@austinmshauri True enough. It is going to depend on the student. There have been studies however which show that students from poor backgrounds benefit more than others, from attending Ivy league schools. Unlike the middle class kid, they are able to jump into a social background that would otherwise be unavailable to them.
While I’m sure there are thousands/millions with a state degree who manage those with Ivy degrees that’s really not the point. ( The manager might be older, have more experience, be interested in managing, etc etc.) And managing isn’t what everyone wants so one person’s experience really doesn’t mean they are more successful then the majority. Just take a look at company leaders and it is chock full of great colleges ( and some great state schools too). For many, the Ivy is a way to gain entrance to investment banks and other high paying degrees without which, a connection or the degree may never be available to them. People realize this, hence the tough competition to get in.
I agree with your assessment that it’s a 100K risk and making it as a 17/18 year old probably isn’t the best thing. But every family needs to assess what college is worth and make associated trade offs.
It is worth noting that many hard working middle and even upper middle class families cant afford the schools OP wants to attend. Because her family are hardworking and poor immigrants does not make her situation a more noble cause. Sometimes you dont get what you want.
@Center Nobody said it does…I gave you context not justification.
Where are you getting that her family is poor? In the very first post she said that her father “makes welllllllll over the national average” and that NPCs she ran show little to no eligibility for need-based financial aid.
No it’s not possible to close a discussion.
@katerpillarca – I am sending you a PM with some specific suggestions/info.
Just in response to misinformation on this thread about the UC system — the UC’s are still fully functional and accepting tens of thousands of students. It is true that spots have gotten more competitive, but the OP is still guaranteed admission to at least one campus if she meets basic eligiblity standards. Statistically, her chances of admission to Berkeley are higher than chances of admission to Barnard – though not by much (15% admit rate vs. 13% admit rate) — but for her UC app she gets to tick off as many campuses as she likes with one application… so no downside at all with applying to Berkeley.
Although my California kids headed out of state when they graduated, as public school grads they saw many of their high school friends head off to UC’s, and every one I know graduated within 4 years. UC’s are generous with AP credit, because they award credit for scores of 3 or above – which means that it is actually very feasible for students who have taken several AP exams to enter with sophomore standing, and graduate even sooner. See http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/exam-credit/ap-credits/index.html
It’s a myth that students can’t graduate in 4 years, and usually attributable to other decisions the student has made along the way, such as changing majors, or taking a reduced courseload. Because it is a public institution and serves students from all walks of life, many students do opt to take time away to work to earn money and return later on; and the UC’s also serve many nontraditonal students as well. That’s one thing I liked about UC – there was a diversity of age and life experience among my classmates that I probably wouldn’t have found at a private college.
And yes, costs have soared over the years, but for undergrads, the biggest cost is room & board – tuition and fees are roughly $12,500 annually, all of the rest are costs related to eating, sleeping, and buying stuff (including textbooks). There are ways to reduce those costs, especially for students who are local and have a wider array of housing options.
So it is $12,500 tuition to attend UC and $53,300 for Barnard, with Barnard fees increasing annually at significantly faster rate than UC’s. So that’s the bottom line math differential - roughly $41K/year and likely at least $165K over 4 years for a full pay family. The additional ~$20K or so for room & board doesn’t need to be factored into the equation, because one way or another the student needs to eat and to have a place to sleep and the family will have to pay those costs if the student goes away to college anywhere. The main cost differental from one college to another is urban vs. rural. Berkeley and New York are in costly housing markets, so that is also reflected in their dorm fees. But the public colleges also have more housing options than many private schools – for example, Berkeley co-op housing is significantly reduced cost as compared to the dorms.
And undergrads can’t borrow $100K to attend school or anything close to that-- so the investment or risk is one the parents are taking on. The OP has a younger sibling and the OP might be considering law school in the future … so probably not a good idea to burden the family with debt for undergrad, no matter how fond some CC’ers are of their experiences at an elite private. The money question really is a decision for the OP’s parents to make, given that they will be paying for it. Whether they borrow or the amount they borrow needs to be tied to their financial needs and future expectations – we don’t know anything about the OP’s parents’ age, health, or future anticipated earning capacity, so it’s nuts for anyone to suggest that the parents’ willingness to take on a 6-figure debt is in any way related to some sort of personal value judgment. There are plenty of parents of California students who highly value education, and who are very happy to see their student follow the go the CC to UC route, because they also value financial security and don’t want to become burdens on their children in their old age.
No, never for undergrad
Just to address the original question - “How do middle class families in California, or in general really, afford private education costs?” For this middle-class family, it meant saving from the start for both retirement and college, making sacrifices, living frugally, and having two incomes. We took one fancier vacation to Hawaii in 18 years, and some other smaller, less expensive trips. No cruises. No trips to Europe or Asia. When we travel we find ways to cook rather than eat out three meals a day. Our newest car is 12 years old. Our home is comfortable but we never traded up or remodeled. It serves its purpose. We always thought it was our responsibility to provide for our daughter and made plans for our spending and earning accordingly. Families can make choices; our choice was to prioritize saving.
@katerpillarca I would recommend posting your firm budget (per your parents’ guidelines), college atmosphere wishlist, and any stats you want to share. By doing that, posters can offer you much better suggestions than going off everyone’s personal bias. One person’s $35,000 budget is another person’s $10,000.
I completely agree with @mom2adancer. The “donut hole” doesn’t really exist. It’s not like there’s a sharp cutoff at some income level (that’s what a donut looks like after all). People of moderately high income are able to send their kids to private school because they cut back on “other” expenses (many of which seem “normal” to people of moderately high income) to save for that private education.
I certainly know how OP is feeling - we went through some of the same soul searching just over a year ago, when we realized that it just didn’t make sense to pay $300K per kid (we have 3) for college. We had saved nearly enough to pay for a UC, but the gap between that and (near) full pay at private colleges just didn’t add up. So planned applications to Georgetown, Chicago, Brown, Michigan, etc all went out of the window. What we were left with was 1) Princeton (much more generous financial aid than other schools, notably by not considering home equity), 2) Oxford and other English universities (comparable to UCs in cost when you adjust for the course being three years rather than four) 3) Private and OOS public colleges with merit scholarships of varying levels of competitiveness and 4) UCs.
In the end, S18 chose UCLA (Berkeley was too close to home) as he didn’t get into Princeton and Oxford and we couldn’t justify the extra costs of his OOS options while D18 chose Utah (over Berkeley, UCLA, et al) with a full merit scholarship. Both had lots of options (10 and 8 successful applications respectively) and are very happy with their final choices. But neither could have imagined those being their destinations at the start of the process.
The Thumper Family paid for two kids to go to expensive private universities where the kids didn’t receive any need based aid. One kid got a decent merit award, and the other got a teeny merit award.
Kid one had a family contribution that exceeded the cost of attendance.
Kid two had a family contribution the first year that was 1/2 of the cost of attendance…but was more than the full cost after that. Didn’t matter. Neither school met full need, and neither kid got need based aid.
We didn’t have a nickel of college savings.
BUT both parents were employed full time in professional positions. DHs income paid our everyday household expenses. My whole paycheck (except what I contributed to my retirement accounts) went to colleges. Every penny.
In the case of the OP, she says her dad makes more than the national average, and apparently that is paying the bills.
If the second parent gets a job, that entire income can be dedicated to college costs.
Is this a possibility for this family?
@blossom
Here are the homeless rates for US cities. New York City tops the list in the USA by
10X except for LA but LA is considerably SMALLER homeless population. It IS shocking, and sad, but its just the facts.
Any student who wants to attend Barnard College should be aware. Columbia U students I know found this depressing. It is a very difficult problem and Barnard College students will become more aware of this by living there.
NYU and Greenwich Village, , the city is different down there. the homeless problem is in poor areas of NYC. Barnard is not the best location in Manhattan. Some can tolerate it. It can drain some students out and it can be dangerous, which is why there is a bus to football games. Columbia does not suggest any student take a subway up to 168th Street to the Columbia football stadium. Its not safe today.
https://www.statista.com/chart/6949/the-us-cities-with-the-most-homeless-people/
My whole paycheck would not be enough to pay full cost for a private college – it simply isn’t enough. I don’t earn $72K after taxes, or anything close to it. And I am a native-born American who has worked every day of adult life-- not an immigrant without a history of recent employment. A person with a full time, entry level job at the San Francisco $15 minimum wage would gross $31,200 annually, which would be about $28,800 after payroll deductions.
Let’s go pie-in-the-sky and assume the mom can get hired at $25 an hour. That triggers higher deductions from the paycheck for taxes, and results in a $52K gross, take home pay of $45.9K – still more than $20K short of a private college COA.
If the mom is able to go to work and wants to do that for the sake of helping to pay to college – more power to her – but let’s not kid ourselves that it is realistically possible for one parent to earn the cost of attendance for a private college in today’s market. It just isn’t. A $75K job is what people go to college hoping they will qualify for after they get their degree-- and even that can be unrealistic. It’s certainly a whole lot more than what my daughter-in-law with an MD is earning now or for years to come.
@blossom This link may be helpful to understand the extent of homelessness near Barnard College.
Barnard and Columbia students staff two shelters to help, but its not making a dent right now. Its a serious problem.
http://communityimpact.columbia.edu/our-programs/project-homeless
Its not racist to mention homelessness, if we don’t talk about it, there will be no solutions. And it is relevant to choosing Columbia or Barnard as a “dream school”.
Add $5500 student loan to that and you have $50,000 a year for college.
You know…there are a LOT of colleges that cost $50,000 a year…or less.
My kids went to college between 2003-2010. Costs were not $72,000 a year.
But if I were still working now, my income would be enough now to cover a significant portion of college costs.
The OP was asking about $100,000 in loans…which is $25,000 a year. The mom should be able to find a job with take home pay of $25K a year. That would mean this student could attend college with no loans…if all she really needed was $100,000!
Plus, we don’t really know what year this kid is in HS. Even if a senior, the mom could bank a years worth of salary BEFORE the kid starts college. And then continue to contribute whole the kid is in college.
Would Barnard be affordable? Maybe not. But plenty of other colleges would be.
Actually @calmom the incremental take home pay would be a lot less than that for the second earner in a married couple where the first earner is bringing in a reasonable Bay Area wage. Marginal tax rates would likely be at least 24% federal and 9.3% CA (no longer deductible) and then another 7.65% SS/Medicare. So no more than ~60% of gross pay is left after federal and state taxes and social security. The second earner would need a salary of almost $120K pa to cover the full $70K cost of a private college (with nothing for retirement in there either).
“A $75K job is what people go to college hoping they will qualify for after they get their degree-- and even that can be unrealistic. It’s certainly a whole lot more than what my daughter-in-law with an MD is earning now or for years to come”
MD’s earn a whole lot less than 75K? What type of doctor and what location? That is at the very low end of the salary spectrum for medical practitioners.
I think the point was that some two parent families make a choice to have one stay at home parent who could have been working (at least part-time) to help pay for some of the anticipated college expense which may have made for a softer landing when it comes time to pay for a college education. It’s a lifestyle choice for many. I know growing up that both of my parents worked full time for 30+ years and were able to put 5 kids through college on a two earner income.
And on a separate note. Urban schools are in cities. There are sections of poverty and homeless populations in most urban areas.
I honestly do not see the issue here. Should this student attend college where there are no folks who are poor, or homeless? Really?
NYC has a huge diverse population and this should be celebrated.
Perhaps this student would find a niche helping those who are less fortunate than she is.
Colorado, there are homeless people in suburbs, cities across the country, and even in rural areas.
What is racist about your earlier post is invoking “Harlem” as some kind of terrible, doom filled neighborhood. In fact, Harlem is now filled with gorgeous blocks filled with renovated and restored historic homes, and other blocks which are filled with regular, middle class people (nurses, teachers, social workers,) who wake up every day and go to work- just like you, presumably.
Mentioning homelessness is not racist; invoking the name of a neighborhood with strong historic ties to the black community going back over a hundred years as some kind of hell hole is- in fact- racist. I hope your kids aren’t interested in living in a city anytime soon. Boston has homeless people. Chicago has homeless people. LA has homeless people. Atlanta has homeless people. And some of them hang out near college campuses in those cities.
And the neighborhood around NYU has a terrible homeless problem but because NYU has no real campus and is spreadout through several neighborhoods in NY, it doesn’t “appear” to be as concentrated as on the Upper West Side. The areas around the NYU hospitals and clinics (there are many) are particularly sad.
But I wouldn’t tell someone to avoid Barnard because of homeless people- and telling someone they should be afraid of Harlem is both untrue AND quite demonizing.
I walked about two miles from a restaurant to the train at 125th street last week- a lovely summer evening, and the scariest thing I saw was a grandmother teaching a little kid to ride a two wheeler without wearing a helmet. But it was a sidewalk- and the kid wasn’t going very far. But still scary. Oh- and a group of teenagers coming out of Whole Foods in Harlem carrying iced coffees. I bet it wasn’t decaf.