<p>killthefifi, you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. Adcoms do indeed care about applicants’ personal lives. If admissions is only a question of test scores and grades, personal life doesn’t factor in unless you are a convicted felon or have black marks on your academic record for plagarism. But admissions is holistic. The Adcoms want to see the whole person so they can give an admissions tip to someone who is especially deserving, or so they can select a diverse class from the hordes of applicants. </p>
<p>Marrying while in high school and then applying to selective colleges is unusual. It will stand out. It may well raise questions in the adcom’s minds. You may think that “any reasonable college-educated person would understand”, but it’s more likely that the adcoms and FA people wil instead think that their merit dollars and admissions offer should go to some other applicant who didn’t arrange a marriage of convenience.</p>
<p>cap, he would get absolutely nothing. but what you just stated was illogical - once you’re married, you’re independent. if you were to get a divorce, that’s a whole other story.>></p>
<p>If he is at a school that does not change status upon marriage, it is not illogical. If he started as a dependent, he may or may not be treated as a dependent for the rest of his college time. It’s just something else to look into.</p>
No it would not definitely result in institutional aid. It depends very much on the school. (I don’t know what sort of schools the OP and her friend are looking at). There are many schools that do not offer any institutional aid at all - only federal and any applicable State aid. Our State Us, for instance, do not offer any need based institutional aid at all. At such schools reducing the EFC to (in the OPs case) @ $5000 would not result in any grant aid if the only grant aid offered is federal, for which a 5000EFC is too high. There are many schools that would fall in this category. You have only to search through CC to see that many students find themselves gapped (unmet need). My own daughter (who does qualify for federal grants) would have had a large gap her first 2 years of college if she did not have a substantial merit based scholarship, as all the federal grants and her small state grant and federal student loans available would not have added up to the COA of her school.</p>
<p>Agreed there are schools where reducing the EFC would lead to institutional aid - but it is definitely not a guarantee at all schools.</p>
<p>I think that is a good idea. I spent hours last Winter filling out the financial aid forms and I came away with the impression that they’ve seen all of the tricks. Especially the CSS Profile asks so may specific questions, if you answer all of them truthfully you won’t get away with anything. It’s hard for me to believe that getting married would be a such a short path to easy money.</p>
<p>And as other people pointed out, down the road it may turn out that it wasn’t worth it.</p>
<p>If we’re talking about HYPSM and other top privates, then this wouldn’t work at all.
For most private schools, that use the CSS profile, your dependency status when you’re entering is the same for all four years. You would be forced to apply to only public schools because of this little clause.</p>
<p>Also, if you’re worried about the adcoms, then this may not be the best solution for you right now. If you can manage to scrape together the first year at a top public school that offers institutional aid, then this would work for the subsequent years. Any other case would be rifled with numerous problems and ultimately wouldn’t work.</p>
<p>Now that I think about it, you have to be in a pretty fortunate situation to make this work. Although the HYPSM adcoms may think it’s odd, I know there was a news story a while back about how this worked for someone at NYU.</p>
<p>killthefifi - I am not aware of any law to prevent marriage of convenience for immigration purpose. One can’t be put in jail or be fined. If they think it is a marriage of convenience, the only thing immigration office could do is to deny your application for a green card. That is no different if a financial aid office should question one’s reason for getting married, they’ll just deny giving aid. </p>
<p>No question, if one should get married at 18 and doesn’t even write something about in an essay, would definitely raise a red flag.</p>
<p>“TwistedxKiss, other than getting off of your parents health insurance and them not being able to claim you on their taxes, there’s nothing else that makes an independent truly “independent.” Besides, the right pre-nup could eliminate joint debts, so that $90k wouldn’t necessarily be joint.”</p>
<p>Considering that there is no conceivable way I could obtain health insurance that I can afford at this present moment in time, losing my parents coverage would be a big deal. Furthermore, as we were NOT planning to get married JUST for aid only to divorce later, that 90k is going to end up getting paid by both of us regardless of a pre-nup. I was not saying we had considered marrying just for aid, we had considered marrying SOONER just for aid. Which, for us, could have been a disaster-- for reasons that apply to anybody who considers getting married in college for any reason. </p>
<p>Not to mention that in many families once you get married the parents doors and wallets are closed for good. So far as our parents are concerned, once we get married we are each others responsibility only and given that we are still young I would not quite like to have my parents doors slammed on me just yet.</p>
<p>oldfort, for international cases i’m pretty sure that being in a relationship or living together is a requirement. this definitely isn’t true domestically. =/</p>
<p>The big aid schools look very closely at the ‘family’. We have kids getting married during senior year of HS and heading off to different colleges? Sure…they’ll fall for that!</p>
<p>Rocket, I’m curious about why you would feel OK pulling this on your future college. What if everyone did, there would be no aid for the deserving. Why do you deserve more than the college gives to others in your family’s income range? Feel entitled to do this?</p>
<p>Many parents don’t contribute and their children get educated without lying.</p>
<p>Curiosity got me to look at your list. You are going to pull this off at small colleges? Do you intend to date? When I was an adcom, I rememberedd my ususual admits. Often ran into them sooner or later, read their articles in the school paper, saw them mentioned in activity round ups…And the school I worked for was many times larger than most on your list.</p>
<p>Well… if it is illegal, you just made a thread documenting your crime. </p>
<p>I doubt the legal system would let something like this pass. I am definitely not an expert, but several people on this thread make a good point, disregarding the morality of your actions. </p>
<p>Whatever the issues, it seems you are pretty set on getting married for your financial situation, so why even post this thread when almost all people are haranguing you for your decision. </p>
<p>I do have sympathy though - these are tough economic times, but are you sure this is the only way? Think about your decision and what you and we may be overlooking. The law finds any and every way to screw a person over. As my physics teacher once said: “The world is oversaturated with lawyers - you are going to get sued”. Worth the risk of a possibility of a future of trouble? Its up to you.</p>
<p>I suspect that some private schools that give good institutional aid may still require the parent financial information for the institutional aid even if the student is married. There are certain circumstances where independent students are still required to provide this information - for instance many medical schools require parent finances even though the students are considered independent. Of course the only way you would know for sure is to ask the school - and if you did that prior to getting married it would raise a red flag or two.</p>
One could just as easily argue that if it was “wrong”, there would be a rule to prevent anyone from benefiting from it. Whoever came up with the rules certainly must have thought of this (since there are rules about how you are treated when you are married), and decided it wasn’t important enough to make a rule against.</p>
<p>Do you get angry at people who buy municipal bonds, which are tax-free? Those people pay less in taxes - therefore they are not paying their fair share. Do you get angry at people who have large retirement accounts, or who pay down their mortgage, or buy a large life insurance policy, which lowers the assets available for college? They are getting more financial aid than they “deserve”.</p>
<p>If you find a way to play within the rules to maximize the aid you get, more power to you.</p>
<p>Tax avoidance is perfectly legal. Tax evasion is not.</p>
<p>Just as marriage solely for purposes of immigration is a felony, marriage simply for purposes of acquiring federal funds would certainly be considered fraud.</p>
<p>totally false, they are tying their money up and taking risk to get the return. On the other hand, does the IRS spell out every evasion–every potential lie–or just make clear there is a penalty for not telling the whole truth?</p>
What are they lying about? What rule is being broken? Do the rules say the marriage must involve love or a deep emotional commitment or whatever?</p>
<p>If they weren’t married and said they were, that would be lying.</p>
<p>
Do you have anything other than your opinion to back this up? For example, it is not uncommon in the military for soldiers to enter into a marriage of convenience so they can get out of the barracks and into married housing or get off-base, which pays them extra money and provides benefits to the spouse. It’s been going on forever, and doesn’t appear to be illegal.</p>
<p>(Note: I’m not advocating this as I think the potential problems down the road out-weigh any short-term advantages, but I don’t see how it would be “illegal” or “fraudulent” or “immoral” or whatever. It seems like a nice loophole in fact.)</p>
<p>
If I buy a corporate bond I am tying up my money and taking risk to get the return, but I am paying taxes.</p>
<p>H. Ross Perot, the billionaire, is well-known for investing his fortune in munis to avoid taxes. Is this fair?</p>
<p>Your moral compass also seems off if you don’t recognize that a marriage for the express purpose of obtaining aid–one that is a sham for this sole purpose–is a lie and fraudulent behavior.</p>
<p>The schools are entitled to dispense aid as they see fit. They believe Rocket’s parent’s should contribute something of their $80K annual income. They have chosen not to contribute–so Rocket can A)go to a college she can afford or B)lie and get money that could otherwise go to a child from a family that has no money to contribute. </p>
<p>Would you encourage your kid to choose B? What if every kid whose parent’s won’t pay did this? Then they would make an express rule and those choosing to scam would move on to the next fraud?</p>
<p>I believe munis yield is lower than regular corporate bond because you don’t have pay tax on the interest income, that saving is then in turn passed on to the issuer (government). Am I missing something?</p>
<p>I think that the part that Louise is missing out on is that she will be an independent student for federal purposes(FAFSA) only. </p>
<p>It is still up to the school to decide how they chose to distribute their own institutional aid. If her soon to be husband is already in college, his financial aid situation is not going to dramatically change, as other stated at most schools if you start out as a dependent student you finish as a dependent student, so even though he is married, they will still ask for his parent’s information when it comes to distributing institutional aid.</p>
<p>Since Louise’s FA for the 2010-2011 school year will be based on her parents 2009 income, the school still can ask and use her parents income to assess need based financial aid (especially since she will have lived most of the year as an unmarried student and her parent’s dependent).
The school can still require the income/assets information of both of her husband and her parents.</p>
<p>Just some things Louise should consider…</p>
<p>When is Louise looking for this marriage to take place? It should probably happen before she applies to college and even then, it would probably need be addressed by her guidance counselor.<br>
Others are right that it is not everyday that students ho up for senior year of high school married.</p>
<p>What exactly would her GC say? That Louise got married over the summer in the hopes of being a being declared financially independent? </p>
<p>Unless their are extenuating circumstances that she needs to get married and logic would dictate that she would be attending school with her husband or at least in close proximity to where he attends school. If this is not the case an admission counselor may think twice at her maturity and though process and may think that her decision to marry is rash. </p>
<p>Louise should also remember that FA does not increase because she is married. Since most schools do not have accomodations for married undergrad students, she would most likely not get housing on campus (again, this would raise a flag if she states she will not be living with her husband).</p>