<p>We are in about the same financial situation. My daughter has been accepted at two top 10 private LAC’s. They expect us to pay EVERYTHING, minus about $5000 covered by loans! </p>
<p>$50,000 a year. The fact that this is 45% of our net income means nothing. </p>
<p>Now my daughter is crushed that she has to go to either the state school or a merit aid private that was her 4th choice. </p>
<p>Better not to put those dreams into your student unless you are willing to liquidate.</p>
<p>I’m a bit surprised at some to the sticker shock I’m hearing. I did a lot of financial aid options at different schools and used the on-line calculators. I have not heard or seen anywhere that much need based aid is available for those making 150K plus with 1 child in college. Sure they send you glossy brochures declaring 100% need met. When’s the last time you believed an advertisement?</p>
<p>Not to say I wasn’t shocked by some of the financial aid offers we received as most of them were beyond our “price range.” But, a financial safety gives you peace of mind.</p>
<p>Too many of us look at colleges, starting with the big expensive namebrand schools which are not only lottery tickets for admissions but are very expensive to boot. It’s fun to cherry pick, and if you have a student who has the academic profile, by all means give the schools a whirl, but do the numbers and be aware what the cost for these schools is probably going to be for you, and that few of them give merit and for those that do, getting a piece of that is another even more high odds lottery to enter. Yes, Duke, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Wake Forest, UChicago and such schools have some very nice merit awards, but not that many, and getting any of them is truly tough going. Getting into the schools is difficult enough. </p>
<p>The true challenge in putting together a college list is finding good, affordable schools. You want schools you can afford with NO aid. Those may be your local state school, or maybe your state schools that have some guaranteed or automatic scholarships and discounts if your student has certain stats. There is a section on this forum that lists some of these schools and awards that you can check for qualification. Then look for some schools with merit awards where you student is likely to get accepted and also likely to be a top pick there, since that improves chances of getting something. </p>
<p>There is a big fat lie of a rumor going around that a good student is going to get into a top name brand school with a full scholarship. Not true. Take a good look at the mirror and you’ll see from where most of the college funding is supposed to come.</p>
<p>GTalum - I generally don’t believe ads from most companies, but I thought that prestigious colleges and universities would be more forthright and trustworthy than, say, car dealers or peddlers of weight loss supplements. So yes, I was fooled by private schools that claim they’ll meet 100% of financial need. Shame on me for that.</p>
<p>I do understand the merits of diversity and giving less fortunate people a chance. But it seems interesting that private schools seem intent on attracting mostly the extremes of family AGI (<$100K and >$200K), while leaving a big gap in the middle for those families that are told there’s no aid available, but who really can’t afford $50K/year on top of current expenses.</p>
<p>Those colleges that say they will guarantee 100% of financial need will do so. But they define the need. I don’t know a single school that makes this guarantee and uses FAFSA alone. They use an additional application with their own criterion on it. There may be a school or two our there that are exceptions, but rare they are, and certainly not the better known ones. Also, how they meet the need can be with loans and work study too. They can make stipulations that the student earn so much, as well. They can include the silver in your teeth as assets if they want to do so. It’s their money.</p>
<p>The very top schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale do tend to be more generous and there are schools that do not have loans in their packages, do not count or cap home equity. Notably, schools like Emory, Vanderbilt and some of the more selective LACs and other ivies are among the most generous. Also some schools have some merit within need awards than can sweeten the aid pot for the students they most want. But none of these schools or things are so probably that anyone can count on them.</p>
<p>“Those colleges that say they will guarantee 100% of financial need will do so. But they define the need.”</p>
<p>Yes, I understand that they define the need. I just thought that the definition of need would be a bit more realistic. </p>
<p>I don’t know anybody with an AGI of $160K and an after-tax income of about $135K who could continue to pay all of their current bills, and then go out and buy something for $50K…four years in a row. We have actually been very frugal for many years. I drive a 22-year old car, I’m about to eat my daily peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch while my colleagues go out to lunch, we go out to dinner about once per month, and it’s rarely anything more than $10-20 per person. Heck - our kids’ friends laugh at us because we keep our house so cool in the winter and warm in the summer to save on utility bills. Even with all that, I haven’t amassed a pile of cash like the schools or people with lesser incomes think, and it will be a stretch to even pay the $20-30K that I’ve resigned myself to. Under those circumstances, it seems pretty disingenuous for schools to claim that they’ll be meeting 100% of my need by telling me I can just cut a check for $50K four years in a row.</p>
<p>Thanks to those who have provided advice about state schools, or private schools with more merit-based aid. Seems like those are the only real options for many of us stuck in the middle.</p>
<p>Join the club. You aren’t expected to pay for it all out of current income. It is expected that you and the student have been saving for this great rite of passage since the day s/he was born. You know, the old college fund , the saving money for college thing? That is a big part of the picture, 18 years of savings for college. Then your student should be working every summer and have some money saved from that. If you are still short, maybe a job over the school year is in order. My cousin’s son has been working 15 hours a week for two years now and saving half his pay for college. My son has his neighborhood pet sitting/dog walking business he’s had for years. Plus birthday, Christmas, graduation gifts. Half of any money goes into the old college fund at our house. </p>
<p>Then you borrow. We expect to borrow $10K a year. for our kid. He can also borrow $5500 on his own name from the government which he may do if he comes up short this summer in his earnings goals. No trip to Europe for him–he’s working 2 jobs, busboy and life guard as well as giving private swim lessons and his pet business. Hoping to get a couple thousand in graduation checks as well. </p>
<p>So we’ll be cutting a check of about $15K or paying a little more than $1000 a month for school. Which means we drive the junker for a few more years cuz it’s paid for and no vacation or major spending sprees, or any spending sprees really. The rest is loans and savings. After first semester, I expect son will get a job for 10-15 hours a week which will pay for his living expenses.</p>
<p>Our AGI was under $130K a year. We paid almost $3000 a month to the colleges and another $800 a month for room/board for our two college kids out of current income. Both of us work…and my WHOLE (every penny) income went to paying for college bills for seven years.</p>
<p>It can be done…but it means having planned ahead well. Our mortgage is VERY low and thus our living expenses low. In addition, we planned things like car purchases so they would NOT happen within that seven year window. BUT most importantly…we both worked full time professional level jobs. I never left the job market and therefore, my income was higher than if I had been a SAHM at any point in time. This also contributed ot our ability to pay out of current earnings.</p>
<p>BTW…you may notice that the total isn’t the full cost of the expensive colleges. Both kids took the full Stafford loan and each got some merit aid at their schools. We did not qualify for need based aid.</p>
<p>One of my son’s favorite teachers went back to work when her kids hit the high school years because she knew that the college train was starting up soon. Her husband makes a good income, they have a nice home, great kids and they all got into schools that were good matches for them. Mom’s take home pay went towards college costs. They had to borrow and dig into the savings as well. Who did you think was going to pay to take your kids off your hands? You want sleep away college, the chances are high that you pay for it.</p>
<p>Of course no one expects you to pay the bill out of your current income, but it is expected to come out of income, plus savings, plus loans. Few of us are a disciplined as thumper and live in an inexpensive house, but that would cover quite a chunk for college expenses. I struggle to pay our share of the expenses for college and I am fortunate to benefit from generous financial aid so not all the middle class is shut out of the financial aid picture. But, I would rather make 40K more and pay 20K more in tuition.</p>
<p>I am getting really tired of the upper middle class posters (and I limit this rant to them) who have apparently been able to accept with equanimity the cost of comfortable homes, nice cars, vacations and, in some cases, private secondary schools, and then are shocked–shocked!–that they have to pay for their kids’ higher education. This isn’t about colleges failing to meet “need” of families with an AGI of $130,000 or $160,000, it’s about colleges failing to meet their “want”. We paid full freight for S; a few years later, when we were not in as good shape financially, D enrolled in a college that was not the most selective one she got into, but which offered her a hefty merit award. In neither case did we feel entitled to whine about our supposedly unmet “need”. If you are upper middle class and have chosen lived a lifestyle that didn’t allow you to save for your kids education or require your kids to work summers, if you have chosen mortgage and car payments too high to permit you to take on any loans for school–no college is required to save you from your own poor financial decisions.</p>
<p>“Of course no one expects you to pay the bill out of your current income, but it is expected to come out of income, plus savings, plus loans.”</p>
<p>But it’s that underlined part that’s killing me - using our AGI to presume how much we would/should have stored away. Our current AGI is about $160K, but it is the result of some pretty significant increases over the past couple of years. Just a couple short years ago, it was a lot more of a stretch to pay the bills (we saved what we could, but it wasn’t much), and we had an AGI that would have qualified us for decent aid. Now I have gotten a significant bump, and I certainly understand the expectation to pay the same portion out of current income that others who make $160K are expected to pay. But to expect us to have saved the same amounts as people who have been making around $160K for many years is a killer. The amounts we have saved for college and in regular savings accounts are more what schools would expect from a family with a much lower AGI. </p>
<p>Seems like the fair way to do this would be to use your AGI only to calculate the amount they expect you to pay out of current income. And to the extent they also expect you to pay out of savings, use the actual amount of the savings, not the amount they presume you would have if you’d had your current AGI all along. I came into this thinking that this was the way aid was calculated…but have learned the stark lesson that your current AGI is kind of viewed by colleges as something that has always existed (and that actual amounts of savings accounts are pretty much an afterthought).</p>
<p>jmills20, under your plan a family that has in fact had a high income for many years but lives high on the hog and saves little would be considered “needy”. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>“I am getting really tired of the upper middle class posters (and I limit this rant to them) who have apparently been able to accept with equanimity the cost of comfortable homes, nice cars, vacations and, in some cases, private secondary schools, and then are shocked–shocked!–that they have to pay for their kids’ higher education. This isn’t about colleges are failing to meet “need” of families with an AGI of $130,000 or $160,000, it’s about colleges failing to meet their “want”. We paid full freight for S; a few years later, when we were not in as good shape financially, D enrolled in a college that was not the most selective one she got into, but which offered her a hefty merit award. In neither case did we feel entitled to whine about our supposedly unmet “need”. If you are upper middle class and have chosen lived a lifestyle that didn’t allow you to save for your kids education or require your kids to work summers, if you have chosen mortgage and car payments too high to permit you to take on any loans for school–no college is required to save you from your own poor financial decisions.”</p>
<p>I don’t know if this rant is aimed at me, but if you’d have read all along, you’d see that we don’t have fancy cars (I drive a 22 year-old car with a blue book value of $3,000, my wife drives a 9-year old minivan with a blue book of about $10K), we haven’t lived an extravagant lifestyle (rarely going out to dinner, and never going out to lunch at work), and the fact that we don’t have piles of cash in savings is due to the fact that our AGI was a lot lower just a couple of years ago (we do have some savings, but not nearly what you or the colleges would expect for someone making $160K). Further, both of our daughters have gone to public schools. Our house is nice and in a safe neighborhood, but it’s actually in the lower end of houses in our community, and nobody who has ever seen it would call it extravagant. We certanly aren’t talking marble or corian countertops and Italian tile floors (sorry to burst your bubble).</p>
<p>Part of the reason we don’t have the piles of cash that everybody assumes a $160K earner would have is that my wife and I both had student loans that were only paid off a few years back, and that we have had to move frequently to get nearer to the better jobs. Yes, we’ve arrived there now, but the journey has led to relatively low assets, not through extravagance, but through necessity.</p>
<p>Sounds sensible, but then you end up rewarding people who’ve spent money on fun consumer stuff instead of saving for college. At least at the “meets full need” colleges. I know this isn’t your family; I’m just using this argument to demonstrate how hard it is to be utterly fair with need-based aid.</p>
<p>It’s complicated enough to calculate financial aid and verify it . Going back into history would make it even more onerus. But, yes, it is unfair that the person who makes $160K in a year but was making a quarter of that for previous years and has a slew of bills and issues from those times to pay the same as someone who has had that income for a while. But by the same token, the person, making that amount for a while has kind of grown into that income and is probably committed up to the dime to that amount. Many of us tend to spend up to what we make, often on things for a better quality of life for the entire family every day like on a nicer house in a better area, a good school, educational and cultural pursuits, better healthcare, etc. Ironically, it’s the family that blows their money that is in better shape than such families since they can then cut back on those meals out, vacations, clothes, shopping sprees. When your investment has been in an overall better quality of life for the whole family, it’s harder to cut back when the commitments made are longer term. </p>
<p>If income has truly been a sharp increase just recently, especially if it is expected to be uneven, that fact can be brought to the attention of the fin aid office, and perhaps some adjustment can be made. Not a big chance of a big change, however. I know folks who gave their kids gap years because of a huge unusual income blip, such as taking a retirement distribution to start a business, that compromised financial aid due to timing. That is the other avenue open if this is a one time sort of distribution of funds. </p>
<p>No question that the process is not fair to everyone. The smart thing to do is to learn the rules well ahead of time and plan accordingly. Make sure that you are in the best position possible when the college train takes off. But there are inherent unfairnesses that you just can’t address such as income history, bad financial luck in the past, living in a high COLA area.</p>
<p>jmills20, under your plan a family that has in fact had a high income for many years but lives high on the hog and saves little would be considered “needy”. Does that make sense? </p>
<p>Read my post just above, and please explain what part of it sounds “high on the hog.”</p>
<p>I agree with your assessment for families where income has been high for many years, but it isn’t in our case, and unfortunately, the aid calculators seem ill-equipped to take the different circumstances into account because they extrapolate most everything out of current AGI.</p>
<p>There isn’t enough money to do this. The private colleges are in business. They need to make the money. If any more money should become available, it should go to those at the bottom economic tiers. Why should anyone be subsidizing kids to go to private school and for their room and board there? The only reason the schools themselves do that is to attract enough of what they need to keep the others coming–and paying their own way. If your kid isn’t considered one of those very top kids, then you pay for the privilege of going there. The most selective schools don’t even have to offer such sweeteners. There is a line miles long across the globe wanting to pay full freight and more to go to the schools. </p>
<p>Where I feel the greatest needs lie are in areas where there are not affordable options for kids to go to college. In those cases, room and board can be a necessity to get a college education. In our area, there a many choices for kids to go to a college at an affordable price. If they want to have a sleep away experience, well, that 's a whole other story. They want to go to private school, that’s still another story. Why should they get money for that anymore than getting funded to go to private highschool and earlier? Why all of a sudden they should get money to go away to school and for their food and room? Who do you expect to pay for that?</p>
<p>jrmills, it’s just great you are on the CC boards junior year. I was not, and wish I had started sooner…
You are getting a crash course from some veteran posters regarding the harsh reality out there. But most of us are very fortunate that our kids have the options they do, and will definitely enjoy the “sleepaway experience” as well!
Like others have said, don’t count on the “dream schools” accepting your kids, much less giving them merit aid. Check out the boards documenting ivy rejections, or kids who’ve rec’d 6 or 8 or 10 rejections…we are talking STAR students who are very sad since final decisions came out from top tier schools last week.</p>
<p>jrmills, I think your assuming that your asset (house) or savings will make much of a difference in your EFC. The truth is, there is very little need-based aid for anyone making 160K with or without assets. Especially with on child in college.</p>