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<p>The hypothetical wasn’t whether co-signing meant college or no college. It was around choice of college. If a parent think their offspring would be far better off going to a school that provides as good of an education but without the debt, it is done so with the best interests of the offspring. Nothing cold about it.</p>
<p>Socnerd, we have a budget and it didn’t allow our daughter a 50.000 a year education. Only a 35,000 dollar a year school plus books, and transportation. We started saving for her education while she was still in the womb. I don’t think she’s deprived because we wouldn’t cosign for any additional money although she would have loved to go to school in NYC. Life is tough and we’re cheap parents. She has what she does because we don’t pay interest on anything. Had a mortgage once but it kept me awake until I paid it off. No tax deduction, don’t care, no stress. I drive a 2003 Toyota and I’m glad I was too concerned about the economy to trade it in. Now I think I’ll keep it till it quits.</p>
<p>OP: As parent either you should pay for your children education or let them know prior to application how much you will pay.</p>
<p>It is wrong on parent part to let children apply to $50K/yr college and then refuse to pay or co-sign a loan.</p>
<p>Either I won’t let my DD do something or I’ll stand by her all the time. You can’t act to become responsible after an irresponsible act of letting your child apply to a college you knew to begin with that neither your nor your child will be able to afford.</p>
<p>But how do you know how much merit aid a student might be offered before you apply?</p>
<p>^^^: You can be reasonable with your child by knowing how much a similar student from your child school have recieved the merit aid.</p>
<p>If you can’t find a comparable student then assume your child won’t recieve the merit aid and provide a list of colleges you will be willing to send your child to.</p>
<p>Merit aid is also usually very small and some colleges are doing away with it entirely. It’s usually not more than a few thousand, not enough to make the difference.</p>
<p>OP here–</p>
<p>Thanks for the support from most of you. As I said, it’s still a hypothetical.</p>
<p>Re: letting them know before application what you will pay:
I did agree that we would be able to pay the EFC (in our case $25K). However, I guess I didn’t realize that many colleges “gap” students, and expect the families to come up with more (sometimes a lot more) than the EFC. But from what I’ve been reading here on CC, that seems to be the rule, not the exception. How can you promise kids that you will pay for a particular school before application when you only learn the actual cost when the financial aid packages arrive? You can agree to pay a particular amount beforehand, especially if you use the FAFSA calculator, but you don’t know what the bill is until after the applications are sent.</p>
<p>To me, this smacks of bait and switch on the part of colleges.</p>
<p>In our case, the kid has a couple of reasonable options already, so we’re in relatively good shape. However it must really stink if you’ve told your kid you can afford to send them to particular schools (based on FAFSA) and then find out you really can’t. Should you then let the kid go into extraordinary debt or renege on your promise?</p>
<p>^^^: My feeling is that as parent you should have done a better job finding your actual EFC. If you couldn’t figure out then how will your child be able to make out. </p>
<p>I think you should stand along with the child and co-sign the debt or do a good job of explaining why not.</p>
<p>A guidance counselor recently told me that the University of Florida has started telling their students to expect to work longer hours for less money with more degrees in the future because that is the world we are now in. Considering this and the current economic climate to support this, I would refrain from co-signing loans and encourage my child to take the full-ride. Use the money you would have paid for undergraduate for graduate school.</p>
<p>Even responsible, hard-working eighteen year-old kids can be unpredictable. Going into debt for a person who might not produce as expected in college as in high school, or a person who might change their majors multiple times, or a person who just might decide their “dream” school isn’t what they really wanted isn’t the best advice. Even a driven kid who goes off to college and does very well and gets their undergraduate might decide after graduation that they aren’t happy with their career choice. </p>
<p>Eighteen year-old kids are still young and many have limited life experiences that hinder their ability to really know their selves enough to commit to massive debt for an undergraduate degree and I do think it is irresponsible of parents to encourage their children to accumulate a lot of debt.</p>
<p>I compare it to not wanting your (referring to any ones’ 18 year-old) child to marry at 18. I think most parents on CC would agree that 18 is too young to make that type of commitment, but some parents would still encourage their child to take on big debt commitments because their child is so sure about what they are going to do in life when in reality most of us end up doing something we never thought of when we went to college.</p>
<p>“I think as parents we have a responsibility not to cooperate with our kids making bad choices.”</p>
<p>I was so glad to hear how you believe that we parents do have a responsibility and from reading the other responses it sounds as if this is the thought of the majority on CC. One reason I am happy about this is that I know of a number of former students who are taking on huge college loan debts with their parent’s encouragement because “it is a better school.”</p>
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<p>Check out this thread. The family knew their EFC. Zero. Didn’t stop the school from offering minimal aid and loans that would total over $30,000. That’s just for year one. You often don’t know until you apply how much will be loans and how much will be grants. Colleges need to be a lot more upfront about this.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/883876-i-just-got-my-financial-aid-package-help-me-clarify-please.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/883876-i-just-got-my-financial-aid-package-help-me-clarify-please.html</a></p>
<p>Socnerd, I can see from your profile that you are just shy of your 21st birthday, so I assume you are probably a college junior. That means that you are still in school, and not yet repaying your loans. You may very well come to regret your loan burden after you are out of school – and if you can’t make the payments, then your many relatives may come to regret their generosity.</p>
<p>One quality we parents have is the wisdom that comes with age and experience. We know that college is 4 short years, and after that comes the rest of your life – and we know what it is like to have to meet large payments every month without fail, on the strength of our own earnings, whether it is our mortgage, or health insurance, or car payments – or debt we have incurred on our own.</p>
<p>Life throws a lot of curve balls. </p>
<p>Do you even know how much your monthly payment will be on the debt you are incurring for your education?</p>
<p>Of course it’s not unreasonable! If you sit down with your child to analyze all of the FA packages and show him a loan calculator (finaid.org has several good ones), he will likely come to the realization that no school is worth a crippling future debt. I think many kids are also very sensitive to their parent’s finances and family needs and would not want to see them incur excessive debt.</p>
<p>As far as “allowing” your child to apply to schools that may be unaffordable…it does not create a contract or mean that they’re guaranteed support at all costs. That’s ridiculous! Few people can accurately predict what a school might offer, particularly as the institutional goals and endowment levels are changing. With the current economy, many can not even predict where the family budget will be in six months! Most of us will allow our children to “reach”, but still try to keep their feet planted!</p>
<p>Megmo, I simply told my kids that I would pay for the best in-state public they could get into, but that we would have to wait and see what the financial aid was from any private college they applied to. I knew what the costs were for the in-state publics — I also knew that we would qualify for financial aid, but even without it the COA for the in-state is something that I could have somehow managed. </p>
<p>Both my kids ended up turning down prestigious schools that were top choices and where they were accepted because of inadequate financial aid offers – at the same time, both were able to attend other schools that on paper looked far too expensive, but which offered reasonable, if not overly generous, financial aid. There was no way to know what the schools would offer if they hadn’t applied. I do not know how my kids feel today about the schools they had to turn down – at the time there was mild disappointment, but certainly not a melt-down – like your son they had good alternatives, and they just went with their alternatives and didn’t look back. </p>
<p>I think the one wrinkle in the equation is what happens when your child gets admitted to a school that is far more prestigious than you had anticipated – but the school also costs somewhat more than hoped for. This happened with my daughter, and as a parent I found that I was willing to stretch a little bit more in that setting. But it was my stretching – and fortunately my daughter has repaid my faith in her by taking full advantage of the elite education I helped provide and doing very well academically. So I may have paid a little more than planned, but I certainly feel I got my money’s worth. </p>
<p>I think that you should be proud that your son already has such excellent options, and wait and see what the finances look like after all acceptances and financial packages are in hand. Our kids are smart enough to understand basic math — they may feel disappointment, but they will accept our financial limitations if we are direct and honest, and they will move on. </p>
<p>I’d note that in addition to the risk you would face with co-signing, it puts a heavy emotional burden on the person who has taken on that debt down the line if there is every at time that they cannot make the payments. With a cosigner, they may not have the flexibility to extend the loan or negotiate a lower repayment rate than they would with a loan solely in their name – after all, what incentive does the lender then have to work with them?</p>
<p>dragonmom:
</p>
<p>But don’t you think people who don’t have any money to begin with should make it very clear to their children that they won’t be able to contribute anything in case universities doesn’t provide sufficient aid.</p>
<p>I think it is parent responsibility to prepare children to opt out of the school where they will end up having a huge debt. A child of 18 years is not mature/smart enough to make this choice. </p>
<p>Parent should make their children fall in love with the colleges where they can send them without any additional burden. If children get more aid at a higher ranked college and prefer to go there well and fine otherwise they already love the choice the parent can afford.</p>
<p>It is wrong to first encourage children to apply hoping that aid will be sufficient and then backing out because aid was not sufficient. Parent need to do a better job convincing children about the financial realities.</p>
<p>POIH, as I noted above, my kids were smart enough to figure out the math of the whole thing. (Even my daughter with the 580 math SAT – she does really “get” the idea that $30,000 is a whole lot of money). It’s not irresponsible to tell a kid that they can apply to any college they want, but that they can attend only what the parent can reasonably afford. They get it, they really do. (And if they don’t get it – then they are going to have a hard time with life, because some day they will run up against a “dream house” they can’t afford, or a “dream vacation” they don’t have the money to take).</p>
<p>Calmom: I really liked your strategy and know that most children will understand if taught properly the facts about financial liabilities of huge debts.
I think more parent should follow that and teach children what might be the issues related to graduating with huge debts.
Kuddos to your children, I wish them well in life.</p>
<p>Socnerd’s quote </p>
<p>Wow I’m really glad I wasn’t the daughter of any of these parents, refusing to co-sign on a loan so your kid can go to college? My parents did everything they could so I could go, including taking out loans, having other relatives co-sign, etc.</p>
<p>Socnerd’s quote from another thread…</p>
<p>*My parents spent over $200,000 on my undergraduate education and it was the worst 4 years of my life. I was completely miserable because it was the wrong place for me, full of people I couldn’t connect with and I spent most of my time in isolation. That being said, it was a great private school and I did get into a good graduate program so I guess I’ll have another chance, but I’m not expecting much in terms of experience. My parents will also be paying for my graduate education (where would I get the money?). I did have an awful time in college but I guess I did get something out of it and I’m hoping things will get better.</p>
<p>I realize it was a mistake for me to go to a LAC and I probably would have been happier at a public school. Cost was never a factor for me because my parents always told me they’d do anything to pay for wherever I wanted to go (I’m an only child).*</p>
<p>First of all, how tragic that these parents have spent/borrowed $200k and now are going to spend/borrow more for grad school. </p>
<p>Well, Socnerd…you are an only child. Realize that other families may have more than one child. Still, even if I only had one child, there’s no way I’d borrow/co-sign $200k for undergrad for my kid.</p>
<p>@calmom…it sounds like socnerd may be a graduating senior who may not have any or much loans herself. It sounds like her parents are absorbing most (all?) of the burden of debt. However, maybe I misunderstood and the loans are all co-signed with her being responsible.</p>
<p>Thanks for that - I didn’t look beyond that age & date of birth that socnerd had posted in her profile. Seems that she’s being a little hypocritical, or at least inconsistent, in her posts. </p>
<p>I can’t support my kids through grad school - so unlike socnerd, my daughter is job hunting because she will have to manage to figure out how to support herself when she graduates, and graduate school is at best a distant dream on the horizon. Its a tough job market right now, so prospects are not all that great. (I am 99% sure, knowing my daughter, that she will have a job lined up by the time she graduates – I am just not so sure that it will be the job she envisioned.)</p>
<p>I do think its unfortunate that a student elected to stay at a school that was costing her parent’s an arm and a leg where she was miserable. She could have improved her situation and saved her parents some money by transferring to a less expensive public school – if a student is going to be miserable, they might as well be miserable on the cheap. I’ve always been somewhat grateful that my son dropped out of his expensive private LAC after 2 years – I’m not much of a fan of following the sunk cost fallacy. (My son finished up later, on his own dime, at a public u. in our state where he was actually very happy and ended up with much better opportunities than he got at the private LAC. )</p>
<p>I guess I agree with Socnerd to some extent. My dad hates me, and he’s still going to cosign my loans. Under threat if I default, of course, and with the sweet and nagging suggestion that I should just “join the peace corps” after College.</p>
<p>But he’s still cosigning my loans. I guess this varies from student and family to family but my dad is purposely refusing to meet my EFC, so he had better cosign the loans (He knew going in how much it would cost).</p>
<p>Personally, I want my loans cosigned. I guess for other people that may not work for them, but I’d talk to the child in question, frankly.</p>
<p>On that note, my dad got HIS loans cosigned, so his saying no would be hypocritical.</p>
<p>I would take loans in my own name rather than cosign for them (if it were an amount I was comfortable with). For one thing Cosigning has too much potential impact on the cosigner’s future finances and credit rating with too little control by the cosigner. For another thing I would not want my kid to have debt over the maximum Stafford loan amounts. Stafford loans do not require a cosigner and the aggregate Stafford amounts are more than enough debt for a student in my opinion. Both my kids are on target to graduate with around $10k in Stafford loans. </p>
<p>My daughter actually did a consumer credit class at her college and was horrified at what being a cosigner entailed and said she would never do it and would never ask anyone to do it for her. Everyone should take that class. She learned a lot (much of which of I had told her but it did not “take” until she heard it from someone who knows what they are talking about - i.e. a non parent).</p>