Paying for college and financial aid

I think the OP makes a great point and a national disgrace. Average families can’t afford tuition for colleges for their kids. Why is every school whether public or private we looked at like $50,000-62,000/year. Yes we have public but University of Illinois is like $37,000 plus for engineering so not cheap either. Some LAC’s you can negotiate with… like buying a car.

I think for younger families reading this is to start building equity and start a savings plan like a 529 when the kids are young. We have 2 for our kids but nowhere near like $200,000 for each kid…lol. It just makes it a bit easier now that they are in college but by no means a piece of cake. I do sympathize. It’s frustrating just trying to provide for your families future.

Every college on Illinois is NOT $35,000 a year. Look at NIU, or WIU or SIU…or UI-Chicago.

There are plenty of colleges where your net price will be below $50,000 a year.

As an example…the SUNY colleges don’t cost that much for OOS students.

Here is Bing…$44,000 a year.

New Paltz is even less costly.

@thumper1 totally agree. We now have 2 year free community College if you went to a Chicago public school and have like a b avg. We are OK with what we are paying but it is frustrating for families that can’t. Our son going to University of Michigan for engineering is about the same as going instate to University of Illinois champaign. He could of gone to Illinois Institute of Technology, if he applied, most likely for free or close to it due to large scholarships to get top students… If there is a will… There is a way… Just sympathizing with the OP. As parents I think we all want to give the best for our kids. My daughter couldn’t go to Emerson since we just couldn’t afford it since she didn’t get one of the few great merit packages. She went to a LAC instate that gave her a decent one.

Unless your son went to college 15+ years ago, it does appear that he wrongly qualified for a Pell Grant, since it appears that your daughter is at least 17 years old. Probably won’t get caught now, but if you were married during the first 3 years of his college years, your husband’s income should have been included, and likely the EFC would have been too high to qualify for Pell.

I don’t know why so many people think that poor/low income kids are going to college for free. High school w/ large number of low income students. Most of the kids live at home, work, go to community college, local jr college or various combinations. They certainly don’t get to have the “college experience” that other kids have, and they work just as hard.

The “poor kids who get to go to college for free” are a tiny tiny minority, as they first have to have the stats and grades to get into the tiny fraction of colleges that have great big endowments. Everyone else is pretty much stuck as they can barely scrape together money for community college.

We have a large metro university here, with about 25,000 students. I doubt there is enough housing for 1000 students, so everyone else is commuting. There is another university and a community college that share the campus too. LOTS of commuters, but still having the full university experience. The school has sororities and fraternities, D2 athletics (national champs for basketball one year), clubs, theater, a student center with a brew pub. It is downtown with all the government buildings and professional sports, just blocks from the Theater District and all the opportunities those operations provide. My daughter took classes there this summer and I was very impressed with how helpful the FA office was and how they try to make it affordable to everyone.

Is it Harvard? No. It’s still a university experience.

My daughter is going where needed right now @turtletime. Not where she wants, she knows what needs to be done in order to get where she want. She wants to go to a school with a good vet program! So she will do what’s necessary until then, like going to a great college now to get her minor then continue on. All while working and applying for scholarships and grants with a little help from her parents who want her to succeed.

Your daughter can still use HOPE, or even Zell Miller if her stats are high enough, to pay most of her tuition. If her stats are strong enough, she can also get merit scholarships.

She doesn’t have to go to an undergrad with a vet school.

@thumper1 SIU and NIU quote about 28k to 30k, and UIC is similar to UIUC if you are not in commute distance to Chicago. The Illinois colleges aside from UIUC, NIU, and UIC are in considerable trouble lately. Last year close to half of Illinois college freshmen left the state. It is likely worse this year. The state legislature finally decided that they need to offer merit scholarships to Illinois students. We may see that come in 2020. It is limited to families earning less than six times the federal poverty level.

For right now, other states are getting most of Illinois high stat kids.

I feel the OPs pain. The shock of college pricing really floored us. I am glad we started researching as early as we did.

Your daughter does not need to go to a college with a good vet program. Vet school is Professional school. Right now she needs to go to school, do well take her pre-requisites, see the career service officer to find out who from her school applies to vet school. The main drivers in her bility to go to vet school will be her college GPA and her test scores. If Vet school really is in her future, she needs to take the least expensive option for undergrad because she will have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt (there is really no need based for professional school).

@elodyCOH really 50% freshman left the state? I knew it was high… My son went to Michigan since UIUC doesn’t seem to give merit. His friends went to just about every surrounding state school but a few went to DePaul. I know UIUC engineering is self sufficient but not the rest of the school. Professors are leaving etc, its a shame.

@sybbie719 is right.

Kids sometimes think that they need to go to an undergrad with a med/vet/dental/etc school. Not necessary.

For someone who is prevet, I would recommend volunteering/getting a job at a local vet clinic.

@Knowsstuff - Yeah, it’s pretty miserable for higher education in Illinois. They released this report showing the admissions vs. enrollment stats for all public colleges in Illinois. Of all the students who applied and were accepted, 38% of THOSE declined to accept and attended out of state schools. There are many who do not apply to the in-state schools at all.

https://www.ibhe.org/assets/files/180309.pdf

As for the total number of Illinois college freshmen who head out of state for college, in 2016 it was 46%. The numbers for nearly all the colleges have gotten worse since then. The projections in the fall of 2017 were that the loss of students was accelerating here.

They finally decided enough was enough and are looking at fixing some of the issues with some new merit funding:

https://dailyillini.com/news/2018/06/14/statewide-program-to-provide-merit-based-aid/

It’s not going to help my oldest kiddo, but hopefully it helps other families find a way to attend college here. It’s horrible to pay super high taxes to fund a highly rated flagship university that your kids can’t go to due to cost.