Loan questions, I'm feeling confused, please help

Parents Forum
61

With our son, the price calculator included things like $1,000 a year for books and supplies, $2000 a year for “transportation,” etc. We rented nearly all of his textbooks from Chegg; that MAY have added up to $1,000 over all five years. Certainly not $1,000 per year. And he went to a college 15 miles from home. He did live on campus, so we had room and board to pay for, but he did not need an extra $2000 a year; that might apply for a student who is across country and needs to fly home for Christmas, etc.

So, even when a school includes some dollar amount for an item, look at that item and see if it would apply to your student. It might …but it won’t always.

I would also point out that when I went to college years ago, tuition was charged by the hour. So if you took 14 hours one semester and 18 hours the next semester, the 18-hour semester would have a higher tuition bill. Son’s college charges one tuition amount for ANY number of credit hours from 12 to 18. So, if he had taken 18 hours every semester, we would have gotten more bang for our buck. Make sure you look at that, as well.

62

What @OHMomof2 says. We’re not talking about FAFSA. We’re talking about the Net Price Calculator on each college’s website. There should be something that points to the Net Price Calculator on the Financial Aid page. Every single college seems to do their financial need-based and merit-based aid differently, so you have to go to every single college’s website. You may be pleasantly surprised that you qualify for need-based aid and your daughter qualifies for merit-based aid (although not all NPCs show merit aid).

It’s okay that you have nothing contribute. You may need nothing. Or you may find, sure you can contribute $5,000 between your child’s summer earnings, the nest egg. Or you may find the college wants your first grandchild. When I ran the NPCs, the total costs ranged from very low to laughably high.

63

You can start Alabama and many public universities in July. Those are usually easy.
Some FLorida universities (FIU, USF) have good scholarships for Honors students, so you should always apply to the Honors college at state universities.
You can start commonapp applications after August 1st - but she can work on essays in June and July, and just paste them in August 1st :).
You can decide on a budget, and if the university’s within budget she can choose her favorite even if it’s not the cheapest. That should sweeten the pot - she can apply to lots of universities and if they come under $… she gets to choose.
You can agree on a limit of 5.5K in loans for freshman year (=federal student loans, no co-signed/Parent PLUS.)

64

People want you to run the Net Price Calculators (NPC) on each site to find out what each college believes to be your EFC because this will tell you:

  1. What they expect you to pay (each school will be different, so it’s important to find out)
  2. How much of the FA they give you will be in the way of loans vs. grants. (Of course grants are desired over loans!)

Also, in some cases, I believe, the NPC will ask about GPA and test scores and use that as part of the calculation to show what merit your D may get. (I don’t have first hand knowledge of this, but I believe others on the on the board have implied this on other threads. )

To add to cgpm59’s post…some schools charge different rates for different types of dorm rooms. Others charge a flat fee regardless. You may want to consider this as well…And, yes, COA has some “Personal expenses” and “books” …personally I took these out of the equation when comparing colleges, because I felt these probably wouldn’t change much. Travel costs on the other hand could matter if you are looking at different parts of the country and should be considered in your costs.

(See, I told you lots of people would have advice for you!)

65

If she likes Florida, just point out that Bama is not a far drive to beautiful Panhandke beaches. :slight_smile:

66

The NPC will vary quite a bit by school. We qualify for nothing from an EFC standpoint but some schools NPC will show grants etc for my son, and others absolutely nothing. Some ask for scores/gpa, some do not. It’s only an estimate, but it is helpful. The $$ difference is all over the board. Some will show a price that doesn’t include merit, some will. Some have the merit offerings clearly visible and you can add that in yourself, others do not.

My son’s pre-calc teacher had the kids figure out how to pay for college over winter break this year. They had to pick a school, look at the estimated costs (all of them, tuition, fees, room and board, books, other), grill their parents on what the parents could contribute, run the NPC for that school, also look at the estimated FAFSA NPC for comparison and determine how they would pay for school.

Even if kids had parents who could pay for everything, they had to assume that they didn’t and figure out what kinds of loans, grants, work study, work, etc they were willing to do to pay for it. And then show how long it would take them to pay back and what those loan payments would be, both for the kid and for the parents if the parents took out a loan of any sort.

It was a PAINFUL exercise to do with my child. It was also the best thing in the world for both of us. It let him really understand the financials involved and how his choice of schools could really impact his financial future. It let me see how much skin my kid had in the game.

Most importantly it gave us a shared, collaboratively created road map that we are using to come up with his list of schools.

I don’t see how it had a thing to do with pre-calc but I am so grateful to that teacher. I plan to have S19 do the exercise when it’s his turn, even if he doesn’t have the same teacher! I need to see if I can get an electronic version of the original assigment.

67

At this point, don’t worry about telling any school they’e the first choice. Find schools that she qualifies for and that you can afford. Later, you’ll know if there’s an early application process and how it might benefit. (“Early Decision” tells a school you’re willing to commit, unless there’s a financial boggle- you can get to this detail and decision much later. Right now, you’re still confused. Make some headway before you get into finer points.)

“What you can afford:” you may have nothing, but the schools still expect something, often more than most of us would like to pay. That’s why you need to run NPCs, to get an idea what they expect, more or less. This is all very much their game, not ours.

And this: many are talking about if she gets a 32. CYA. What if she does not? It’s theoretical to think about practicing more and more or tutors. So keep in mind schools that offer good merit at less than 32.

Last: EFC is the expected Family Contribution. It gets confusing because we use the term generically- and the FAFSA calculators can refer to EFC. You need to separate these in your mind. The FAFSA EFC is about fed aid. It always did come close to what the schools expected of us. But it’s not a final number representing what the college may actually expect of you. I usually think of the school’s expectation as the Family Portion of the bill. And that comes from the schools, via the NPC, not the Fafsa EFC.

68

Thanks everybody. I had a talk with her last night and I think that she will just have to come to terms with the fact that she might be going to UW Parkside. If she manages to get some crazy good scholarship somewhere, that’s great, but I have prepared her for the possibility of staying in town.
We will not keep her from applying to places she wants to go, just in case something good pops up.
I appreciate the eye opening experience this has been.

69

One more thing, I swear I saw thread that had people’s payment amounts on their loans, Am I crazy?
Link please, if you know what I’m talking about, thanks.

70

Like this? https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/mobile/repayment/repaymentEstimator.action

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@OHMomof2

Thank you, I thought there was a thread on here that had people throwing out their own personal experiences, but this works, thanks :slight_smile:

72

^ She probably WON’T be going to UW Parkside, especially if you follow the advice on this thread.
If she can bump up her ACT just from 29 to 30 and takes good care in writing her essays, she’s in with scholarship at UW Eau Claire Honors (and it’s MUCH MUCH better than Parkside.)*
And the higher she pushes her ACT, the more choices she’ll have.
In addition to the public universities’ honors colleges with afferent scholarships, there are all the “meet need” universities and LACs plus with good scholarships since you’d bring geographical diversity - seriously consider applying to St Olaf, Gettysburg, St Lawrence, Connecticut College, Mount Holyoke, College of Idaho, Agnes Scott, Gustavus Adolphus, Carroll-Montana, Ohio Wesleyan, Wooster, Denison, Hiram, Wheaton, St Michael’s, Muhlenberg, Ursinus, Guilford, Eckerd, Virignia Wesleyan… plus Beloit and Lawrence.
Some of these applications are free (and check whether you qualify for commonapp fee waiver or NACAC fee waivers).

73

@MYOS1634

I just told her it’s a possibility. I’d rather have her pleasantly surprised at the outcome of all this than tell her she WILL get into some of these other places, when we really don’t know for certain.
Thank you, I’ll check out some of the mentioned places. If I’m understanding correctly though, meeting need, is only meeting the funds above and beyond what the EFC from fafsa says we can contribute and that’s the problem. We can’t contribute anything close to that, so we would still need to get large loans, which we aren’t willing to do.
We don’t have her scores back yet, those were just practice. Writing essays should be a breeze for her, reading and English are her highest scoring academics. I believe her practice score for that was 34.

74

You’re very right to position things as in “pleasantly surprised”. :slight_smile:
Also, your daughter knows now that she needs to “earn” a scholarship through test scores.
The schools on the list “meet need” and offer merit. Whether they will offer merit to your daughter AND allow her to “stack” the awards will vary according to school, which is why you need to run the NPC. Those that ask for stats will factor in the merit awards. Otherwise, type in the name of the school + “merit scholarships” and see what they offer.

Average GPA
Parkside: 3.05
Eau Claire: ?

% admitted students with a GPA 3.75 and above
Parkside: 9%
Eau Claire: ?

Top 25% ACT threshold (25% scored that or higher)
Parkside: 23
Eau Claire: 26 (average 24, meaning the average students at Eau Claire are better than the top 25% students at Parkside)

% that scored ACT 30 or higher
Parkside: 1%
Eau Claire: 6% (which is why I said that if she hits 30 on the ACT, she’s in and in the Honors Program)

% small classes (with 20 or fewer students)
Parkside: 47%
Eau Claire: 26%

% large classes (with 40 or more students)
Parkside : 16%
Eau Claire: 20%

% freshmen living on campus
Parkside: 34%
Eau Claire: 94%

% graduating in 4 years
Parkside: 8%
Eau Claire: 28%

% students who were top 10% high school class
Parkside: 8%
Eau Claire: 17%

http://www.uwec.edu/academics/university-honors-program/

75

@BeeDAre wrote:

Alabama’s full-tuition program is well known, and very generous. However, OOS scholarships at KU and Mizzou are much less so. Both cap out at around $10,000/year off of OOS rates, making the net cost of each still in the $25-28k range.

See:
http://admissions.ku.edu/cs#NonresidentFreshmen
http://financialaid.missouri.edu/types-of-aid/scholarships/scholarships/mark-twain-nonresident-scholarship/index.php

76

OP - I am happy to share specific loan pymts if that helps you - it is a good dose of reality.

I have a $48,000 parent plus loan - pymts deferred until 6 months after graduation - so I still do not have an exact pymt amount. I believe it will be about $550/month for 10 years. I have paid the interest voluntarily to keep the balance at the $48,000 loan amount. It’s actually two loans of $24,000 each, so I guess I will have two payments. Might consolidate.

One son has a Stafford loan that started at $16,500. Paying $166/month for 10 years on that one.

My biggest criticism of the student loan process is that you don’t know the exact payment upfront. You can estimate, but not knowing the exact pymt helps defer reality.

77

I think I’ve at least convinced her to look outside of Florida! She still wants warm, but as much as she wants what she wants, when it comes right down to it, she’s smart enough to make the right decision.
Part of her problem is, she doesn’t really know where to start because shes not sure what she wants to do. We are working on it, it will come together eventually. Maybe sometime over the summer something will just click to help her along.
As far as ACT scores go, if she takes more than one, does she pick which one goes to the colleges or do they see both/all? Again, not sure how that works. She was worried about taking a second one in case her scores went down.

78

@rockvillemom
Thank you so much, would you mind sharing how much the interest payments were every month. I did see your post about that and wondered how much the interest is, I’m thinking we could cover that for the time being.

79

A few colleges want all scores, most let you send whichever is highest.

80

You get to choose which set of scores to send. If she does better on the first date, she sends that . If she does better on the later date, she sends that. A few (very few) universities demand all scores - off the top of my head, I only know University of Pennsylvania demands all tests… Maybe Georgetown. But it doesn’t sound like you or she is targeting these schools.

Most (?) Many students do better on the second or third ACT test. My daughter took the ACT three times. Her score remained the same between the first and second tries. The third time, the score went up significantly, going from 27 to 31 (just missed that magic 32). So, it is very possible your daughter will hit the 32 if she’s already scoring 29, 30. I found the old adage, practice, practice, practice was key in improving the score - if nothing else, the practice builds a certain familiarity with the test format and questions.