<p>“Additionally- many students use credits from classes taken in high school, either through AP testing to place out of required courses, or by concurrently taking college credits, which can save time and money when they get to university- this is usually limited to schools in their state/area.”</p>
<p>If your son or daughter did not take that many APs for some reason, look into CLEP testing as a way to get additional credits for the price of a test. Be aware that most schools put limits on how many of the total credits earned can be CLEP or AP credits. For example, my younger daughter’s college requires that out of the total 120 credits needed to graduate, 100 of those must be taken at her college, and only 20 can be AP/ CLEP or community college credits.</p>
<p>This summer before her sophmore year of college, she will be taking a community college class or two before she studies abroad. It is very difficult to keep up with required credits when you study abroad- you usually get 12 to 13 credits a semester when you might have taken 15 credits a semester at your college. (my older daughter studied abroad twice and will graduate on time.)</p>
<p>Also, be careful about how many community college credits that you take before you enter college- it may mess up your scholarships by making you technically not a “new student” or a “freshman”. My older D graduated high school a semester early and took community college classes. She could only take 9 credits. If she would have taken more, she would have lost her merit scholarship at the University of Missouri. Check with the advisor at the college.</p>
<p>Just an aside, but how are you explaining to DS that it was OK for DD to go to her choice of schools but he needs to get a full ride? That would not go over well in my household!</p>
<p>hmom5…you ask a very valid quesion. I cannot imagine making the parameters of college selection (on the parent end of it) any different for one of my kids than for the other.</p>
<p>Another thing…after reading DadII’s posts over the years, it seems his decision of what is affordable is based on cash on hand out of current earnings. Most middle class families do not make enough to pay for college out of that year’s earnings. They either have to have savings on hand or have to borrow and pay the college off over ten years or some such. I do not think my family makes any more than DadII earns. We do not have savings for college. But we are willing to pay college off over time. We were not looking for free rides (not that we’d mind, of course…LOL…and actually D1 was offered a free ride at our state U where she was not planning to apply and did not attend). So, some of DadII’s situation appears to me to be about willingness to pay and not only ability to pay. For someone in his income bracket, his son should not require a free ride in order to attend college, if the parents are willing to finance the education over time.</p>
<p>We have been getting advertisements in the mail from colleges offering various scholarship programs. Today in the mail we received a brochure for University of Richmond scholarship and financial aid. They have the Oldham Scholar which gives full tuition, room and board. They also have the Science Scholar which has tuition, room and Board. I don’t know if you would qualify for this but if you are from Virginia and if your total family income is $40,000 or less then you can get tuition, room and board paid for without loans.</p>
<p>^^ Absolutely. Younger D got over $12,000 in scholarships and grants at Grand Valley State University, bring her COA to $10,000. At University of Illinois, our flagship, she would have recieved no scholarships and minimal, if any, grant money. U of I costs about $20,000 in state this year, so we saved substantially by sending her to GVSU.</p>
<p>Since she is a hospitality and tourism major, we did not think that the “prestige” factor of which school to attend would matter as much, and she liked the smaller, prettier atmosphere at Grand Valley.</p>
<p>I required each of my girls to take the minumum loans each year. I think that graduating with $20k in debt is a managable amount for them, and I need to retire some day. If they go to grad school I will help them as much as I am able to pay off their undergrad loans .</p>
<p>"So, our experiences was that a strong student going to a lower tier school does not improve your odds of getting merit $$. "</p>
<p>Dad II, I’m afraid you don’t HAVE any experience with a strong student applying to a lower tier school, since your daughter only applied to very top-tier schools (plus one flagship state u honors program).</p>
<p>If you really want your son to get a full ride on merit – which I have no doubt he is capable of – you will need to investigate schools that right now, you may not even be aware exist, and be open to them.</p>
<p>However, I urge you to think about the message that it sends your son as compared to your daughter – that she’s the golden girl who got to apply and go wherever she wants, whereas he needs to chase the dollars. Is that a good message to send?</p>
<p>Yes this is true. But in a previous thread…Dad II indicated that his monthly income was in the $10,000 range. I would say that if that is still true, paying the room/board costs for his son at $10K per year should be doable, especially if you look at savings, and future earnings (aka loans) too. Dad II also indicated that for DD, he had enough money in the bank to pay for a portion of her education from savings. I don’t know if this is true for the son or not.</p>
<p>Dad II…listen, I’m not knocking your desire to look for a good college education at an affordable price for your son. There are plenty of schools out there that “fly under the radar screen” but offer outstanding opportunities to their students. As mentioned, Rhodes is an excellent school but not one that has name recognition across the country. I would have been proud as punch if one of my kids had gone there. There’s Trinity in San Antonio, and all those schools in the Lehigh Valley of PA.</p>
<p>And why is your son not being able to pursue the same sort of “dream school” application process as your daughter? Seems to me that her college search worked out beautifully…with a mighty fine aid package due to her schools newly minted need based finaid policies for families with incomes in the $100K range. Not every school has that policy has you know.</p>
<p>What kinds of interests does your son have? Perhaps with some direction, folks here can better direct you to schools with decent merit aid, AND the right courses of study for your son.</p>
<p>I agree that both kids should feel equal support form their parents. The reality of financial limits is real, and this issue is a delicate tightrope walk. Keep in mind that with 2 kids in college, the FAFSA will look very different-- so the EFC will be much lower. Consider schools that offer both nice scholarships and will offer nice need based $$$. Several schools now offer financial packages with no loans to families with incomes below a certain threshold (eg below $75K for Tulane). Tulane’s merit aid is very generous as well, so the combination might be very attractive.</p>
<p>Thumper…you are right about the money. If DadII earns $120,000 per year and can afford to put $10,000 of it toward his son’s education during the four years he attends (assuming he has NO money saved up so far), and then takes out a loan over ten years after graduation still paying $10,000/year, that is $120,000 for his son’s college education. His son would not need a full ride but would require eitehr some need based or merit based aid to make up the full cost of the college education.</p>
<p>jym brings up excellent points. I forgot about all that. I also have two kids in college and once the second one entered, D1’s need based aid shot way up as our need was greater on FAFSA and the EFC per child decreased. And this was before certain schools changed the FA formula. Older D was at Brown and they made it much more attractive to people in our income bracket (DadII’s bracket most likely too) right after she graduated.</p>
<p>Thanks, sooze! Is there a thread anywhere that lists the schools that have relaxed their income threshold for scholarships, especially those no longer requiring a loan component? Besides Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Brown and Tulane, what are the others that have offered this new FA benefit?</p>
<p>Though it is very competitive, and not something that you can expect to get, those with the high stats and profiles should certainly apply to those selective school scholarships. Kids get those awards each year, and if yours has the package to be competitive, of course, give it a try. However, just as one should have safeties for admissions, financial safeties are important if it you want full ride options. Since it even more difficult, competitive to get these full pay awards, you have to cast a wider net to up your chances of getting any of them. That does not mean you should cross off those schools that have competitive merit scholarships.</p>
<p>There was a NYT article last year about a family local to us whose two college students pursued full ride scholarships. The daughter’s journey was chronicled. She was very successful in her pursuit as was her brother. She got a full package from UNC Chapel Hill, and her brother was an Emory Scholar. She was one amazing young woman, with a very full schedule pursuing those awards. She had safeties in her list which were colleges where her stats assured her of a full ride, I believe. I think Pitt and UArizona were two that were mentioned. </p>
<p>As for treating siblings differently, sometimes it is necessary. With our five kids, a lot of our beliefs and abilities and practices have changed as circumstances change. To rigidly offer things just because they were available to the other sibling is unrealistic when life is such that it is not the best move to make. Sometimes it is downright damaging to do so. Sometimes what the earlier kids were offered were mistakes, bad judgment or just not approporiate for the next child. I know a number of families who had to temper offers among children. Sometimes it can cause bitter feelings, but in our family, we never ensured equality or even equity, just the best we could offer at the time. Our kids seem to do well with this. But then we have had rather a roller coaster ride in our lives that make it pretty clear that things have not been the same over time. How I wish I could have given my older kids a more stable early education instead of all of the moving around. I wish things had worked out differently with this move to NY that we could offer all of our kids the option of picking college without regards to the cost. With our first one, it looked like this would be possible for us to do. Now we know it is not a wise choice with so many other things that are in our lives.</p>
<p>“I agree that both kids should feel equal support form their parents. The reality of financial limits is real, and this issue is a delicate tightrope walk. Keep in mind that with 2 kids in college, the FAFSA will look very different-- so the EFC will be much lower.”</p>
<p>This does not always translate into dollars, however. This was the only year that my two were in college at the same time. I was looking forward to getting more aid for my older D based on a lower EFC. She actually got $600 less in grants than she got last year, and she didn’t get much last year. </p>
<p>Also, her out of state merit aid stayed the same for 4 years, but the COA rose every year she was there.</p>
<p>The financial aid office said that they had more kids this year that needed aid, and they had to spread it around more.</p>
<p>Vderon…what you say is absolutely the case when students (and most do) attend schools where full need is not met. In the case of the OP (Dad II), I believe his older child is at a school that meets full need. That being the case, when the younger sib enters college, that WILL be taken into consideration by this very highly regarded and well endowed school with excellent need based aid (and no loans).</p>
<p>Our EFC for our oldest was about $14,000.
We made before taxes- in the range of $50,000 to $65,000 in the six years after high school, during which she completed her college degree.</p>
<p>Ask me how much sympathy I have for someone who apparently makes double our income- yet wants to come up with half for their kids tuition.</p>
<p>first of all, thank you for those who gave me some good ideas. I guess my definition of lower tier needs to be redifined. </p>
<p>To those about treating two kids the same. I am doing that, DD went to the lowest cost school rather than her dream school per se. DS is being encoraged to apply to elite schools too. However, the financial safety needs to go a lot lower in cost. Paying tuition has a significant impact to our checking account. </p>
<p>Since two of them will be in schools two of the years at the same time, we are talking about paying a total of 6 years of college. It is my intention to support them to have 4 full years each college experiences. </p>
<p>As thumper1 stated, DD’s school has promised us that our EFC will be 50% regardless what type of aid DS could get.</p>
<p>PS, I am not here to ask for any sympathy. DS will apply to around 8 schools, I am seeking information so we could pick 2 financial saveties that DS would love to attend.</p>
<p>I think you are wise to advise your son to include financial safeties. You don’t know what the economy will be like in April, or what your situation will be. We always included such choices in each of our kid’s cases, and will continue to do so. My last son who went through the college admissions process had the option to go to school, not only for free, but get paid. It was a serious consideration for him, but he decided he did not want to take that route if we could manage other alternatives. But if H did not have his job, or we could not make house payments, the situation would have been quite different, and he would have considered that option and other low cost alternatives seriously, probably taking one. As it was, there was much number crunching and weighing value vs cost with desires and fit thrown in the mix. We were able to afford his first choice option, but if it did not happen, he at did have some well researched alternatives rather than scrambling for what was left. </p>
<p>We have friends who started private practice this year. Every cent had to be weighed carefully. At the time their son applied to colleges, the Dad was the head of a dept at a hospital. By May, it was a whole different financial picture. The boy’s sister was finishing junior year of college, and she did have here choice of schools and was in an expensive private school with family paying every bit of the cost. That luxury was not going to be as easily provided given the circumstances. Kid actually said he wished he had applied to some SUNYs and local schools, as there were a few that he would not mind choosing. But he did not have the option because he did not include them on his list.</p>