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<p>Sorry…above is NOT true. Savings are indeed considered an asset. If you are talking about real retirement savings (IRA, TSA, 401K, 403B) that is different. BUT regular savings are very much considered an asset.</p>
<p>And dividends from these stocks are also assets.</p>
<p>I recently talked to a UPenn Representative and Princeton rep.</p>
<p>I remember them telling me that they do not look at house loans or equity.</p>
<p>You are asked to report the current market value for your home and also the mortgage outstanding on your home. So, equity is the difference. SOME (maybe many) private schools expect you to use your equity to help pay a portion of your Family contribution.</p>
<p>This can be a real problem if you live in an area, like ours, where housing prices are quite high. Unfortunately, property taxes in NJ are the highest in the country but those expenses aren’t counted… Can’t sell. Market is dead. Plus giving up a job to move is crazy in this economy.</p>
<p>Why would you think that your father should not have to pay for college when he has the money? Which, indirectly, is what those assets are, and really, not so indirectly. If colleges gave financial aid to those in your situation, they would need a lot more money than they have right now.</p>
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<p>A good friend recently went to a FA session given by Stanford. They said that they use Zillow to determine current market value. I usually take a look at Zillow and a couple of other sites and take an average.</p>
<p>I am always surprised that folks with great assets aren’t grateful that they HAVE them. Instead, it seems like they are trying to figure out if they “count” or not…or how to find a way NOT to use them to pay for college. Why can’t these families celebrate their good fortune. If this dad has $500,000 worth of stocks, perhaps the dividends for those can be used to help finance college costs.</p>
<p>Agree with thumper (as usual). If you have assets they can be used for college…quit figuring out a way to NOT use them or make them not “count.”
If the stocks are truly for retirement they should be in IRA/401K/retirement accounts and then would be protected.<br>
If the stocks are between 300K and 500K and are not in protected retirement accounts then it is time to sell some and use the proceeds for college.</p>
<p>Here is the judgment that my father makes. He has 400k worth of assets because he worked really hard and was a part of some successful entrepreneurial endeavors.
He was born in China in poverty, ok? He is not from a wealthy family, nor does he act as such in anyway.</p>
<p>His judgment is that, UNLIKE ALL THOSE AMERICANS WHO FAIL TO SAVE MONEY FOR THEIR RETIREMENT, he wanted to save his assets as a backup for retirement. </p>
<p>Why not save it in a savings account, retirement plan, or 401k? Because he wanted to have the money grow.
I mean would u rather save a portion of the money in a stagnant account, or reinvest it back into the market where is could potentially be worth more later?</p>
<p>Your father (or you) has a basic misunderstanding of self-directed retirement plans. An IRA or 401k can easily be invested in the market. How do you think people who lost 40% of their retirement funds last year did that? Trust me, they weren’t keeping their money in “stagnant” savings accounts.</p>
<p>All other things being equal, if your father has $500K in total savings and is looking at retirement in 15 years or so, he’s really in no position to pay $40-$50K/year for college. So do him a favor, apply for colleges where you’re likely to get merit aid, apply for every scholarship you can possibly find, work hard during the summers, and do your best to keep your cost of attendance as low as you possibly can.</p>
<p>Good luck to you!</p>
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<p>Here is the judgment that my father makes. He has 400k worth of assets because he worked really hard and was a part of some successful entrepreneurial endeavors.</p>
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<p>First off…“your dad” doesn’t own those stocks, “your parents” own those stocks. I don’t know why you keep referring to your parents assets as “your dad’s assets.” It’s a bit annoying that you act as if this is your “dad’s money” when it’s not.</p>
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<p>Life if about choices and their consequences. Your parents choose to keep that money in accounts that are not protected as retirement accounts. That’s THEIR choice to make a decision that negatively affects you. </p>
<p>Have your parents ever said how much they’ll give you each year for college? It’s starting to sound like zero.</p>
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<p>Oh really…but your dad’s not against you taking all those Americans’ tax dollars for you to go to college. How nice. </p>
<p>Blame your parents that you won’t get F/A, don’t blame anyone else. They could pay.</p>
<p>And, again…they’re not HIS assets. You live in California…those assets are from earnings during the marriage. It’s your mom’s money, too.</p>
<p>I refer the assets as my father’s asset because they ARE. My mother does not work and all the stocks he has are under my father’s name anyways. Does it really matter whether they are my father’s or not?</p>
<p>I am not arguing that is is not my family’s fault that I will probably not get any F/A. I think it is 100% the responsibility of theirs to account for the future of their decisions. I agree to that.</p>
<p>My parents are thinking about 25k - 30k a year total. 40k - 50k just seems very daunting to them</p>
<p>Then choose some schools that that will cover…some UCs perhaps…</p>
<p>Or, choose some lower ranking schools that will give you some merit money.</p>
<p>either way, their assets are too much for F/A</p>
<p>And, it doesn’t matter that your mom doesn’t work. In the eyes of the state of California, it is your mom’s money, too. It doesn’t matter if it’s in your dad’s name.</p>
<p>Djokovic: Just to clarify in a less heated way, California is a community property state, meaning that by law, any assets acquired during the marriage by either partner belong to both equally. This is to protect women like your mom, who make valuable contributions to the family, but have no wages to show for it. :)</p>
<p>Unless your parents are willing to cash in a significant chunk of their savings, your best bet is to find schools that give significant merit money. I don’t know that I’d recommend the UCs right; they are in the $25-28 range for residents, but they’ve recently announced a tuition increase of 40%+, and I imagine we’ll see more hikes in coming years. Also, some feel that the quality of education at many of the UCs is in decline – crowded classes, furloughed professors, course reductions, etc.</p>
<p>@LasMa,
I totally agree that the UC’s are not doing so hot…I am going UC Berkeley and UC LA for sure though. I listed UC Berkeley as my number 1 school on my National Merit semifinalist app, hopefully gonna get some merit aid? I am starting to doubt that saving money at UC’s is really worth the declining equality of education.</p>
<p>K so basically there is a consensus that I will probably have to pay the full 50k for those need-base only schools?</p>
<p>@ mom2collegekids: I already said that it doesn’t matter whose assets they belong to already. I get your point on that.</p>
<p>Djokovic there is a small amount of merit money such as Regent’s scholarships available at the UCs, so it’s possible you can be awarded some. At the most selective schools in the country (Ivies, MIT, Stanford etc) there is little merit money available, if any. There are outside scholarships that you should definitely apply to in order to bring your costs down.</p>
<p>With your stats (4.0, very high SAT, tons of ECs) there are probably hundreds of private colleges and universities that will throw a lot of merit money your way. The merit money you could get would bring your total cost of attendance down to the level of or below the cost of a UC. In California, depending on what you want to study, you have many many options. Look at Santa Clara, Saint Mary’s, Occidental, the Claremont Colleges…these are just off the top of my head.</p>
<p>There is absolutely no need for you and your family to spend $50,000 per year on a college education.</p>
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<p>Of course, this could be a concern… But, if the UCs do increase their tuition (aka fees) by 40%, then possibly that will stem some of those declining factors.</p>
<p>I know that a 40% increase sounds just awful, but the UCs have been charging a lot less than other similarly or lower ranked state schools for probably too long (which may be one of the causes of these declines).</p>
<p>So, assuming UCs charges between $8k-9k/yr, a 40% increase would put the new rate at around $12,000 (I don’t know if the proposed 40% increase is “across the board” of if that exact percentage just applies to the lower priced UCs.</p>
<p>Charging $12k per year would put the UCs towards the top of the below list, but the UCs rank amongst those schools (UF an obvious exception). Calif is unique that it has the Cal State system, too. While I suspect those, too, will see fee increases, they will likely always lag behind the UCs in cost by a few thou.</p>
<p>To give you an idea of what other good state publics are charging…</p>
<p>Annual Tuition & Fees for In-State students , State Universities</p>
<p>$4,373 , U FLORIDA (How is their budget doing, anyone know??)
$5,396 , U N CAROLINA
$6,030 , U GEORGIA
$6,824 , U IOWA
$7,506 , GEORGIA TECH
$7,692 , U WASHINGTON
$8,020 , U WISCONSIN
$8,053 , U MARYLAND
$8,228 , UCLA
$8,336 , TEXAS A&M
$8,352 , UC BERKELEY
$8,613 , INDIANA U
$8,638 , PURDUE
$8,706 , OHIO STATE
$8,735 , VIRGINIA TECH
$8,775 , UC IRVINE
$8,798 , UC SAN DIEGO
$8,890 , UC S CRUZ
$8,930 , U TEXAS
$9,055 , UC S BARBARA
$9,364 , UC DAVIS
$9,486 , U DELAWARE
$9,870 , U VIRGINIA
$9,886 , U CONNECTICUT
$10,688 , CLEMSON
$10,800 , WILLIAM & MARY
$11,542 , U MINNESOTA
$11,614 , U ILLINOIS
$11,738 , U MICHIGAN
$11,886 , RUTGERS
$11,935 , MICHIGAN ST
$14,154 , U PITTSBURGH
$14,416 , PENN STATE</p>
<p>To the person who suggested SCU…SCU requires profile submission for scholarship consideration. I think their policy is to refrain from giving $$ to those whose financial situation suggests that they can pay.</p>
<p>The OP needs to apply to schools that give generous merit $$ without FAFSA or PROFILE submittal.</p>
<p>USF, Seatle U, Gonzaga, and others would likely give you merit money.</p>
<p>Agreed re: merit money. Both of my children are at schools where the merit money brings them on par with about 25K per year in cost. We get no FA. To clarify that is 25K COA, the figures in the post above mine are for tuition only, not total COA.</p>
<p>To clarify for Santa Clara University, their merit aid is quite generous. They offer full-tuition scholarships, 50%-tuition scholarships and a number of other partial-tuition awards. The OP’s stats would make him competitive for these merit scholarships. SCU does require both Profile and FAFSA to determine need-based awards, and these must be filled out in order to be considered for merit awards as well.</p>
<p>[Santa</a> Clara University - Financial AidSCU Merit-based Awards](<a href=“http://www.scu.edu/financialaid/SCU-Merit-based-Awards.cfm]Santa”>Financial Aid - Santa Clara University)</p>
<p>Most schools will require submittal of FAFSA even if the student is not eligible for need-based aid. Seattle U is one of them.</p>
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<p>The CSUs increased tuition by 10% this year, and I will be amazed if both the UC and CSU systems don’t have major increases over the coming few years. However, CSU is still very affordable; that’s not the problem. The problem is quality. The CSUs are seeing significant increase in class sizes, and some classes are being dropped altogether. Student services are being cut. Enrollment for Fall '10 will be slashed by 40,000 students. There are long waiting lists for some general ed classes. Professors, librarians and coaches have been forced to accept furloughs amounting to a 10% pay cut. In fact, a CSU official stated publicly that with the budget cuts, CSU may no longer be able to provide the quality education it wants to and is capable of. </p>
<p>Even if without these sad facts, however, I wouldn’t recommend CSU to the OP. mom2collegekids, you are probably unaware that the CSU system is not the junior version of the UC system. It has an entirely different mission, and is an entirely different educational experience. CSU was established to train the state’s next generation of nurses, teachers, architects, law enforcement officers, physical therapists, accountants, and computer technicians. And it was set up to provide a college education for California students who, either for academic or financial reasons, cannot realistically strive for the UCs, much less private schools or Ivies. That perhaps explains why we see so little mention of CSU on this board; it lacks glamour. And given the OP’s stats and ambitions, I doubt that it would be much of a fit. But give CSU its due: it has been the unheralded workhorse of California higher education for decades.</p>
<p>I absolutely think that people who are middle class and have been prudent with their money are complete chumps. I find it outrageous that my D cannot expect to get any FA simply because of my husband’s income of $150K. Well, after paying federal, state, local, and hidden sales taxes - 60% of our income is gone! (Maryland is a high tax state. I’m grateful my husband has a job when so may people are losing them everyday but we are stuck given the economy right now. And the government justs keeps spending and spending us into oblivion while the dollar falls through the floor)</p>
<p>We’ve paid off our debts. We recently refinanced our home and our property value has fallen $40K since July when it was appaised. It infuriates me that private schools who are asking for the CSS profile are going to look at what little home equity we have left and tell us to tap that to pay for school. This is what got us into this mess to begin with - people using their homes like ATMs while values were booming.</p>
<p>If I go on one more college visit and am shown their rock climbing wall and juice bar in the new athletic facility - I will scream!</p>
<p>We opened one 529 for each of our children with $30K from money my husband inherited when his mother died. ALL the gains from thiose investments were wiped out last year during the stock market decline. Now they are both just a couple thousand over principle. Now that money is going to be held against us.</p>
<p>My Ds first choice is a private university in PA, but I’m afraid she’ll have to go to our in-state public college where we can afford full price.</p>