@Midwest67 : circumstances changed, you kept your kids aware of the changes and clearly it affected them, and in December the dream school agreed upon in August got off the table. It sounds very different from the op’s situation.
The issue isn’t the timing, whereas it is for op and his/her son.
The op has had three months to realize that Princeton is more expensive than UC’s.
And most of the list is as expensive as Princeton so it wasn’t a one-off, basically the kid spent hours and hours applying to over ten schools that the parent approved and now won’t fund, while circumstances have seemingly not changed.
Ucb eecs is terrific but when you hear that science facilities won’t be upgraded and broken stuff won’t be replaced because of the budget cuts you need to think twice about the other possibilities that you can afford.
I don’t think OP has much choice except to go through the family finances with the spouse and decide how much they can pay for college. Depending on how much younger the sibling is, they may have to increase the amount for the her. If they can’t afford the ~$64k/year for Princeton, or the ~$55k/year it would cost if their son took the federal student loan and worked summers, then they can’t pay. But they need to decide soon and they need to tell him right away.
What’s so difficult about this situation is that this family has been thinking about college for several years. They chose a high school based on how many kids were accepted to different colleges, and told their kids if they worked hard they’d pay for college. The problem isn’t that now that the son has gotten into college they don’t want to pay. They knew when he applied that they didn’t want to pay that much and they let him apply anyway because they were banking on him getting rejected. If they can’t pay, they need to be prepared to answer his questions. He’s likely going to want to know why they let him apply if they couldn’t afford it, why they didn’t tell him it was unaffordable when he got accepted (or at least before he bought the college shirt), and why they let him spend 3 months thinking he could go. This is not a good situation for anyone, but the longer it takes the parents to make a decision and convey it to the son, the worse it’s going to be.
Bottom line: will you pay for Princeton or not? If you can’t afford it, then you need to tell your son that. If you can afford it but you don’t want to pay that amount of money, then you need to tell your son that. If you can afford it and you’re just stunned at the amount of money, then pay up and be happy for your son. Of course, there’s a lot of gray area. If you were planning to retire at 55 or 60, but now you have to work until 65 - can you afford Princeton? If you have to channel your retirement contributions to tuition, can you afford Princeton (I would say “no”)? Do you need to borrow money? Will your son borrow money? All that is up to you to decide. Obviously, people have different opinions on this.
If I were your son and you told me (after letting me - encouraging? - apply SCEA to Princeton) you didn’t want to or even can’t pay, I’d be incredibly angry at you right now. That preliminary school list you presented was filled with elite schools almost all costing $65,000-$70,000+ a year. It should have been absolutely no surprise that his education would be costing you close to $300,000 a year (don’t forget to include a 5% annual increase). You can certainly say “No, son. I just can’t afford these schools” but expect lots of anger from your child. Accept full responsibility for your error of judgment. Apologize.
I witnessed this exact situation - with different schools - between a boy and his parents last spring. He ended up attending his safety (which his mother mocked fall of his senior year - never mock your child’s safety). His mother knew these schools weren’t going to give enough need-based financial aid to make his schools affordable but she never told her son. Until April. This late disclosure fractured their relationship and I’m not sure their relationship has yet recovered.
I don’t condone telling kids that something is possible and changing my mind.
But life happens. Reality hits. Things get real.
This isn’t a case of “changing my mind”. It’s a reality hit In the pocket book. For a kid who has very good options.
And may need more funds in the future.
Plus he needs to “share the wealth”–there are siblings at home.
And planning for retirement etc is a GIFT to your kids.
“He’s likely going to want to know why they let him apply if they couldn’t afford it…”
Because it’s exciting to see if he /she can actually achieve that goal. And there is a ton of hype about how generous the schools are (not! Not if you can technically pay). Ever buy a lottery ticket? If you WON the lottery–are you ready to pay for your own prize? Didn’t think so.
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Geez, some of you! Of course no one here said it was “a disaster” to attend a non-Ivy (or a sub-$50k/yr school)…the vast majority of kids are in this boat and most will still have a wonderful, fulfilling college experience.
Princeton could be considered a chance-of-a-lifetime and some parents will be willing to sacrifice to allow this opportunity for their child…why must some of you denegrate them (call them “nuts”)?
@gouf78 wrote “this isn’t a case of changing my mind”
OP wrote “Yes, we could technically afford it. However, we were looking forward to retiring in the near future, and that much of a college bill would upset that plan”
How is that not changing your mind?
Probably the bigger question is how much damage will changing their mind do to their relationship with their kid?
Also, I completely don’t get the whole idea of getting accepted to a school you can’t or won’t go to a “goal”. That’s an awful lot of work for something as specious as bragging rights.
No one is giving the son much credit in this situation. He may not want to go to an expensive school if he knows the effect it will have on the family. He may actually agree with his parents that the price difference is just too much.
My daughter was signed, sealed, and all but delivered to her school when the merit award package arrived (athlete, so signed in the fall). It was $5000 per year less than what we’d calculated. She just looked at it and said , ‘well, I guess I’m not going there.’ Luckily it was a mistake and we fixed it and she does go there, but she didn’t want to put the family in such a financial bind. Other daughter made a similar decision for a trip in her senior year. She’d gone junior year and enjoyed it very much, but for senior year the price went up about $1000 and she just said no, it’s too much with all the college costs looming.
Neither of my kids would want me to be eating cat food so they could go to a more expensive school, especially if there is a good affordable alternative. I’d have the conversation now with both kids. ‘Kids, here’s the deal. We have this much money and we need to decide how to spend it. Son, you are very smart but will studying CS at Princeton be a good way to spend our family money? Daughter, you may want to study at an expensive school too. What if we cant afford that in 3 or 4 year? Is this how we want to spend the family money? Do you want to spend it now and hope we have enough for retirement? Are you okay with us reducing our standard of living if we have to?’
I really think a lot of kids would understand and want to be part of the decision. My sister went to an expensive LAC which cost about 20% of the family income. She was miserable because she had no spending money and felt guity that she was using all the family money. Switched to a state school, paid her own way, was happy. Yes, we’d been raised to expect to go to college, and probably and east coast expensive one. Things just didn’t work out like that.
The original list (see link to OP’s other threads in #48) contained three in-state UCs and ten other schools with prices similar to Princeton. Basically ten wasted applications if the parents really knew that they did not want to pay the price of the more expensive schools (well, maybe a few could be super-reach for merit scholarships at a few of the schools, though most do not have any merit scholarships). It does seem odd for the parents to have said that “Money is not a factor in the decision” and allowed/encouraged an application list heavily weighted toward expensive schools if they knew then that they did not want to pay that much.
Bite the bullet, delay retirement by a lot (if both kids choose expensive privates) or only by a bit (if second child chooses a public or receives a lot of aid)
Own your mistake. Apologize. Try to point out the world-class choices he has, choices that will in no way diminish his future. Maybe sweeten the public school option with study abroad for a semester? Show your son you feel terrible, that this isn’t an easy or arbitrary decision, but one that’s rooted in the family’s financial realities.
In the last option, will your son be bitter and angry? Probably, at least for some time. Accept that, too. Your son probably feels like he’s had the rug pulled out from him – and in fact he has. But odds are, he will get over it.
Let me end by citing the story of carmudgeon, a poster from a few years back. His daughter got into some amazing schools – Amherst, Yale – which would have entailed financial hardship/loans, etc. She also got into a southern LAC with a full ride. For the daughter, the choice was clear: a debt-free bachelor’s, especially since she had medical school in mind. For the father, the prestige of Amherst and Yale made that a tough pill to swallow, but he agreed. Daughter went to the small southern LAC. She did very well there. Fast forward four years and she’s in med school at… Yale.
For the well prepared (and a bit lucky) life has a way of working out.
I’m trying to understand how you couldn’t have known how much Princeton would cost. When my nearly 21 year old daughter was a baby, predictions all agreed that that the cost of a full-pay, 4-year private college education was likely to be about $250,000 by the time she was old enough to go to college. So we’ve had that scary number in our head for years.
I think you should keep your promise to your son, even if it means delaying your retirement. It just seems wrong to renege on a promise like that.
To me, “Life happens” means something like someone in the family gets sick and medical bills are a concern, or someone loses their job. “I forgot to do the math and I want to retire early” isn’t “Life happens”.
The kid might hate Princeton if he visits – some people find the eating club component too snobby, for example.
@intparent, true, the kid might hate Princeton. I knew a young woman who turned it down because she was appalled by the whole eating club thing… but she turned it down in favor of another elite school.
Unfortunately for OP, Princeton’s yield is pretty darn high because most kids fall in love with it.
@gouf78, that same calculator may very well show this smart kid that the parents, in fact, can afford Princeton. But worry they can’t afford to retire when they planned if they send him/sibling to such pricey schools. This isn’t a case of parents not being able to pay for a school - rather, case of parents whose lifestyle will be negatively affected in case they decide to.
I didn’t realize until coming back to this thread that the majority of this students’ applications were to schools with similar COA to Princeton. I think the parent’s had a change of heart and I’d be BS if I were the student (assuming no financial changes to the family in the meantime). I know that people make mistakes every day and we need to allot some compassion but…really? My D knew going in EXACTLY what our top $$ was. She could apply anywhere she wanted for the most part and she knew to through the acceptances away when they were outside our budget, which happened at several schools. I would have never led her to believe I could do something and then not do it intentionally. In all honestly, the one thing I didn’t account for was increases in tuition over the four years and this became a point of discussion for one school but we’re not talking the difference between Princetown and a state school.
I see changes of plans happening on Bogleheads, early retirement forums, even Mr. Money Mustache. They are sometimes almost as abrupt as OP’s, but not quite. Doing the math after the apps are in isn’t cool.
The scenario: you’ve got a lowish 7-digit portfolio, accumulated through frugality (LBYM) more so than high incomes. Many of your assets are in taxable accounts (because you’ll need those to get you from now to age 59.5). Your investments have done well over the years, you’ve paid off your house (because you’re debt averse), and you’ve got it all figured out: you can retire early AND send the kids to whatever school they can get into. Then, the market stumbles a bit, your “unprotected” assets count for more than you thought they would in FA calculations, and all of a sudden your frugality, which has grown into a fetish, rears up on its hind legs and screams: “half a million for college is absurd, I won’t pay it!”
I don’t know you, and I don’t know your child. I honestly believe that you will regret not paying for Princeton if that’s your decision. I am paying full freight for Yale, and next year for Skidmore also, in addition to living expenses for an older child attending Rutgers. We are financially okay, but not to the point where the checks are written without any second thoughts. I would be uncomfortable doing anything less, and I have the sense that you would also.
OP, your kid isn’t going to hate you if you choose not to cover the full cost of a college. I am a little shocked at people who seem to be saying that you screwed up by making a promise to your kid, and you have to fork out the cash no matter what. Your kid will either accept what you give him or he will make an alternative plan, but he won’t disavow you because you became aware of the reality of paying for Princeton.
I have to confess that we have been vague with our daughter with what we are prepared to pay for college. Mostly this stems from a complicated situation in regards to my husband’s self-employed status, and other outside factors. Now that the offers are coming in, with cash, it suddenly makes things seem different. I didn’t expect it to. Call me naive, we expected her to be offered money, but now that she has been, it’s suddenly got us thinking " College X is offering $20k a year. Does it matter if it really isn’t as good as college Y, which will not offer merit aid should she get in?" Maybe for,those who have been through it, it seems obvious, but I am definitely feeling that the decision is far more complicated than I imagined it would be. Though if she doesn’t get into any of the non-merit offering schools, it will be easier.
It is not a “fork out the cash no matter what” situation, but the OP now has to make the unpleasant choice between trustworthiness/integrity and affordability/value, since s/he has painted himself/herself into a corner where s/he cannot keep both, unless the kid changes his mind and decides that a UC is his first choice (or scores a big scholarship at some school and decides that it is now his first choice).
Lindagaf, you didn’t say for the past year that you could afford it, money is no object, apply to expensive schools (which is what op has done). You’ve been wondering about costs the whole time. You’ve been worried about Brown for months, don’t think your daughter doesn’t know it. When your daughter’s ea acceptances came in, you started talking about cost. You’ve not given her a specific budget - is that to mean she has no idea that you’ll be looking at costs ? Or is she aware that costs will be part of the criteria considered ?
In this case, we need op to state clearly
-when they planned to retire and how Princeton would affect the plan
if there’s overlap foe the two children and if s/he has run the npc on Princeton 's website with 2in college
what other options are there - colleges and costs - beside UC 's since op is considering paying less than Princeton more than UC (45k ? More ? Less ?)
Without this information our advice will start going round and round.
