<p>I attend a US News Top 20 school with a cost of attendance of about $60,000/year. Over the last three years, I've been--to put it humorously--a member of the "Broke Phi Broke Fraternity Incorporated" and so haven't had to pay tuition. </p>
<p>Last summer, I realized they I have several grandparents who were in bad health and had a decent amount of money. If any of them died, I knew the school would ask us to pay substantially more. As a result, I took two summer classes (most of which were covered by need-based aid) so that I could graduate early if necessary.</p>
<p>Sure enough, I lost a grandparent at the end of the fall semester. The inheritance process was very uncomplicated and our EFC rose from $0 to $60,000. Fortunately, financial aid is an extension of the previous academic year, so I'm continuing to receive need-based aid to take two summer classes. In the fall, I will take two classes total to finish my major and my minor, which I'll get half off from because of a non-need-based scholarship. In all, graduating early is saving us $50,000.</p>
<p>Of course, part of the reason I was able to do so was because of the amount of credit I was able to bring in as a freshman, plus really solid academic planning since freshman year.</p>
<p>My advice? Write a tentative four-year plan during your freshman year. Prioritize your major classes and don't be afraid to add on specialty or pass/fail classes to help build up credit hours. Obviously, most deaths are unexpected, but if you have wealthy relatives who are in bad health or very old, consider a plan that will allow you to graduate early. Finally, you might consider your potential schools' policies. Brown, for instance, doesn't allow students to graduate in fewer than 8 semesters.</p>
<p>If your EFC increased to over $60,000, then you had quite the inheritance. An inheritance is not considered income, I believe. But the amount would be an asset. To get $60,000 EFC with JUST your inheritance in the bank (I’ll say it’s in YOUR name with the 20% assessment per FAFSA), you would need to have $300,000 in the bank.</p>
<p>And if it’s in your parent name at 5.6%…you would have in excess of $900,000 in assets to get to $60,000 EFC.</p>
<p>To be honest, taking $60,000 and paying for your final year would have still left you with $240,000…your grandparent would likely have been happy to see you use some of this money to complete your education.</p>
<p>I brought in 32 hours of transfer credit that I earned in high school and I’m majoring in Economics & Mathematics with a minor in Sociology, so I don’t feel like I’m being cheated by graduating early. My parents are paying for me to live near my school for another year (since I can’t start grad school until the next fall) and I have a part-time job secured for the fall to help offset expenses. I’m actually looking forward to it as a sort of gap year.</p>
<p>My parents have never had much money, so after my grandparent died, they called me to have a difficult talk about whether they’d send me back to my current school for my senior year and I told them I’d already figured it out (the money is theirs). As a result, they’ve agreed me to give me some support for grad school, which they wouldn’t have done otherwise.</p>
<p>Very nice. You do know that if you had transferred with on,y one year left, you likely would have needed to do two years at your new college. Good that you are able to graduate at school number one. </p>
<p>There’s something vaguely disturbing about the fact that your parents were fine with where you went to school as long as someone else was paying for it, but not if they had to pay themselves.</p>
<p>This is true. But one reason I’m glad we didn’t have to consider this option, because it would have been cheaper to have attended a public school back in my home state for two more years than pay 60k for my last year at my current school.</p>
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<p>Their parents paid for all their schooling (including more than one graduate degree) and so I don’t think it ever occurred to them that school costs money and that they might be responsible for some of that. My parents attitude was sort of always like, “What do you mean the school doesn’t pay for you to eat?” To which I wanted to say, “Who do you think the school is, my parents?”</p>
<p>On the other hand, the money is theirs, not mine, though I do think parents have an obligation to help with college if they are able. </p>
So why, oh why, would they not consider it their responsibility to pay for all of your schooling??? I find it more than vaguely disturbing that the only lesson they learned from their own upbringing was that someone else should pay all the bills!</p>
<p>Good for you, @aigiqinf, that you have a good head on your shoulders when it comes to money and figured out how to solve this problem yourself.</p>
<p>but the fact that these parents have degrees and an advanced degree yet “never made much money,” their child had an efc 0, their parents have money and paid for their college, and so forth suggests that there is something “off” about these parents. It is funny that they didnt think their parents money was the parents’ money when their college years were paid for.</p>
<p>as the calculations indicate, for their efc rose from 0 to 60k because of newly gained savings, means that they inherited around a million dollars…and it sounds like they will soon inherit a lot more.</p>
<p>And do the arithmetic folks…if the inheritance was in the parents’ name as an asset, at 5.6%, the asset would be worth about a million dollars. I’m not feeling the least bit sorry for,this family.</p>
<p>If the inheritance wasnt around 1M, then it is possible that either they put the money as income on their forms, o the css school processed it that way.</p>
Maybe I’m perpetually rationalizing, but I would consider having to pay $60K for ONE year and nothing for the other 3 years to be the same as paying $15K/year on average and still count myself among the UBER-Blessed.</p>
<p>we cant apply sense to nonsense. if what this student has said is true, there is something wrong with these parents. they had a privileged upbringing, educated, yet on their own couldn’t rise above minimal incomes. two working educated parents shouldn’t be 0 efc unless a downturn occurred, which according to the OP didn’t happen. they have always been low income. </p>
<p>Posters with 3,000+ posts don’t usually ■■■■■. I think it is real, I just think the OP doesn’t realize how it comes across (that it makes it sound like his family shouldn’t spend money if they have it on his education, but someone else should cover the cost). Or realizes it, but doesn’t care that many others would consider it unethical.</p>
<p>The family has been very fortunate to have inherited a sizable amount of money. I would think the grandparents would have been happy to have this used to lighten the financial load for,this family. But the OP seems to have figured out how to graduate early anyway…so,his load would have been lighter anyway.</p>
<p>Neither of them work and are both on full disability–and have been for years.</p>
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<p>I guess what I’d emphasize–as is so often pointed out–is that this is not my money. This is my parents’ money. You and I can disagree with their attitudes and beliefs, but that doesn’t change anything. I still have to make the best decisions from among the restraints they and the school impose. </p>
<p>Maybe I’m wrong, but my primary thought in this thread is that for anyone in a similar situation–and maybe there aren’t that many people–there are a lot of things to consider that are not obvious at all. When your parents have never had much money and you’ve been going to a top school for free, I don’t think it should be surprise that they suddenly can’t imagine the idea of actually paying for it, even if that attitude seems to be (or is) absurd.</p>
<p>And my parents did inherit a lot of money–about half as much as people have guessed (I’ve been looking through the FASFA to make sure we didn’t make an error or to see if something else has changed). For a lot of parents, inheritance can be something they feel that they deserve and that their ship has come in. They know they’ll never see this kind of money again and so they want to tightly hoard most of it, while treating themselves to some things they never could before.</p>
<p>Though my parents’ situation is definitely unique, I can see this happening with a lot of parents who are on a fixed income or who are low-income and don’t expect to make more later. And I can see other parents in that situation reacting the same way for inheriting 150k or 250k (not unreasonable amounts of money if they inherit the proceeds of the sale of a house) and not being able to imagine sending 15k or 20k a year of that toward one kid’s college education.</p>