<p>Beyondtx in that case, I would suggest a gap year( which I do anyway)
:)</p>
<p>There’s no such thing as fafsa aid. If you’re taking about pell, that caps at 56xx for an efc of zero. Hardly covers tuition at most four year colleges. Doesn’t over tuition any state 4 year college in my state afaik.</p>
<p>Also, the top schools are subsidized by endowments. They are frank about the fact that even full pay students
are subsidized.</p>
<p>I apologize for using the term FAFSA aid. What I meant was the full need-based scholarship that students receive as a result of an EFC of $0. And $5000 is essentially nothing. That is merely asking persons receiving need-based aid to actually get a job and pay for 10% of the cost themselves instead of having other people cover the cost in its entirety for them.</p>
<p>My experience is limited and frustration is more limited to flagship, top 10 public, and Ivy-League caliber institutions, so I cannot elaborate much on other types of colleges.</p>
<p>@GMTplus7 I too am not a fan that top schools are limiting merit aid in favor of meeting 100% of “need.” I suppose it’s acceptable at Harvard where nearly everyone is equally qualified, but what about places such as University of Michigan, which doesn’t offer any amount of substantial merit aid, yet awards exceptional financial aid.</p>
<p>So then, you’re angry about an extremely small percentage of very very lucky poor students who won the lottery.</p>
<p>Because most full pell students, raised in poverty, get $56xx and that’s it.</p>
<p>Also, almost every school, except for maybe 5 or 6 has a student contribution.</p>
<p>What is the difference between being poor and having parents that refuse to pay for one’s education? Since when did parents of middle class students have to contribute to their children’s college? It wasn’t like this 30 years ago. Why can’t poor (excuse politically incorrect language) students take out loans like middle class students? They can get better loans (lower interest rates) too, can’t they?</p>
<p>I apologize for being angry about a relatively small number of institutions, but the stats I’m dealing with put me (and many other posters in this forum) among that group of students.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Many state flagships do not “meet full need” even for in-state students. Perhaps you may prefer the model followed by Pennsylvania and Illinois, where in-state financial aid at the flagships is minimal, so merely being admitted to the flagship is insufficient to be able to attend unless one comes from an upper middle or upper income family who is willing to pay the cost.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Michigan presumably takes the viewpoint that a student meritous enough to be admitted to the flagship should not be held back from attending due to coming from a poor family, and that completion of a bachelor’s degree at the flagship will likely result in that student eventually contributing (through economic activity and tax payments) far more over his/her working life than the subsidized tuition for his/her attendance.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus</p>
<p>I truly appreciate your viewpoint. All I am trying to say is that upper-middle class students struggle to pay for college too, and they have a lot less going for them (like absolutely nothing at all) in the financial aid process. </p>
<p>I do not think anyone should be held back from attending Michigan, including myself, an admitted student from an upper middle class family that doesn’t have $50,000 plus travel, book, supplies, etc. to pay for college for myself and to subsidize the education of those “who can’t afford it.” I put that in quotations as my family also cannot afford it.</p>
<p>@romani,</p>
<p>True, the rich schools do indeed defray some of their operating costs w endowmt earnings. But consider the arithmatic. If a hypothetical school has a 30 billion dollar endowment that earns only a modest 3% per year and has 10,000 students, then all the kids could attend for free, eat cake, and the school could still have leftover change.</p>
<p>But that’s not what the college do. There is now an arms race that high tuition = quality. Plus it satisfies the pervasive redistributionist liberal mentality of college administrations today to stick it to the higher earning parents.</p>
<p>The difference between being poor and having parents who won’t pay is that being raised in middle class gives you advantages that you can’t imagine unless you’ve been in both poverty and middle class. </p>
<p>Btw, I meant no disrespect to those at top schools by saying they won the lottery. They obviously worked incredibly hard and were superstar applicants.</p>
<p>The problem of paying for college isn’t just a lower class problem, it is a problem of students in nearly all socioeconomic levels thanks to the rapidly inflating costs of a high quality college education.</p>
<p>True, I will not claim to be able to imagine the difficulties those in less than ideal situations may face. I just don’t appreciate that paying for an Ivy League education isn’t one of those difficulties.</p>
<p>You can get a quality education at most schools. It’s what you do there that counts. </p>
<p>I’ll sound like a broken record if I continue so I’ll bow out now.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If your Michigan price is that much, you must not be a Michigan resident. What is wrong with your lower cost in-state flagship? Note that very few public universities give good financial aid to out-of-state students, even if they give good financial aid to in-state students (presumably on the idea that the in-state students are much more likely to have parents who have paid state taxes in the past, and are much more likely to remain in-state to boost the economy and pay taxes in the future).</p>
<p>If your family income level is such that you would not get financial aid anywhere, then you are likely way above upper-middle class.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus</p>
<p>I live in the Dakotas. We do not have a flagship that carries much of any notoriety outside of our state. I want to have the option to leave our state as even my parents will be leaving shortly. Our EFC is about $40,000. This has left me with no need-based grants at any of the institutions I applied to.</p>
<p>@ucb, what is your income threshold for distinguishing btw middle-middle class v upper-middle class?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The University of Minnesota gives in-state tuition to residents of North Dakota and South Dakota:
[Costs</a> and Aid](<a href=“http://admissions.tc.umn.edu/CostsAid/tuition.html]Costs”>Cost of Attendance | Office of Admissions)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If we take middle-middle income as the 40th to 60th percentile of household income, we get an range of about $40,000 to $70,000 per year. If we take upper-middle income as the 60th to 80th percentile of household income, we get a range of about $70,000 to $105,000 per year.</p>
<p>Now, a lot of people talk about middle class as opposed to middle income, but class definitions involve inclusion of educational attainment, source of income, type of job if employed, and such, and are often determined subjectively and not consistently from person to person. However, when people refer to “middle class but will not get financial aid anywhere”, that stretches the definition quite a bit, since it probably takes being in the top 3-4% of household income to not get financial aid anywhere.</p>
<p>But since income is most important in terms of determining need-based financial aid and affordability of college, it is a better means of looking at demographics in a discussion about need-based financial aid and affordability of college.</p>