<p>Community college and transferring to a commutable 4 year U is what most low income students do. </p>
<p>Guidos example was a tier 2 private college with a cost of $60,000 which meets need without loans. Not the local CSU. I just don’t know of any. Maybe there are. The schools I know that meet need (and their definition of need) are a handful and very selective. I would classify them as tier 1 schools. Most schools don’t meet need and very few do so without loans. That’s all I was trying to say. </p>
<p>The University of Michigan meets need for low income instate students. But it’s not a private school and it’s not $60,000/year in state.</p>
<p>deb, use this kind of bracket: [ ] and don’t do the slash before the quote (just the word “quote” inside the brackets. After the quote, it goes [ / quote ] but without the spaces.</p>
<p>No, it is not certain. The $250K household could have 3 in college at once, huge medical bills and an upside-down mortgage; while the $80K could be passive income on a $5mill investment account, with one child to educate. There is no way for you to know.</p>
<p>Meaning, what? That these two household have the exact same number of kids and expenses? That would be a newsflash then, wouldn’t it: “People with $250K have more money to spend on college tuition than people with $80K.”</p>
<p>Anyone with $250K income should be able to afford decent health insurance (thus, no huge/unanticipated/out-of-control medical bills). The upside-down mortgage is only a problem if they need to sell their house right now or are hoping to borrow against equity to pay for college. If they have three kids in college at once, maybe they should have planned their family a little more wisely, or accept the fact that one or more kids might have to start out at community college. Seriously! It all comes back to CHOICES.</p>
<p>Oh, Sally, it was just an example of how one cannot assume another person’s finances are squared away and available to pay tuition, just because it sounds like a lot to you. Maybe the medical expenses are for a dying relative with no insurance, and completely wiped out their college savings. Bad things happen to rich people too, you know.</p>
<p>Then they have no one but themselves to blame for not being able to pay for college. That’s all I’m saying. Everything is about choices in life. Three kids in college at one time? Easily avoidable unless you are blessed with triplets.</p>
<p>This was a thread to articulate exactly what Bay said. Some individuals are willing to accept this information and others will continue to believe their assumptions.</p>
<p>A scenario with a “dying relative with no insurance”? That info can be given to the college. I would think this would only apply in very limited circumstances related to siblings, catastrophic illness,etc.?</p>
<p>Do you notice more poor parents complaining about their college expenses, or parents who don’t qualify for aid?
Ive noticed * way more* parents complaining about their EFCs of $50k.</p>
<p>Poor parents can’t send their kids to college without aid so they would not be expected to have this complaint. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem for some families.</p>
<p>No system can prepare for every single contingency. Schools have to go by what makes the most sense. If you’re an elite private school - really the only kind of school generous enough with aid to be applicable to the discussion - you want to be able to cherry-pick among the best, not just the best in a certain income bracket.</p>
<p>If your tuition is 60K and you don’t give aid to a family making 100K, there is almost no chance that a child from that financial bracket can attend. If you don’t give aid to a family making 250K, there’s a very good chance the child can attend anyway. I have to believe that financial aid offices have some sense of the salary level at which they can stop giving aid and still attract the vast majority of the students from families at that level. Determining that magic number also tells a school that for most people in that income bracket, their school is indeed affordable; if it weren’t, they would see it reflected in their yield numbers for that group. </p>
<p>That isn’t to say that it is affordable for everyone in that group. I do wonder whether if there were really extenuating circumstances - not typical ones like having multiple kids in college at once, living in an expensive area, or having a heavy mortgage, but things like a child with severe special needs whose care eats up a lot of your salary - some of those colleges wouldn’t be willing to work with you. I hope they would. But in other cases, it seems less a matter of “I CAN’T afford this” and more a matter of “I’m prioritizing things differently.” That may be the right decision or the wrong one, but it isn’t necessarily one colleges should take into account if they’ve found that most people in your income bracket - including, perhaps, those with multiple kids who live in expensive areas - do find their college affordable, if not necessarily painlessly so. </p>
<p>I’d just like to add that since the population of elite schools disproportionately comes from some of the more expensive areas in the country, I assume that the threshold for aid, while not based on a person who comes from NYC, is probably based on a COL that is above the national average.</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4, this thread is about college costs for the comfortable. So I would not expect someone you consider poor to be on this thread complaining. I bet if the title addressed college costs for the poor, we would probably see the same concerns.</p>