<p>I’m curious if they still felt that way after graduation?</p>
<p>thumper1 : My parent can afford to pay $28,000 a year, so I would have to sign (she refused to co-sign) loans for $30,000 a year. Half as $60,000, but still a lot!! </p>
<p>My ACT is higher than I posted before, it’s now a 34 with a 35 combined writing (12 essay). I think that between scholarships and potential merit aid, I will be set at many schools. Regardless, my parent can still afford $28,000 a year which would help significantly at any school.</p>
<p>Sir…YOU will not be able to get $30,000 a year in loans without a cosigner. Sorry, but you won’t.</p>
<p>Can’t you attend your instate public university for $28,000 a year or less?</p>
<p>Having NO debt would be terrific!</p>
<p>My instate public university costs $33,000 a year.</p>
<p>My parent refuses to co-sign any loans, unfortunately (which may just be good parenting).</p>
<p>With scholarships and a job over the summers, I think it’s possible to attend the UC school system debt-free for me. That will probably be my best bet aside from merit schools.</p>
<p>Are you instate for the UCs? If so, then yes, you could probably swing it between your parent $28,000 a year plus the $5500 direct loan and a summer and school year job.</p>
<p>I’m hoping your parent has that $28,000 saved in an account for your college costs. If income is $60,000 a year, take home is probably in the $40,000 a year range. I would hate to think your parent would have only $12,000 of their earnings for all,their expenses while you were using the other $28,000 for college.</p>
<p>You do have excellent ACT and SAT scores. Is there any chance that you would be eligible for merit awards at some of the UCs, not UCLA or CAL, but some of the others.</p>
<p>If you are OOS, all bets are off!</p>
<p>Also, I’m betting you could get some. Very significant merit aid at some of the CSUs if you are instate.</p>
<p>
You may be interested this thread: <a href=“VERY LOW COST OOS COA universities......less than $25k COA for everything! - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1651944-very-low-cost-oos-coa-universities-less-than-25k-coa-for-everything-p1.html</a></p>
<p>There is a thread by a parent whose son had terrific SAT scores, but not so terrific GPA. I believe he got a totally full ride to SDSU, that sounds like it has some great opportunities with it. He was a URM student, but your standardized test scores are higher. That might be worth a look see. He also got terrific aid to Cal Poly Pomona. </p>
<p>I do live in sunny California! the $28,000 is, indeed, in an account. That would be insane for it to come from the income directly!</p>
<p>Thanks 4kidsdad for the thread link. Great, great info on here.</p>
<p>My GPA is a 4.0 unweighted with maximum rigor and AP classes at a magnet high school. Merit based aid seemingly would be an enticing option with these stats.</p>
<p>It seems to me that you have great stats and will have great choices within the UC system – and it will be very affordable. Keep in mind that the COA figures includes some costs that are flexible – for example they are projecting an average cost for housing, but most UC’s have a variety of housing options, and you might save costs by choosing one of the least expensive options. </p>
<p>I think your mom has done a great job of planning for you as well as investing in a way that assures financial security for her. That is something you might come to appreciate as you and she grow older.</p>
<p>Forget the Ivies - apply to the UC’s and look into schools where there is a good likelihood of getting substantial merit aid. Are you NMF? If so, there are a handful of pretty good private schools that will give you a half tuition scholarship or better, and some public u’s where you can get a full ride with your stats. </p>
<p>Honestly: there are a plenty of students who get into top college, but turn down an Ivy League spot to attend Berkeley or UCLA. Your financial situation is pretty common – not the exact details, but the situation of parents having too much income or assets to qualify for need based aid but not truly have the funds to finance a private full-pay education. </p>
<p>Agree with Calmom…you are fortunate to have so many terrific public university options in California. While UCLA, and Cal are the top to many, please do look at some of the others, as well as some of the CSU’s. </p>
<p>And since you have those options which are affordable, and desirable, sure, apply to a few others…schools with merit potential, and a couple of those Ivies…but ONLY if you are prepared to walk away from any college that doesn’t meet your price point!</p>
<p>My friend’s main source of income was from rent that he got from apartments that he bought for a song, fixed up and managed. He was and is a slum lord for the most part. You can’t get financing for the places he owns, not easily anyways. He lived modestly on an income of about $60K a year in a small house himself, and those properties not only provided his family income and jobs, but also were his retirement nest egg. Harvard and a number of other schools to which his son applied (top drawer student, Presidential Scholar, NMF, ) felt that the parent could sell off one of his properties and pay for the college costs that way. Doing that would cut their income which is not all that high, even lower as the rents would be lost. Due to his personal attention to the properties and tenants, he probably got a higher return on his investments than the market would assess in terms of sellabilty of those properties. Not that there is a huge market in such properties in terms of getting the full market value out of them in terms of return on investment. </p>
<p>Some years ago, when I first joined the board, a student was accepted to Yale and could not get financial aid for the same reason. His name was Evilrobot or something of the sort. He ended up going to Vanderbilt as they gave him enough merit aid to make it work. To ask his parents to compromise their present and future income and security was more than he was willing to do. You can see how that can work when one owns property of this sort and it is your nest egg as well as your main source of income.</p>
<p>I have another friend who came up the same way. She lives in the student ghetto herself and had bought up a number of places around her which she rented out to students. She never left her student digs, and made the area pay for her family’s life. It was a comfortable situation for her. She was an adjunct at the college and also collected rents, paid little in taxes due to all of the deduction and depreciations, and life was good. Until one kid (and she had 8, hers, his, theirs) got into a top school. The school, an HPY type, can’t recall which, would not give a dime either despite letters of appeals professionally written as she had access to university resources where she worked and knew fin aid personnel who knew the language to best have a chance of a professional judgment. Not a dime. </p>
<p>THis and another category, some business ownerships that have no true marketability but have a market value can kill financial aid. You own something that is essential to your making your current income that you can’t borrow against, can’t sell as it’s not saleable on the market. But it has a value, and a significant one, at that. There are some associations (the ones I know all happen to be Chinese) where if someone leaves the group, his share is split among those left, and so you can even get a gain of assets that year, but no money is received as it stays in the pot, and you can only recoup your money when you leave. Sort of like a partnership in a private company, that refuses to let you borrow against that owner ship and you get what your share is worth when you leave, and only when you leave. </p>
<p>If she can’t liquidate then, perhaps she can borrow using a HELOC. Selling a property has some tax ramifications. Hence a lot of people are reluctant to sell.</p>
<p>With your stats you may well qualify for a regents award at one of the UCs. It isn’t a huge amount of money but it is given to students without financial need. “Entering freshmen and transfers without demonstrated financial need receive a 4-year honorarium of up to $8,000 ($2,000 per year paid evenly over 3 academic quarters).”</p>
<p>Here’s the info for UCSD </p>
<p><a href=“https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/financial-aid/types/scholarships/freshmen/regents-scholarships.html”>https://students.ucsd.edu/finances/financial-aid/types/scholarships/freshmen/regents-scholarships.html</a></p>
<p>
I get the issues with the POV here, but the truth is that if something “has (monetary) value” it has value because someone is willing to pay that value for it. Things don’t have monetary value apart from what someone is willing to pay for them. The problem arises from the idea that you should sell the source of your livelihood to pay for your kid’s college bills. Then you go live under a bridge and collect bottles for money :). The schools don’t care about these things. </p>
<p>UCSD doesn’t give a lot of merit money compare to other UCs. UCR, UCD, UCSB give a lot more than $5000/year, it’s more beneficial to apply there.</p>
<p>The problem is that some properties are not such that a bank will allow a HELOC or a mortgage, at least not with good rates. They are not things that are easily sold. They don’t fall under the traditional rules. The money one can juice out of managing properties is often directly related to the work one is willing to put into them. My friend made it his full time job and did well with them, but I doubt most people would have been able to get what he was getting from that real estate. My friend with the college properties would tell anyone it was easy peasy money. she lived right in the midst of her real estate, rented only to foreign graduate students and her husband was handy with repairs. </p>
<p>Schools use rules of thumb in evaluating things, and it’s difficult to assess somethings. If you own a large share of a company, which you only can get when you leave or when the company dissolves, can’t borrow against it, what’s it’s worth? You need to keep it for your place in your job, and it is likely to pay off in time (a risk, but you think it’s a good one). What you have to do is borrow money elsewhere, but then if your current income isn’t up there, paying it back is problematic. With a $60K a year income and it’s carefully managed already, borrowing a quarter of a million dollars for Harvard is an issue. Never mind that you have a million dollars in real estate if you liquidate it all–it’s what’s generating your $60K a year and is your retirement to boot. Your social security check is going to be small since you don’t have much in earned income. It’s a niche that is difficult to assess. The answer would be for Harvard or whatever to take a lien against all of the properties in that amount and get payment when they are sold, I guess, but they won’t do that. </p>
<p>
Nobody is forcing your kid to attend that school. If you don’t want to do that, have your kid go to a cheaper school. </p>
<p>Absolutely, 4kidsdad. That is what a lot of students/families do in such untenable situations. HPY and other like schools brag that money would not be an impediment for student who are best qualified to go there. But that 's not quite true. This is a bracket where it’s an issues. Kids who are outstanding candidates who get accepted won’t get aid if their parents won’t give the financial info or have the means by formula to pay but won’t or can’t. That is a niche unaddressed.</p>
<p>My friend borrowed heavily through PLUS and has stretched those payment into forever more. He’s in ill health at this point and will probably die without paying for most of those loans. Another friend I know died a couple of years ago after borrowing close to a half million from PLUS. He was ill even when he did so, with terminal cancer, and was able to get his two girls through expensive, select schools for nearly free that way. So you string it out and maybe make out that way. If I borrow for my youngest’s school, I’ll be in my late 80s, early90s before it’s paid off and can probably push it out even more. Might just do that.</p>
<p>
Obviously. No one has said otherwise. </p>
<p>Just like with the tax code, this ‘financial aid’ code is set up for the average situation. It’s going to work for the majority of people who make $60k per year from a W-2 job, but it isn’t going to work for people who live off investments or own businesses. The OP was smart to recognize that, and luckily he has all kinds of great options in California or with private schools that award merit money. Singles get screwed with the very small savings amount that can be excluded, plus can’t really take many of the tax credits. Nothing I can do about that except take it into account when deciding where my kids can go to college,and the OP’s mother is in the same situation. We have to play the cards we’re dealt, and that does exclude some things.</p>
<p>The colleges look at this situation as a family that has choices. I do that with my taxes. I could ‘save’ money on taxes by owning real estate, but I don’t want to so I pay more in taxes. I do the best I can to avoid them by maxing the 401k and other tax free accounts, but in the end I just have to pay taxes on the income I can’t shield. For the OP, his mother doesn’t want to sell the assets (and I agree with her), so she and son will just have to pay the tuition or go elsewhere.</p>