We are close to retirement. Our income is relatively low but we have accumulated a low seven figure nest egg. We have cash, College 529 investment, stocks and equity in our house. What will be our chance of getting any financial aid from any private college?
We live in Illinois. Any advice will be appreciated.
@blossom Thanks. Just google Net Price Calculator and find the website. Run it for a few colleges and we guess we are not eligible for any financial aid.
page 15
We are 95 percent confident that the 10th percentile amount is between $9,644 and $23,956, the 25th percentile amount is between $36,999 and $60,601, the 50th percentile amount is between $123,799 and $172,201, the 75th percentile amount is between $306,096 and $482,304, and the 90th percentile amount is between $885,356 and $1,339,444.
<<<<
low seven figure nest egg. We have cash, College 529 investment, stocks and equity in our house. What will be our chance of getting any financial aid from any private college?
<<<<
Private colleges that give the best aid will require CSS Profile. They won’t ignore those assets if they’re not in a protected retirement acct. Are they? Sounds like they’re mostly not.
If your kid has good grades and test stats have them apply to schools where they are above the top 75%.
We did not qualify for financial aid, so didn’t fill out FAFSA. Son has received some decent merit packages from schools that are looking for students with higher test scores and grades than their norm.
We have different numbers but similar situation of high assets for our income level.
If you do not want to be full pay private tuition, you should look at merit aid schools.
Midwest liberal arts colleges are pretty good hunting ground for merit aid. You can find more options if your child doesn’t need engineering and has good grades and test scores.
I agree with the other posters–applying to Us where your child will be awarded generous merit aid because your child has the test scores and grades the U is looking for is ideal. If your income is low and you don’t want to have to liquidate assets, it really is the only option other than loans that will have to be repaid.
Again thank you everyone for your advice and comment. We apologize for not proving more details about our personal finance as we are uncomfortable to talk about it in details in a public forum. But we appreciate all the suggestions and we shall look into colleges that may provide more merit aid.
don’t feel bad that you didn’t share more. generalities are fine.
as i started learning the lay of the land in terms of financing college, the single most eye-opening thing was running the net price calculators for potential schools. Next would be how some schools use merit to try and attract kids that don’t want to pay the full freight. There are plenty of threads here about merit-heavy schools, so look them up.