision.
I think that if there is any chance you would say “no” to a younger child after saying “yes” to an older child, based solely on financial considerations, think again. Children are never treated “equally,” but in our family we have strived to be as even as possible, and have been very transparent to both kids about any financial support we provide (they are both out of college now). Otherwise I can forecast family strife down the road. My husband’s family is dealing with decades of financial asymmetry between the 50-something year old siblings. It has caused a LOT of negativity.
Here’s what HYP each says about those whose income is greater than $200,000 (I couldn’t find Harvard’s specific statement about families in that income level with 2 children in college like Y and P do).
Harvard: “There are several hundred families earning more than $200,000 who are receiving scholarship aid based on extenuating financial circumstances.”
Yale: “Greater than $250,000 is $50,957 (median net cost) with 23% qualifying. (most who qualify have multiple children in college)”
Princeton: “33% of families above $250,000 (most who qualify have 2 children in college) with grant of $22,880, covering 46% tuition.”
If your NPC at any of these most generous colleges shows that you’re still full pay even with 2 children in college at the same time, your income/asset gotta be really high. None of these colleges, by the way, consider your home equity and retirement savings.
As someone whose parents burned the college fund on older kids and didn’t have much left for me (kid #3), I’d say you need to plan ahead and be relatively equitable if possible. Your kids WILL know. And it won’t feel good.
That said, kids with high stats have a lot of choices that cost less than ivies full pay. Decide on what you’ll spend, whether you’ll have your kid take out their federal loans, and start there. Let your kid (and spouse) know early in the search process so everyone understands the parameters.
Most of these calculators consider your ability to pay over time – not just out of current income. So that would include your current income and savings as well as your future income and savings.
It’s all about priorities. You are in a great position that your financial situation is such that you do not qualify for any aid from the most generous colleges in the country even with two in college—AND your children have the qualifications for the most selective colleges in the country. Combined, these two situations give you many, many options and many possibilities for re-setting priorities. For example, having all four of your children in parochial school costs, what? About $50k a year in total? That’s a lot of dough that can pay for a large chunk of one year of college. Or you can plan to work beyond your envisioned retirement age. Or you can start socking away money in 529s now for the two youngest instead of going on a vacation.
Wow…if you’d be full pay for 2 kids at Harvard, does that mean that your income is approaching half of a million?
Anyway, to answer your question…if your son gets into H, there would be no room for negotiation since they think you can pay for two students there.
Best you find out this now. You need to tell your kids how much you can spend on EACH child per year…including the times when there’s two in college at the same time.
So, if you can only afford to pay $50k per year, then tell your kids $25k per year so that you won’t have an issue during the years when there are two in college.
This may seem like a “tough decision,” but really it’s a decision many families face. Many can’t/won’t spend their EFC towards college when there are so many other alternatives.
What is your son’s major and career goal? What are his stats?
Admission to such schools is highly unlikely so this really isn’t a tough decision at all.
Your real tough question is how much will you pay for a school without such perceived status and those endowments? The fantasy discussion is way less important than picking out schools you actually WILL pay for. If you are such a high earner and have no savings for college, set out a budget now for all your kids that would work, and then your kids can apply for rare reach schools with merit to round out the list. Your position is pretty common other than having multiple kids that you assume would be a shoo in the tippy tops.
No. If you aren’t eligible, there is no negotiation. This is one reason, we are attracted towards schools like Rice, Northwestern and Vanderbilt, COA is lower than many Ivies and there are good merit scholarships as well. If one top 20 school costs 30-60K less than other, it’s a great value for us full or high payers. If you add it all for 4 years, it adds up to 100-300K. If it came between rank 1 and rank 50th then I may think twice but it’s too much money to make rank 7 worth more than rank 17 for most full pay families. It all depends if we get any merit offers from any highly selective college, keeping fingers crossed.