<p>One other approach to reducing college costs is the application of APs for college credit. Personally I am still uncertain about this approach but if you have a child who has gotten a 3 or better on 5 AP tests that translates to about 1 semester at many schools, or about $22K.</p>
<p>As you move toward the higher rated schools in the USNews rankings it is harder to get this type of credit, i.e. Harvard requires that a student get a 5 on the tests for credit. Though some schools grant credit for SAT 2 results, i.e. Notre Dame for language tests.</p>
<p>There is a common agreement that parents should pay for their children education. I think this situation is fundamentally wrong. I wonder whether anybody on this forum would agree with my point of view.</p>
<p>I believe that any awards given to students should take into consideration only students performance. The higher the achievements, the better the scholarships. It should be done not in portions (i.e. full ride, full tuition, ¾ turion, etc.), but rather be proportional to their stats. Parents income should be irrelevant in this matter. </p>
<p>It makes perfect sense, as our children at age of 18 can serve (and die) in the US military, vote, be prosecuted as adults, buy cigarettes, etc. In short, they are adults. But for some reason, the US government (only for purposes of payment for education) wants to consider our kids minors and therefore, make the parents pay for their education. </p>
<p>There are several advantages in this approach.</p>
<p>1) All children would know that their achievements would bring them direct benefits in form of discoiunted education, and they would work harder. </p>
<p>2) Colleges would stop this insane race of incresing tuition costs every year, if they would have our childers as their customers rather than their parents. </p>
<p>3) US federal government would take the responsibility to subsidize the students with stellar performance and low income, beacause it would benefit our country, as educated people is of the main treasures of any country.</p>
<p>Also to the OP, as others have pointed out your EFC per child gets reduced as more go to college. Your personal EFC remains the same. I am going through this for the first time this year and my FAFSA number is roughly 1/2 what it would be for one student. What I want to see is how the aid is put together, i.e. loans or grants.</p>
<p>Macinaw...so how is it that next year (if things go the way we think they will be going....) we will be spending out of pocket...$28K for #1 (the senior) and $34K for the freshman...with an EFC of $18K per child. It's because we have chosen schools that meet our "need" with loans and not with grants or other free money. DD didn't even get work-study with her aid packages so far. So $52K will be out of pocket on our AGI of $117 k. Should be interesting!!</p>
<p>Starting with the premise, Cost Of Attendance - EFC = demonstrated need</p>
<p>if possible look at the common data set for your schoool</p>
<p>Find out if your school uses the federal methodology (pretty much fafsa only) or institutional methodology (fafsa+ profile or fafsa+ college's own forms)</p>
<p>If your child attends a school that uses the IM, they will most likely have an EFC that shoudl be raised from summer earning. For freshman it could range from $1500-2300</p>
<p>There may also be a work study component in the FA package (which student will use for day to day expenses). Even if your student is not work study eligible s/he would still be able to get employment on campus because there are non-work study jobs.</p>
<p>In the financial aid section it will tell you:</p>
<p>1.what % of student get aid</p>
<ol>
<li>what percentage of the demonstrated need is met</li>
</ol>
<p>3.The average aid package</p>
<p>4.the average amount of need based grants</p>
<p>5.the average amount of need based loans</p>
<p>(you can use 3, 4 and 5 to figure out % grants and loan)</p>
<ol>
<li>the average amount of indebtness upon graduation.</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>Our secret? the book "your money or your life?" which discusses making choices in your lifestyle to cut down on working, and do more of what you really want.<<</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p>YES!! I read this book some time ago and found it very inspiring. We decided to cut down from a 2 income family to a 1 income family and haven't looked back since.</p>
<p>We were able to be in the position of comparing aid packages, so that when the school that met 100% of need, came up with grants and only minimal loans, it was an easy choice.
If D had not been admitted to that school, with such an attractive aid package, her 2nd choice school was instate and offered merit aid as well as subsidized loans ( although they didn't offer her workstudy- that wouldn't have kept her from finding either summer or school year work)</p>
<p>Re: AP courses...yes they can be helpful to some. We know a student who was able to graduate a full year early using his AP credits and dual UConn credit courses from HS. DS, on the other hand, went into his BA program with 18 undergrad credits. Eight were for English Literature (two courses due to his AP score). The other 10 were from a summer course through the university. BUT they apply to music electives only. The reality is that to take all the course he needs to graduate, he will be there for the full four years...and will end up having 18 extra credits. He is a music major and has consistently taken 17-18 credits a semester even WITH the waiver for those two English courses!!</p>
<p>Thumper, I think you made some good points earlier in this thread, that if one can reduce the cost of the college but also be reasonably frugal one can stretch things a lot further than one at first thinks. We stayed in our "starter house" (which, however, also meant we built up less home equity), deferred maintenance on everything, stretched out the time between new cars. By the time they entered college, we had accumulated almost one year of college worth of savings for each child. My 401K (TIAA-CREF) wasn't available to reprogram, and in any case there was no way I would give that up for this purpose.</p>
<p>BUT, in our case the kids had an important external source of support: grandma and grandpa had given them savings bonds (in their names) equivalent to another year of private college each. And so in the end, we really didn't have a terrible time with things. Had those bonds not come through (we knew they were there, though, for some time), I'm sure we'd have found a way to increase our savings prior to college years, and our "emergency reserve" was our home equity, of which we'd have been willing to use it all if need be. So we'd have made it with room to spare.</p>
<p>Now we are about to begin paying back for the deferred home maintenance, and replacing the 9-year old car -- now here is where tapping some of the home equity comes in handy. But after 7 years of two kids in private colleges, and another two in which we're still providing a monthly subsidy to our daughter equivalent to what the OP says he was planning to provide for the college years of his first child, we're not suffering. But we're not on easy street either. And neither child nor we have any loan obligattions to pay from their college years.</p>
<p>Just a small note on perspective (and it is relevant to this whole discussion). You say you "stretched out the time between new cars." Okay, but you don't need new cars at all. I know most people want them, but if you decide not to want them, you can never spend all those car payments and have a much freer life. (We've never paid more than $3300 for a car, and we drive a very nice Cadillac Fleetwood that we'll sell this year for more than that because the motorhome we're moving into won't pull it.) Admittedly, my husband is insanely good at choosing used cars, and we have a terrific, cheap mechanic, but there it is. </p>
<p>This is just one example among several of what makes for a very different perspective on the difference between what one wants and what one needs. Sometimes I think these things need to be brought up in these discussions because they seem to be based on a set of unspoken standards that not everyone shares, that aren't necessary and that it can be very helpful to question.</p>
<p>Yes, I'll be attending UF in the fall, and with the national merit money and bright futures along with other small scholarships, I'm essentially taking care of myself. First year I'll actually be banking money if I stick to the budget that UF lists on their website. I'm sure I could get in to "better" colleges, and would love to go to Northwestern or NYU, but not for that price. And if I'm not willing to go into the debt myself, how can I ask my dad to take the debt on himself? </p>
<p>I'll save my money and go into debt for grad school if I can get into a top one, but til then I'm perfectly satisfied with UF.</p>
<p>For background though my EFC was around 20k I think, and I still wouldn't pay 20k a year for NW or NYU when I can go to UF scott free.</p>
<p>You sound exactly like our son, Gatordan. He's at Tulane and is getting through undergrad on his own steam, for the most part. There's a lot of pride in that! He'll go into grad school with little or no debt, too. Meanwhile, we get to have a life as well. Hard to beat.</p>
<p>Go Gators! (I did my undergrad and some of my grad work there.)</p>
<p>gnusasaurus,
"but my S has asked for virtually nothing his entire life!"
Yea, that got to me with my son, too. Just don't do something dreadful to your retirement savings. If you can manage to keep that vaguely intact ... last year, as I recall, we had a thread that meandered into the many tasty ways of preparing mac and cheese.</p>
<p>It's all well and good to be able to cut down drastically on expenses at home to finance college, but consider that many parents still have younger children at home. Is it fair to deprive them of things such as music lessons, summer programs, sports and vacations in order to pay an exorbitant amount for the older sibling's college? I think not.</p>
<p>fair isn't equal
I have one child who attended private school K-12.
We went a different route with sister, she started public in third grade. By the time we realized we had made a terrible mistake, she was entrenched with her friends and couldn't leave.
We have supplemented her education however as much as we are able.
Both kids have gotten summer camps, and school trips.
But it is relatively easy to afford with two kids, my sister on the other hand has 5 kids, and they have never been able to go to camp that wasn't vacation bible camp, or go on a school trip without their grandmother paying for it.( something that she was able to do for the first two, but not the rest)</p>
<p>lkf725
yes - all depends on the situation. However, vacations do not have to be expensive to be fun, and my son's summer programs consisted, for the most part, first in voluteering and then working at scout camp.</p>
<p>Foomonchoo, I don't mean to pry, but in your original post you mentioned that your wife only returned to work two years ago. That suggests that your family lived on less (one salary) for quite a while. If so, might it be very possible to return to that one salary budget and put all or most of your wife's salary towards college expenses? You've done it before, so, barring things that we don't know about, it should not be horribly difficult to do again. Unless, of course, your standard of living has risen in two years to the level of your wife's new salary contribution through things like a new home purchase or other optional expenditures. In that case, some might say that you should have recognized college was only two years away and planned accordingly.</p>