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Parents Forum
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<p>Coming in late to this thread-</p>

<p>First of all, CONGRATS to your dau on getting into Rice ED!! Secondly, full disclosure, my s went to Rice (Mech E, 2008) and had a phenomenal experience. Of course I agree with you that going 100K into debt for college is not a good thing. We were an essentially full-pay family, with a modest NM scholarship every year and about $6k in outside scholarships freshman year (I encourage your daughter to apply for them, though many are small, they do add up). He was awarded some departmental (engineering) scholarships his last two years after he switched from being a physics major to Mech E. These were totally unexpected. They just “showed up” on the tuition bill!! He then won some engineering alumni award, also paying a few thousand $$$. These certainly helped, but (a) you cant “count” on this and (b) its not a lot of money in the big scheme of things. My point in brnging this up is that there may be other moneis available. There were on-campus jobs that were not earmarked for work-study. They paid about $10-12/hr IIRC. There was also a big job available (asst mgr for one of the swim teams) and it paid 60% of tuition and pay went up every year. However, we werent sure of the time commitment, so thought it might not be the best thing. In restrospect maybe he should have pursued it, as a friend took the job and really enjoyed it! </p>

<p>All that said, if you truly cannot afford to pay for Rice with savings, current 4earnings and loans, talk to the FA people and discuss what next years taxes (income) will look like. The worst they can say is no, and you can go on from there. Good luck.</p>

<p>** forgot to ask-- is your dau thinking of engineering? My s had internships the summers after his soph and junior years that paid about $10-$11 each for the summers. That can help pay for college too.</p>

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<p>Just a note: Rice will not give OP’s daughter $5500 student loan… they cap loans at 2500 per year. (I think that’s a good thing!!!) I agree with JYM626 about the other jobs/money on campus. DD got a $1000 stipend one year as a humanities fellow, and it did not involve too much of a time commitment. Although she did not have work/study in her financial aid package, she had no trouble finding well-paying jobs on campus, and there were also lucrative tutoring jobs (local high school students) available.</p>

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<p>anxiousmom - I had no idea a school could cap a federal student loan. How do they do that? (Glad I posted that disclaimer that I NOT an expert of FA!!)</p>

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<p>I don’t think they can – if the family is eligible for a loan, they can get it,k whether or not the school has given them financial aid. Additionally, all students are eligible for unsubsidized Staffords in the full amount.</p>

<p>I think when a school talks about ‘capping’ student loans they usually just mean that they don’t require students to take out more than that in calculating their financial aid. But if the need-based aid falls short of meeting FAFSA EFC, then the student would still be eligible to take a higher loan.</p>

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<p>^Even if the aid meets FAFSA EFC, can’t the student still take out unsubsidized loans? (Although that is not a great idea.)</p>

<p>OP - see if Rice will give you a preread on FA with 84k income. If it comes from them, then the rest of your financial situation (e.g. assets) will also be assessed under THEIR institutional formula.</p>

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<p>Apologies for all my typos above. The one important one is that son’s summer internships paid $10-11K each summer. That can help with tuition if your dau is planning to be an engineering major</p>

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<p>I’d caution you NOT to necessarily expect your child to be able to earn $11K in a summer. Neither of my kids (including the one who is an EE & has excellent credentials) ever earned that much over the summer. Wages S earned over the entire summer ranged from a bit over $1K to a high of $5K gross out of which he had to also pay for housing. Fortunately, S earned some working part-time in the engineering lab during the school year (about $2.5K or more/year). </p>

<p>In this economy, not all of S’s engineering classmates were even able to secure paid summer jobs, despite best efforts of the school and students. Many firms have cut back positions due to the economy.</p>

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<p>Yes and no, Himom. While internships have been cut back, they are still available, especially for strong students. Granted the pay may be less than what it was in the summers of 2006 and 2007. That was gross, not net, but Texas has no state tax, and my son, as a student, was in a low federal tax bracket. So the difference between gross and net wasnt as big as it could have been. Some of the internships offered a car allowance!!</p>

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<p>I have an update. My husband did our FASA and our EFC was only around $25,000 FM and only $18,000 IM. My H is now trying to get the CSS corrected. I do not know the end of this but if these numbers hold up you bet I’ll be the proud Mamma of an owlet. More to come as the numbers roll in. I say this with great trepidation because any thing so far that has appeared too good to be true has been that way</p>

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<p>Wishing you the best of luck - don’t give up!</p>

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<p>sorry, what’s FM and IM?</p>

<p>Oh wait, just figured it out - Federal Method and Institutional Method.</p>

<p>cross-posted with Thumper - asking the same question - how do you get IM from FAFSA? FAFSA calculates FM. Also EFC for FAFSA is usually lower than for CSS/IM, since IM often takes home equity into account and expects you to tap it if needed.</p>

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<p>Just curious…how did your husband get an “IM” family contribution from the FAFSA? FAFSA ONLY gives an EFC that is FM. </p>

<p>The schools use the Profile information to compute the IM family contribution. That will be done using your numbers by Rice.</p>

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<p>IIRC, Fafsacaster has an FA estimator that gives both FM and standard CSS IM. BUT, schools often vary considerably from “standard” IM. Rice may actually vary in the more generous direction, since it is one of the few schools with a loan cap for middle/upper-class students.</p>

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<p>Best of luck, labelness!</p>

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<p>ANYTIME you apply ED you are throwing caution to the winds because you are putting yourself in a precarious position when you do this. You can’t compare offers because you don’t have any others. You may find out that this is your most generous award after all of the rest of the ones come in and you were just not in the right “skin”, not getting what the costs for college are. </p>

<p>When DH got his job offer in NYC, and I looked at homes here, I said, “no way, absolutely, no way.” What our house in the midwest, a perfectly nice house would get on the market, was not even going to make it for the down payment for a house even close to its equivalence here. A year later, after I got “into the skin”, I got it and we moved here. Not gonna say I am happy or it was worth it, but I did get some more perspective than I had on that first visit.</p>

<p>Applying to schools can be the same sort of thing. You get it in your head what you think you are going to pay and what your wonderful student is going to get in scholarships for all of the great work s/he did in high school. Everyone is telling you that you’ll get financial aid, not to limit yourself with those huge sticker prices and of course your top student is going to be getting schools bidding on him/her.</p>

<p>Reality is that most of us on this board make too much to get a full need package and if our top students are applying to the top schools, most of them only give need based packages. That means FAFSA isn’t going to give you a dime other than loans at high interest rates, and PROFILE is going to go after the silver in your teeth. </p>

<p>When you apply ED, you are putting your self in that tough situation of trying to judge the package when you are a novice at this. It’s one thing if you are savvy and can look at the package and say, this is not right, we can do better. But you are not there. Maybe your child could have gotten one of the half cost scholarships at BC or get a nice merit award from GW that makes this an expensive bid. </p>

<p>If you can’t afford this, you do have a good state school option, so really that is the decision to make. If you get anything more from another private school with similar sticker price, it is a gift. You should pretty much understand that your best all around option is very likely to be your state school.</p>

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<p>My latest update; we actually went up to Rice, met a very nice young man at the NROTC office ( we thought of going that route) then went to financial aide with FASA and some PROFILE corrections. We were told by a man at the front desk that ED is a good choice if you really want to go to a certain school and you have the money lined up (another financial aid couselor told my H that he tells parents if you can’t afford to pay for the college, go to another school). After we saw our counselor, she typed in a few numbers and told us our EFC was still $44,000.00. I left upset, then went back to see why there is such a descrepency between the FASA and PROFILE EFC’s and was told that the PROFILE took assets into account like multiple homes, yea right like that was my situation. So I was a novice and I learned my lesson the hard way. May I add, I was never offered information on loans or scholarships or options or hope of any kind. I told my D try the navy way, but she is worried that maybe engineering will not be for her and the NROTC locks you into that degree. I am slimey enought to suggest trying it for a year then you can get out if you do not like it but that is not her style. So folks we are going public all the way. Plus if my D does stay in engineering, the publics rank higher anyway. What a nightmare! Never do ED and remember the PROFILE is not the FASA! And find a school that at least acts like they want to help get their ED choices enrolled. I can not believe the indifference I encountered.</p>

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<p>Labelness – I’m so sorry; that has to be a huge disappointment for your daughter and your whole family. I do wish more of the elite schools would just put calculators on their websites so that people could see up-front what a likely range might look like. </p>

<p>Best of luck to your daughter – I’m sure that she’ll do well at whatever public school she chooses.</p>

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<p>labelness–</p>

<p>1) You the good fortune of having fine state schools that will serve her very well, and their strong alumni networks with help with jobs.</p>

<p>2) You can sleep well knowing that you were extremely thorough in trying to make Rice work out; no one can every say you were cavalier in breaking your ED commitment to Rice.</p>

<p>3) Welcome to the marketing spin of private schools.</p>

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<p>Well, you must have had some decent assets for that discrepancy, right? Although some schools say that if you apply ED, you are more or less agreeing to pay what is deterined is due, while others allow for bowing out for financial aid. IMO, Early Action is much better for just this very reason.</p>

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<p>I suspect the FA officer wasn’t “indifferent”- he/she was matter-of-fact with the realities of what your EFC is based on your assets. The FA folks probably meet with lots of people in your similar situation (asset heavy/cash poor, with limited liquidity) as well as probably many too who don’t have anywhere near the assets you do. It is indeed disappointing, but the FA realities can be harsh. Please don’t blame the messenger if you don’t qualify for more aid.</p>

<p>I am not understanding your consideration of “gaming the system” by your daughter going the ROTC route. If your daughter doesnt continue with ROTC, the program doesn’t continue to pay her way.</p>