My child did not want to apply to any UC’s even though it would have been a great education at a low cost. We have 3 kids, 1 income and this is our oldest. We are looking at 55-70 k per year as cost and now we are really wondering how to finance this. This was a binding early decision and he wants to major in Economics. Are there any good scholarships that are sure ways to get some of the cost off? We will not qualify for need based even though we need help with this considering we live in expensive Bay Area and we have 2 other kids to help put through in subsesquent years. Any pointers greatly appreciated.
Can you afford to put all three kids through comparably priced colleges?
If you do not know, the financial planning should have been done months ago at the latest.
If the answer is no, then you need to figure out how to explain the younger kids that their college choices will be more financially limited than the current kid’s choice. If you are lucky, they have inexpensive preferences. But if they follow the example of the current one in having expensive preferences, it can be a very difficult family conversation about why the first kid is the favored one.
Large outside scholarships are rare, and application deadlines may have passed already.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2041479-sibling-college-choice-cost-and-fairness.html is a cautionary tale about how favoring one kid over another can tear a family apart.
Outside scholarships are very rare, especially for students who do not have a financial need. You can start at UChicago’s financial aid office and ask if they know of any.
The COA for Chicago appears to be $70,000 for the 1st year. Even a UC is $30,000-$35,000 for in-state COA. Did your kid apply to any CSU’s?
ED is not binding if you can’t afford it.
The first post sounds odd. Why let a child apply ED to a full-price school if you’re not willing to pay full price?
Either agree to pay full price, or have him decline for financial reasons and quickly apply to places where the cost is either less or where he’d get adequate merit for his stats.
You need to consider whether you’re willing to be full pay $70k-80k+ per year for 12 years…or not. Do you have a million dollars to spend on college? If so, go for it.
You can pull out of an ED acceptance of the school is unaffordable.
There is no magical way for this kind of money to appear in scholarship form at this time.
If you can’t afford to pay this cost…your kid needs to decline the offer of admission and apply to places where you CAN afford the costs to attend…for all four years.
Letting your kid apply ED to a too-expensive college and then telling him that it is too expensive after presumably foregoing other applications can lead to a different kind of difficult conversation.
Consider these threads:
Summer before student’s senior year, parent says “money is not a factor in the decision”:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1789885-best-schools-for-math-comp-sci-with-undergrad-research.html
After student is admitted EA to an expensive college (in a mostly expensive list of colleges), parent balks at paying more than the cost of in-state UCs:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1866912-need-advice-on-college-choice-etc-p1.html
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You’re in a difficult position. The strong recommendation in November would have been to apply to UCs and CSUs. But you’ve missed the deadlines. Talk to U Chicago and tell them that he can’t go unless they can come up with some merit aid. Seriously. Then, look for less-selective private schools that have Jan deadlines that are likely to give merit aid. If you do the research, you can probably find a nice smaller college that won’t cost more than a UC when merit aid is factored in. If he’s absolutely dead-set on going to Chicago, ask him to take out loans, or commit to getting a high-paying job after college to help support you in your retirement.
You are in a very difficult position. If you can’t afford to be full pay for all 4 years then you need to pull out of the ED agreement. That is going to be a tough conversation.
If any of your kids overlap in college down the road…you may (?) get some aid.
Unfortunately UChicago is essentially a 100% need-based school; they give very limited merit scholarships…its a shame that people do not research school’s financial aid policies before getting into this situation…
Did you apply for financial aid? Fill out either/both of CSS Profile and FAFSA?
Did you run the NPC before letting him apply ED? What did the NPC indicate?
There are no scholarships or shortcuts for this amount (external scholarships are usually a few hundred dollars, they can help with books but require an enormous amount of work). Most financial aid comes from the college. If you don’t qualify for need-based aid and the college is need-only, then that’s it. If you filled out FAFSA your child can get 5.5K in loans.
Since you have other children, parental loans are off the table (unless you want to tell the other kids “you have to go to community college because we paid for UChicago for your older sibling and are now broke”).
Back in the stone age when I was in college, my parents told my sister, who was 2 years younger than me, that they couldn’t pay for her to go to college because they were paying for me to go to college. At the time, they were making $100K/year and were giving me $3K/year. I wasn’t even living at home in the summers so the $3000 was all they were giving me, 3% of their income. I didn’t know this at the time. My sister resented me for 30+ years before I found out about it, after our parents had died.
A year after telling my sister they had no money for her college, after my parents pushed me into med school, they phoned me up in the middle of my first year and said they couldn’t give me any more money, not even the $3k/year.
The psychological harm done to both my sister and I by our parents a) saying they couldn’t pay because of a sibling’s needs and b) pulling out financing in the middle of a course of study was immense. We lost trust in our parents to have our backs at all. It’s affected all of our relationships since. If you can’t find the money to pay for all your children to go to $70K/year schools, you better find a plan B right away, not in April when you tell oldest child they’ll have to go to community college or in 2 years when your middle child is applying for colleges. .
Hi! I think your child may still receive some need-based financial aid regardless of what is being said right now. Please submit all of your financial aid forms, fill out your CSS Profile. UC has need-based but they also have implemented making sure that their students leave with little debt (regardless of what you can and can’t afford) … I suggest you complete your CSS Profile and allow them to do their work! They want great students and it sounds like your child is one 
please keep us posted
@actingdreams
University of Chicago does NOT require the Profile. The school requires the FAFSA and a Chicago form.
Why would this student need to complete a Profile! They need to get the fafsa submitted…and the U of Chicago form submitted.
sorry @thumper1 I guess I should’ve said complete all of the forms needed … Hope this cleans up the confusion
As a parent, you were probably required to sign off on your child’s ED agreement. The language of the agreement is very clear. Unless you applied for financial aid, you may not be able to get out of it. Here is the language from the counsellor agreement:
https://apply.commonapp.org/ca4app/m/85/DownloadOfflineRecForm?formId=6
I hope you filled out the FAFSA and submitted to UChicago. If not then I would do it as soon as possible.