How do middle class families in California, or in general really, afford private education costs?

Davis is a small town, not a big city. The part of Los Angeles that UCLA is in is not generally considered a “gritty” part.

@katerpillarca Yes, it IS insane. I have not yet read all four pages of this thread. In case anyone has not mentioned it yet, your parents are expected to have been saving for your college in a 529 account from the moment you were born. One recommended way to pay for private college when you are full pay, is this: 1/3 from your past income (i.e., SAVINGS in 529), 1/2 from current income (that would be about $23k/year for current college costs at a top-priced college; so, about $2k/month), and 1/3 from future income (i.e., LOANS; that would involve both you and your parents taking out loans). However, I think that it’s a reachable goal for an upper-middle-class family that prioritizes education to save one-half of college costs in a 529.

So … have your parents saved anything in a college fund for you?

Some parents have college savings…but the very vast majority do NOT.

We had not a nickel of college savings BUT we were a two income, professional parent household. My whole income…every penny of it…went to pay college costs for the seven years (we had one overlap year) our kids were in undergraduate school. My husband’s income paid the rest of our living expenses. This made it possible for us to pay for private university costs out of current earnings only. No loans. No savings.

We did, however, fully fund our retirement accounts.

This family seems to have one parent working. They already don’t seem to qualify for need based aid with just the one salary. If parent two gets a job, that income could be dedicated to college costs.

@Coloradomama I don’t think you know me well enough to determine if city living is for me or not. I would not undermine my choice of Barnard as a dream school either. I am nestled right by three major West coast cities. I travel, work, complete programs and study in different parts of all three. I’ve comfortably attended an what you might call an “edgy” art school in downtown Oakland in the past, am very familiar with public transit, handle various situations, etc. I don’t have to prove to you that I can survive in cities, that’s not why I am here, but I ask you not to question why I want to attend a school in an urban area. If this wasn’t a serious aspiration, I wouldn’t be mentioning it on here or considering it an important factor in my college research process.

When I have more time later in the day, I will do my best to go further into detail about what I am looking for in a college, my majors of interest and other questions on here. I’ll get back to you soon, when I have more time.

No. Never. There’s nothing special about a “private education.” University of Michigan, UNC Chapel Hill, UCLA, UC Berkeley, University of Virginia, University of Texas, University of Florida … These are all public institutions that are world-class.

Just piping in that even University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI (midwest, relatively expensive area, considered one of the top college communities in the country) has plenty of homeless people on and near campus. There are a few well-known, very pushy homeless individuals who set up camp near the heart of campus and hassle students who try to eat in the restaurants across from central campus.

The NPC at Barnard was off for us. We are a truly middle class Bay area family, lots of equity but very moderate income. D applied to Barnard even though it was one of the least affordable based on the calculator predictions. She was awarded much better aid than predicted. EFC was 15K but the calculator predicted something more like 25K, I think. We are older and I think there might be an age weighting in the actual aid determination that isn’t part of the NPC, but that is a guess on my part.

@katerpillarca I don’t endorse a “dream” school, for any student, including my own two kids, as it does not serve you to focus on one school. (unless its a safety school for you with high probability of getting in. ) Find a range of schools that you can be happy. If an urban campus is what you want, , target other cities, other than New York City, like Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, if you want to save money.

It makes no sense to complain about money but then insist on an undergrad education in the most expensive area of the USA, New York City. You may have to make choices. We all do. Also, if you are not a really top student, I do not think you have a great chance at Barnard, although its no way near as hard at Columbia for admissions, its not a sure bet, but depends on factors like are you African American? Barnard and Columbia want their student body to reflect New York City. Being an URM can help a lot more at Barnard than at other schools, and change your chances.

Another big factor for Barnard–are you are a first generation college student? ( I was guessing no, based on what you say about your father’s job, but if thats incorrect, then Barnard may go up in chances for you).

If you have checkboxes that Barnard is looking for, then Barnard perhaps should be on a list that includes other schools that match your ACT/SAT scores and your budget, given that you can get financial aid, probably. Do the NPC again for Barnard.

Figure out a budget first. Since you complained about money, thats where I am coming from, don’t over focus on a very expensive private school, if money is a concern. If you talk to your parents, and they do have money for it, then keep it on there.

Its good that you know you want an urban campus. Focus on other urban areas, if money is a concern.

I’ll disagree with @brantly because it depends, it depends on your major, it depends on what you want to do after college, it depends on what you think future earnings will be. Some doors will open for you just due to the name on the degree. How much different is the cost between the “U” and the private college (and when I mean private I meant the top 20 research or LAC after that it starts to become irrelevant).

Here is the profile for Barnard students, about 84% are in the top 10% of their high school class. 13% are first generation college students. 56% are white, and 44% are African American/Latino/Asian/other races.

Compare your test scores here :
https://admissions.barnard.edu/sites/default/files/class_of_2021_profile_1.pdf

One reason I caution you, is that I see a lot of kids disappointed by focusing on a dream that is
not a good bet. Study the numbers and decide if its a good bet for you.

Manhattan is not all the same, and Morningside Heights/Barnard is pretty different than Greenwich Village/ NYC, which I like much better.

you may love it, but most students are unaware of how urban that area really is.compared to the Bay area which is physically much more beautiful, I would say than upper east side of Manhattan.

Tuition, room (not guaranteed) and board at UCB/UCLA is around $36,000 a year for in state. Most of your breadth classes (which are often challenging to get into) will have hundreds and hundreds of students in them with TA led discussion groups. 4 year graduation rate hovers around low to mid 70%. If mom and dad aren’t going to qualify for FA, you can still expect to be on the hook for $140,000 if you can graduate in 4 years. OP, hopefully you will find your best fit both financially and academically. Good luck to you in your quest.

Not advocating that OP should go to Barnard, but … it is not in Harlem. Even if it were in Harlem, have you been to Harlem recently?? Moreover, there are a lot of homeless ALL OVER Manhattan. It has nothing to do with the location of Barnard. There are homeless on Fifth Ave. and 42nd St, in front of the NY Public Library too. The stadium is NOT by the medical school. It is at the northernmost tip of Manhattan, about 50 blocks (in America-speak means 2.5 miles) north of 168th Street. It is NOT dangerous. The reason for the buses is for ease of transport and to make sure they get a crowd! Not because the subway is dangerous. Sheesh. Finally, 116th and Broadway not the "fun"part of NYC? It is “fun” insofar that it is a collegetown area. It is very residential and caters to students and professors.

I’d say 20-25 years.

There is nothing “unfair” about the system. If you want a private education, you have to pay for it (unless you are awarded scholarships). There are plenty of great California state schools, including in the Bay Area–UC Santa Cruz, San Jose St., Cal State Hayward, UC Davis, and SF State, all of which you can attend for a fraction of the price of private college. There are multiple community colleges. Living at home and taking public transportation will save a lot of money. Lose the attitude. Going to a high priced private university is no guaranty of lifelong success.

@katerpillarca , just wanted to weigh in on a couple of thoughts regarding your situation.

  1. If Barnard is your dream school (or at least high on your list), perhaps you might consider Scripps in Claremont, CA. My niece attends Barnard and it is a great school to be sure. But, Scripps offers some wickedly lovely merit aid to the lucky few. If you were the recipient of their aid, it could alter your parent’s financial future (as well as yours). Just a suggestion. BTW, Scripps is part of a consortium, so like Barnard is to Columbia, you would be able to take classes within the other schools of the Consortium.
  2. Your parents are in the donut. It is not fair, it is not easy. There is no magical solution. I know this because I live in the Bay Area and have a child who attends a private LAC. But, unless your parents have amassed a small fortune earmarked for your education, the likely financial outcome is nothing short of brutal. I work on the side (aka have a second job) to help defray the costs of tuition. Two weeks ago, I averaged about 3 hours of sleep a night so I could prepare in the evenings for my second gig. Brutal. I saved for my child’s secondary education. It is still brutal. My daughter has a full-time Summer job and still takes on oodles of side gigs to make money.
  3. It sounds like your mother does not work. I am not sure of her backstory, and I am sure it is a good one, but the financial strain of a single parent paying for a mortgage and household expenses and supporting his child in private college would be hard for anyone making less than 300K. I would urge your family to explore whatever it takes for your mom to work unless she is infirmed. I believe college financial aid advisors will look more favorably on you even if your mom works a minimum wage job. It demonstrates she is really trying to contribute to her child’s education and support her family (versus a possible perception that her child should be entitled to financial aid).
  4. You are not crazy about the difference between a highly acclaimed LAC and a UC. UCs are great!, but they are no match for a LAC if you long for small classes and sitting around a table in a discussion within a Liberal Arts kind of class. But, like many of the posters have cited, your attendance at UC would be half the cost (or less) of a LAC that does not offer merit. So, it boils down to is it worth it to have that great engaging education OR be substantially less in debt or less financially freaked out.
  5. I hope I am wrong. But, it only gets harder. If your parents have saved, they may plow through their college savings the first year or two, and it will keep getting harder. You are an amazing young woman to be cognizant of this. Lots of girls are oblivious. Have the tough to-the-point-of-tears conversations with BOTH of your parents this Summer. Plot out the costs and add in 10%. (College tuition rises waay faster and higher than the rate of inflation.) Figure out the scenarios each year. Figure out what your loan costs would be. And then, I believe you can make an educated decision on what is in your best interest. Here’s to your actual college experience being waaaay easier than this leg of your journey.

@Overtheline I’m not displaying attitude…there is nothing wrong in wanting something. I’m on here because I see the reality of the situation but want to stay creative, not because I have anything against public education. But that you for your input. Really, it’s very much appreciated.

Thank you very much to everyone who contributed to this thread. Many of the responses have been very helpful. I really appreciate you taking the time and responding to me. Thank you all very much.

@katerpillarca There is nothing wrong with wishing you could attend a certain school. But, you need to have your parents give you clear financial parameters now, before you move forward with a list.

Without knowing your financial limitations, you aren’t really having to think in realistic terms, only hypothetical situations and “staying creative” Come tuition and fee time, creative thinking won’t bridge multiple thousands of dollars in gap every semester. You do not want to be “that” student who was determined to make it work and after 3 semesters the financial situation is such a wreck that the student has 2 options…drop out bc they can’t pay the bill and no school will accept them bc their debt from the other school exists or transfer to a more affordable school. Both are unenviable scenarios.

Financial stress is real. Your parents need to set clear terms now.

@ams220 - We also got better aid than anticipated from Barnard, but the difference could be due to overestimating home equity on the NPC. Barnard applies the federal housing price index to determine home equity based on purchase price & year of purchase, but I don’t think that is documented anywhere. There’s a HPI calculator here, but I don’t know if it is the same that Barnard has used – I’m just sharing it as a way of showing how that can impact the numbers-- https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Tools/Pages/HPI-Calculator.aspx

However, for predicting financial aid the OP needs to start with income.

@katerpillarca – you might want to rerun the NPC at Barnard and other colleges without including home equity, so that you can see what percentage of your expected contribution is based on income & liquid assets, and what is coming from home equity. Basically around 5% of home equity is added into the expected contribution, but because colleges have different caps & treat equity differently, it would help to be able to sort things out separately. If it turns out that a large proportion of your purported ability to pay is based on home equity, then it might be worth it to you to contact the Barnard financial aid office to find out whether your aid eligibility might be better than the NPC suggests.

But you really need to figure out the maximum your parents are comfortable contributing. You could be eligible for a chunk of need-based grant money but that won’t do you much good if your parents can’t fund the balance, which could still be significantly above the full COA at Berkeley.

And yes, Barnard/Columbia are a nice and very safe neighborhood, upper west side is great… and plenty of safe & fun things to do in Harlem as well these days ---- and from your chances post I think that you have a high likelihood of admission to Barnard based on your EC’s.

But no point in applying if know from the start you can’t afford it. I will be eternally grateful for the generous aid Barnard gave my daughter, especially her first year – but honestly, college is 4 years of your life and after you graduate, no one really cares where you went for undergrad, especially if you earn a grad degree down the line. (And obviously too much debt from undergrad is only going to make it that much harder to get the grad degree).

I’d add that if you are not majoring in sciences and are coming in with AP credits, you’ll have plenty of smaller classes at the UC’s. The large lecture classes are mostly intro-level classes, and outside of STEM, you can pretty much sign up for many upper division classes from the start. Obviously the AP credits help there too-- if you have APUSH credit, no particular reason why you would sign up for an intro-level history class, for example. I’m guessing from your chances post that you are leaning toward poli sci / government or something similar.

So maybe think about what you want to study and what kind of educational environment you want to be in.

@katerpillarca

Are you willing to look at smaller LACs in the Midwest, for example?

Did you run the net price calculator again for Columbia…because with income of $240,000, $35,000 in aid would be estimated. That would leave you with a balance about the same as a UC. Well…unless your family has some huge assets.

Many families in CA have what would be considered “huge assets” locked up in their home - it’s common to accumulate many hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity, which many private colleges consider to be available to spend on the cost of attendance (and 5% of the balance is included in the EFC each year). Only a handful don’t count home equity in their net price calculation and some others limit it to 1.2x income, whereas public colleges that rely on the FAFSA (where primary home equity is excluded) would come out with a much more favorable EFC. But its very plausible that half of that supposed $35K in aid at Columbia will disappear when running the NPC with home equity included.

The key for OP is to discuss with your parents whether spending $30K or so per year is doable - that would give you a decent set of options including the UCs (their quoted $35K COA includes $2K for insurance which you will very likely be able to waive, and the forced triples that are common would come in about $2K-$3K below the assumed room and board costs). If it isn’t doable then you need a very different strategy, that either focuses on commuting/starting at a community college or looks for significant merit aid (like full tuition scholarships). So it is key to talk to your parents about whether they can afford $30K per year (which might include some loans for you and a summer job).