@TiggerDad I have never had that kind of income, I have multiple kids in college and my students have maybe gotten $1k - $2k a year grants and GSLs for their ‘financial aid’ – On a good year we are maybe making $175 and we have 5 kids so I am not sure where all this ‘financial aid’ is coming from exactly.
How is shopping around and getting offers from places ‘gaming’ the system?
I agree. Without knowing other’s financial circumstances, you can’t assume a cut off below which a family gets financial aid. I did not have any college savings and did not make $275k or whatever the number is that is being thrown around and yet we qualified for very little at 2 schools and none everywhere else because we’re a family of 2 and I have home equity and retirement assets in non-retirement accounts.
What @blossom said. Before accepting a scholarship and committing to a school, make sure the amount is guaranteed for all four years.
@PurpleTitan so true!! I had a special needs child, a costly divorce that I never saw coming, significant medical bills for one of our kids, etc. and so many people have bigger issues than that – and living in the northeast I can tell you that the $200k type gross income gets eaten up fairly quickly and easily without ever doing a single ‘lavish’ thing.
We went through this very same set of issues last year with our daughter who will be starting school at UCF this year as a premed. Not having been through the college process in 25 years – let along with a top 1% student we cast a very wide net and visited both colleges with great NMF scholarships (Bama, UAB, UK, UCF) and also reach schools (UPenn, GT, Emory) with many in between. I really thought she deserved the opportunity to attend a name brand school. After the experience I became convinced that she made the right decision for her. So I don’t think you are crazy.
Running our FAFSA we knew that based on income and savings we would be low financial aid candidates. We certainly couldn’t afford our “EFC” out of our income (would have been 30%+) and we’re not willing to delay retirement for college. Based on that we set a total spend we would allow for our daughter.
• We would cover XXK for tuition room and board
• We would cover her travel expenses and some spending money
• We would allow her to borrow the federal maximums of 5-7K per year
• We would NOT cosign any private loans or take any Plus loans
With this in mind it because apparent that the best options for her were schools where she would be given merit covering most tuition but that she COULD go to most schools that provide some merit if she was willing to borrow her federal loans. She read the book “Debt Free U” and pretty much told us that she was going to a large state school because it just made sense. I read the book “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be” and it eased my apprehension.
In between her research of school visits in because clear that she was drawn to schools with honors and/or focused programs that catered to scholarly students and provided a small community within the school. We found that many of these programs are run by a facility member who is also the cohort advisor. The programs she looked at included the honors biomedical sciences program at Ohio State, the BSMD program at UAB, the BSMD program at FAU, and the BMS and MEDD programs at UCF. The BSMD programs in particular were appealing. I came to think of them not so much as a guaranteed medical school seat but rather as an arrangement to ensure that you graduate with all of your premed requirements (Research, clinical experience, shadowing, GPA, MCAT) in alignment. The requirements of the programs pretty much make you a great candidate for medical school and set annual check points toward those requirements.
In the end she choose UCF because of the personal attention she’s received. It wasn’t just the full ride. It is the early access to advisors, the opportunities of the BMS and MEDD programs and the community she felt on the honors visit. She feels like UCF gives her the best opportunity to make it to medical school and a great set of options even if she doesn’t. Orlando is also a great place to be for 8 years.
Regarding “gaming the system”, I think prudent families should shop around for the best college deal they can get but remember that the tuition discount or full ride is being paid by someone whether its the college endowment, pell grant (government subsidy = US taxpayer $), increase in tuition for full pay students, etc.
Why would that work into a family’s decision? For merit offers, the university is making an offer based on the student’s perceived value to the university. Are you suggesting some level of guilt should come into play on those?
I’m not sure that’s what you are suggesting- but you did say full ride. I can assure you I’ve never thought twice about the $ that my kids were offered for their stats by their OOS schools.
I can’t imagine anyone feeling anything but pride if their kid accepts a merit award.
I borrowed for grad school- at very advantageous rates from a private bank which was subsidized by the federal government. I didn’t feel entitled to the money but was grateful it was available. I did my part- graduated on time, got a good job, started paying back the loans immediately. I also do my part by paying my taxes, contributing to the alumni fund which makes scholarships possible for students who have a gap between what they can borrow and what is prudent, being grateful to past and current students/donors who can write the check without having to borrow, etc.
And I vote with my pocketbook- it’s become fashionable to claim that allowing people to borrow for higher ed is a bad thing, hurts the poor, etc. Government back-stopping of private loans is a complicated subject and so my views are nuanced, but it would be hypocritical of me to have accepted a subsidized loan way back then and now try to shut the programs down by voting for representatives who don’t believe that government should be involved in financing higher ed.
Are there predatory lenders? Yes. Has the ready deluge of cash allowed families to bite off more than they can chew? Absolutely. So tweak the programs and kick out the predators but don’t cut off all low cost loans to kids who cannot complete their education in any other way.
I am not sure why anyone on this thread is suggesting that kids who get a free ride should feel anything but happiness and pride- and down the road, do their part to keep the doors of opportunities open for other kids.
@socaldad2002 My D is on a full ride that includes a lot of perks. That was our goal. Why should I have weighed the fact that alumni decided recruiting a group of top students and giving them additional resources was important into our decision to accept the scholarship? Why should any family?
@socaldad2002 I am not sure why students should be made to feel guilty for accepting scholarships. They are being offered by the institutions for a reason.
FWIW, my dd has met her benefactor. They had a reunion dinner with him a couple of weeks ago where former and current recipients were in attendance. There was a presentation describing what many of the recipients are currently doing. Dd said it was an amazing and awe-inspiring experience to listen to what some of them have accomplished.
The scholarship’s benefactor has blessed the lives of many young people. He obviously believes in what he is using his $$ to support and has seen the outcomes. Zero guilt, but definite gratitude that he has extended the opportunity to my dd. She is very aware of the blessing she has received and is utilizing her UG experience to its fullest.
My D gets $ from the OOS student association. I have no guilt and plan to contribute when she graduates so that others can have the same opportunity.
I would have been proud with zero guilt had my kid gone to a good HC with a great merit based on NMF status and other things, even though I could have and will pay full pay at a private school starting next year. Why should I not want to save money when I am paying a lot of tax — been paying more than a full pay at Stanford — sometimes a lot more — as annual tax for long time. If my financial status was not good, I would help and encourage my kid to become a NMF so my kid can go to college for free. In fact I would have put a Honors College school sticker on my car and wrote below “Turned down Stanford for Full Ride at XX” in big letters. It would have been better if I could have written down “Turned down Harvard for Full Ride at XX” because for some reason I like Harvard less than Stanford but our kid didn’t apply to Harvard. Lol
As far as I am concerned, my kid is a recruited academic athlete.
The question i have, should parents not save a dime for their kids college education but instead expect someone else to pay for it? In the original post, she expected her kid would attend a NE college but how did she expect it was going to be paid for? Maybe I’m missing some additional information?
As a practical matter, high income parents who are unable to contribute much to their kids’ college effectively limit their kids to low cost (to them) colleges. For many, that may be the local community college or state university (subsidized by the state because the state believes that a better educated population will grow the economy more and pay more taxes). For the few with high end academic credentials, there may be additional options in colleges that offer large merit scholarships because they want more such students. For others, there may not be any affordable college options due to even subsidized state schools being too expensive (or too far to commute to from rural locations).
@socaldad2002 You save money and can ALSO go for the best deal. Wealth can be passed down to the next generation and/or used for retirement.
@socaldad2002 At many colleges, full pay still doesn’t cover cost of attendance; the school’s endowment makes up the difference. If I hear right, you are offering to make up the difference for your kid instead of accepting any endowment funded benefits?
Also, a school like Alabama gets an academic boost (test score averages, bragging rights for accomplished alumni, increased quality of some students in classroom) from giving a scholarship to NMF kids. In turn, a kid who qualifies for a higher ranked school agrees to attend a school they realistically wouldn’t look twice at without the scholarship. Both sides get something they want.
Really? My daughter was 16 when she signed her National Letter of Intent. She had about $1000 in the bank. If I wasn’t paying the difference, she wasn’t going to college.
The bottom line for me is have some skin in the game. If you can only save a few hundred or a few thousand dollars over 21 years that’s fine but at least put some thought in to “how will I pay for college for my kids?” But maybe some parents believe that their kids college education is not their financial obligation, fair enough.
@socaldad2002 You are making a huge number of unfair assumptions. Many families had savings that were wiped out during the recession. People lost jobs and were out of work for long periods of time. During that time, not only were they not able to put money away towards college and retirement, but they were living off the savings they had so carefully accumulated. Even assuming they were able to get jobs eventually, all those years, where money should have been accumulating are now gone. Other families have medical issues, or special needs children to care for. I could go on and on. The point is that your assumption that parents simply “choose” not to provide for their childrens’ education is frankly, quite absurd.