@saintfan Oh, please don’t remind us. It’s too painful…
This shows that Mom really doesn’t know what she is going to do. It sounds like the reason the family couldn’t have “The Talk” during the last two years is because Cali’s parent’s are very chaotic with the way they handle their money. They probably don’t really know for sure what they can afford, or what they are willing to pay…they are just “winging it,” while bringing in a relatively high income, so never feeling the acute pain of literally not having enough money for things. Cali is probably hoping to persuade them to pay for one of her preferred schools, and its sounds like maybe they will! The $0 contribution threat was just a dramatic reflection of Mom’s frustration with those schools costing more than she had anticipated. But that doesn’t mean she/they won’t pay in the end. On the other hand, they would be wiser to encourage her to pick one of the SUNYs…as unorganized as they sound, having an enormous college expense hanging over their heads for the next four years will most likely create some sort of hardship. It will be interesting to see how this ends. Good luck, Cali, whatever you and your folks decide!
@HiToWaMom “And it’s intercepted by Butler at the goal line! The rookie free agent out of West Alabama!”
Apologies, but I havent read the whole thread. Can someone provide a cliffnotes version of the issues (omit the side football references 
) : what the latest options are for the OP and what parents can/will pay
Parents haven’t said yet. Mom has something NU pinned on her board and was overheard saying something or other positive sbout NU and UF on the phone. Dad has worked more hours. Whether or not they have the money is unknown. Sorry.
Mom was expecting an exorbitant amount of financial aid. She has come back down to Earth and realized that is unlikely.
Parents have yet to give me a budget
Lack of transparency with regards to financial situation
Mom wants me to go to NU, but that’s the expensive option
I was able to narrow my list down to 4 schools:
Northwestern
Florida
SUNY Albany
SUNY Stony Brook
After hearing a conversation, it seems like my mom is on board with me going away, so it is down to NU and UF.
Thanks! And good luck
If you live on campus…you would be “going away” regardless of which school you choose. There is no magic to being halfway across the country or in Florida. Once you live on campus, you live on campus.
If costs are tight, Stonybrook is a great school!
High income parents still have not given a budget (other than unrealistic ones like $0 that were stated after admission offers were made). OP (student), presumably believing ahead of time that the parents would contribute, did not apply to or get any full ride merit scholarships, so even the cheapest (in-state SUNY) choices would require a parent contribution of several thousand dollars. OP prefers some more expensive schools (which the parents were supposedly encouraging during application season, until seeing the price). OP also has an older sibling for whom parents contributed minimally for college and expect repayment later.
I thought OP earned the full ride at Alabama.
Thanks for the summary. There seems to be such a dichotomy at times between ability to pay and willingness to pay.
The well known scholarships at Alabama are full tuition, not full ride. Remaining cost would likely still be too high for non-Pell-grant students to self-fund (without parent contribution) with direct loans and work earnings. If I remember correctly, the OP did not apply there anyway.
Based on the stats she posted CR-670 M-630, she only qualified for 1/2 tuition at UA. That would mean $12,500 just in tuition/yr on top of housing, meal plan, etc.
Cheat? 
(BeastMode fan.)
I that UA offered 3500 in Capstone. Or did more come through?
The OP did get some sort of scholarship from UA, but her mom didn’t want to send her there (that one point was clear.)
I actually have no idea what UA offered. I simply clicked on her threads, saw a Syracuse thread she stared and looked for her stats. I just used those scores to figure out what she was offered. If you rremember that, you are probably correct.
According to Cali, those were her super-scored stats and her single-sitting ones weren’t quite high enough to qualify for the honors college (which requires a 1250), so Bama probably wasn’t going to be an option unless her parents were prepared to be full pay and they didn’t want her going to school in the state anyway.
Although I consider Higher Education a basic cost of having and raising a child, not everyone does. From a legal standpoint – and yes, I know there have been some recent exceptions, such as the NJ case — for the most part, parents are not required to pay for college. Personally, I cannot understand why a parent who could truly afford that (i.e., the funds were not eating significantly away at needed retirement funds or other needs the child was perhaps not aware of) would not want to contribute and/or fund that education entirely, even if the parents put brakes on the categories of choices.
For example, I have known parents who would pay for publics but not privates; parents who would enter into 50% agreements with their children; parents who would extend personal loans to their children. These were situations where the parents could technically, on paper, “afford” to fund the child entirely, but on principle chose not to – believing that the child should understand the cost involved and participate in that cost, immediately or eventually.
This is a question of personal values. However, there are consequences to being rigid about values, particularly if that affects the future of one’s offspring. In my family, if I had “extra” money and refused to extend it for undergraduate education, it would seriously, perhaps permanently, affect my relationship with my children. But the bottom line reverts to The Talk. The situations I’ve known of where the parents are indeed “rigid” (firm) about the “principles” involved, those parents had The Talk very early on, in a matter-of-fact, non-emotional way, long before college was so much as a concrete possibility in the sons’ and daughters’ minds. By the time college apps rolled around, everybody knew the score and there were no surprises, disappointments, repercussions.