<p>I come from an upper-middle class family, and Brown U is my first choice school. The thing is, even though we are in a good financial situation, we can’t afford to pay Brown’s tuition, and my parents are against me taking out large student loans. I know that Brown only gives scholarships based on need, so we won’t qualify for much there. I have been applying for as many scholarships as possible, but I still fear I won’t be able to go to Brown because I can’t afford it. Any advice?</p>
<p>Get in first, see what FA looks like, keep working on scholarships, and hope it adds up to something reasonable in the end.</p>
<p>I’m in the same situation. Run numbers, see what things look like. If it comes out to be very close, there are loans. If the difference, even after scholarships, would be large, you might need to consider a less expensive solution. Being in that financial grey area hurts, but do your best with scholarships and see how it works out.</p>
<p>I am trying to get a handle on what economic class our family’s income falls in. What is considered “upper middle class” income wise?</p>
<p>I’d imagine it’s a group that would have an EFC of around $50,000-$60,000, though it’s probably a bit wider than that.</p>
<p>Based on the dealings I have had with the financial aid office (we are on the very low end of the upper-middle class spectrum), you can pretty much expect to get nothing except for unsubsidized Stafford loans. One of the only complaints I have about Brown is the way the financial aid office deals with middle class families. Even though my dad was laid off early this year (making our income below 60k), we still received NO aid for the 2009-2010 school year because “the money in my brother’s 529 college account could technically be used for me, even though we’ve already used up all of the funds in mine”. Hmm… guess my brother shouldn’t go to college…</p>
<p>It’s hard to say how these things workout without specifics. My family makes much more than SpicyChipmunks and I got considerable aid at Brown.</p>
<p>They want you to use up the other child’s fund? Wow! That is exactly the impression I get from Brown, too! If you use up the younger child’s college fund, do you then get more aid from Brown?</p>
<p>Brown makes no distinction between money saved for one child or for another. If you use up the money and it lowers your EFC enough, you might get aid, but odds are it wouldn’t be by too much and would be loans.</p>
<p>Urgoola, I disagree. Savings was exactly why I didn’t get much aid my first two years but got a ton my last two years. If you discuss with Brown what their expectations are they’ll explain to you how your package will change over the next few years based on spending savings and the package may change considerably, depending on your EFC and where the money in your EFC came from.</p>
<p>Also, my aid more than doubled when my sister started college, so that’s something to consider if your children are both going to be in college at the same time-- Brown cuts your EFC at least in half the second that happens.</p>
<p>I’m going to tell you what no one was ever kind enough to tell me or my friends. </p>
<p>Lie. If you have any money saved that can’t be found on your tax return (or can at least be buried) don’t report it to the college. Bank accounts, mutual funds, retirement funds, anything like that, do not tell any college they exist. If it won’t show up on a tax return, there is no way that Brown or any other college will know it exists and will try to force it from you.</p>
<p>Some may say its evil and deceitful, but its more than proper given standard financial aid tactics. One of my friends initially had an EFC of 15 thousand. His parents reminded him afterward of their “retirement fund” which they have been saving outside their 401k for 30+ years, and his EFC jumped to 55k. He went from receiving half tuition scholarship and subsidized loans to nothing.</p>
<p>I forget where, but I remember a while back someone posted a conversation with a financial aid representative that told him its smarter for parents to spend their money on pointless luxuries than save for college.</p>
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I completely agree with this. As long as the colleges you’re targeting have need-blind admissions and need-based aid. Most of the good ones have that. Their policies aren’t really thought-out. And they end up losing money in the end anyway. Take for example outside-scholarships: in most places, if you win a scholarship and declare it you will probably not benefit 1 cent out of it. The school will just use it to cover their own scholarship. So if the admission was need-blind, you have absolutely nothing to gain with an outside scholarship-so why apply? Many won’t apply, so schools, because they were so greedy, will lose all that potential money. If they were more thoughtful, they would at least make it a 50-50 or something, so students would have some incentive to apply for other funds. But noooo, why think about or care about students or our own school’s funds?</p>
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megabnx-- in my case, that was certainly true. Those 529s that seemed like a great idea to save money on taxes and put money away for college when we could afford to really bit us in the butt. Had that been spent on vacations and luxury items, I likely would have received the total amount right back from Brown. It’s not Brown’s fault, it’s just something which is innate in the way the FAFSA works and the general difficulty of financial aid calculations. It really hurts the middle class.</p>
<p>On the one hand, no one wants to “punish” people for saving responsibly so they can afford college, just as no one wants to reward people who spent irresponsibly and could have paid for college if they had made more responsible choices. However, when calculating aid, it’s impossible to determine these things and we’re stuck with just analyzing assets at that moment in time. Even if we had information about assets over time, how would we determine who was responsible and who wasn’t and what constitutes responsible decisions?</p>
<p>In the end, the easiest thing, and most accurate thing, is for colleges to just assess if school can be paid for by parents or not, and it cannot, to do their best to make it affordable. The idea of need-based aid is simply to make these schools accessible and possible. It’s not meant to make attendance come without sacrifice, it’s simply meant to make that sacrifice something people could seriously consider making.</p>
<p>I think the paid accountants and counselors and everyone else involved in FA should work a little harder and come with a solution. Don’t they see what the trends are? More and more schools are becoming need-blind/need-based, people will start seeing that there is no point in saving/applying for outside funds, and the whole system will go bust eventually, when no one will be paying anything. At best, we’ll end up where we were a few decades ago.</p>
<p>Also, the whole thing about saving for college and making sacrifices has a positive side: education is a hell lot more valued. When you know that your parents didn’t go on vacation or ate lobster all day so you can go to college, you see things very differently. It’s where appreciation for hard earned money and sacrifice comes from. But if half the people will eventually see the trick and realize they can sneak their way through, and let the other half pay for them, what you’ll get is basically a very dysfunctional system - very much like the one from where I’m from. And trust me…it’s very dysfunctional.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree with you, negru, I just don’t have an answer and understand what complications led to where we are. It definitely sucks, and I wish there was an easy or even hard fix and that someone was working on it.</p>
<p>As far as saving for college: 1. Most people aren’t going to get into a college that is need-blind. Most parents, especially those whose in-state public schools don’t give great aid, are making sure that their child will at least be able to afford college. My parents did that: unfortunately for my future income, my parents expected me to go to college for free in state. And I could have. But… I didn’t plan on getting accepted to/loving Brown.</p>
<p>Now I’ll have maxed out my stafford/perkins loans, and I’ll be responsible for paying back a huge amount of PLUS loans my parents are taking out. But I did receive SOME aid, and am extremely grateful for it, because it’s allowing me to go to Brown. Despite it financially hurting quite a bit.</p>
<p>On not saving-- remember that parent savings are the smaller part of EFC, that the aid you get because you don’t have savings might be loans, and that if you don’t save you don’t have savings for other important life events.</p>
<p>On lying-- I wonder if FAFSA checks for some red flags-- like no savings but lots of interest income. Assets aren’t reported on a tax return, but income from assets is. The income is a hint that there is an asset. Even a reported loss hints at assets.</p>
<p>Upper middle class is a very frustrating place to be financial aid-wise, but our resources mean our children have more choices than many others have.</p>
<p>ModestMelody-- I hope your experience holds true for our family in two years!</p>
<p>I think it’s the 529s… if not it was some other savings my parents had a ton of money in, but one of those deals puts the money in your children’s (hrm… children is plural, already so I guess it’s ‘s instead s’, weird) name which is a HUGE mistake. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is get money out of your children’s name, and if possible, out of your name as well. Stuff in the student’s name is "taxed’ at something like 10x+ the amount stuff in the parent’s name is.</p>
<p>Going to Brown’s Financial Aid hypotheticals might help you to get an idea of what expectation for need-based aid one would have at a specific income level and family situation, since “upper middle class” is such a wide income range.</p>
<p>Then compare their hypotheticals to your own family income; we were suprised to see that we might qualify for some need-based aid despite our status in the “upper middle class.”</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>Yeeesh. Fin Aid is always a hard problem to solve. I find that universal life insurance is a great way to store assets. The money put in is not taxed until it’s payed out, and you can receive annuity payments out of it at anytime (at least through my plan). That being said, you could store college funds in there until school is over and then retrieve them as payments later on. No interest or money to report until you have degree in hand. Mind you I could be very mistaken about whether or not you need to report a universal life insurance plan.</p>
<p>On a more personal note, I recommend a short military service. At the very least the government pays for your education. I know that without the new Post 9-11 GI Bill I would have been hard pressed to pay for school without at least 60k in loans, but now I’m going for free (collecting a paycheck actually). Financial reasons aside, I recommend service in the armed forces to anyone.</p>