Paying for private universities without any help from FAFSA

Paying for College
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<p>Yes, but wouldn’t you feel awful if you took out a bunch of loans, went to Vanderbilt for a year and a half, and then had to transfer to ODU to finish out your degree because the banks cut you off? You would end up with an ODU degree but you would have to pay back loans for the more expensive school for years to come. </p>

<p>I don’t think anyone is advocating completely giving up on Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins. Personally, I think you should chase after as many merit scholarships as you can get, but keep a cheaper alternative (not necessarily a community college or even ODU, but a reasonably decent school that you can afford with minimal loans) in your back pocket to fall back on just in case nowhere else works out for you. If worst comes to worst, you could start at a less-prestigious school for a year or two and then transfer to Vanderbilt – that way even if you have to take out loans it’ll be a lot less risky and a lot less expensive.</p>

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<p>I definitely recommend checking it out. If you have a good relationship with a lending institution, they might be willing to give you a lower rate, or fixed interest loan, or something else that’s more generous than what they might give to the hoi polloi. Again, you should keep your options open. Private loans aren’t always Hell, especially if you come from a well-off family with a strong credit score and they can help you pay it off while you go through the medical school slog. Consider private loans, consider merit aid opportunities, and keep a school that you know you can afford in your back pocket so that you don’t end up here in August with nowhere to go except for a community college.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>@mtpaper I did ask my mom once, and she wasn’t willing to give specifics about how much was saved. I’m pretty sure they’ve only been saving anticipating that I was going to stay in-state though. But, she basically said that if I got a substantial merit award at Vandy tuition-wise, they’d be willing to pay the room and board expenses/remainder of tuition. She basically said up to $20,000 a year they’d be willing to cover themselves.</p>

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<p>When was this once that you asked your mom? I’d ask again. Many families’ finances are changing rapidly these days, often for the worse. Are you a rising senior? Now is the time to sit down and get the financial situation fully understood by you and your parents. If your folks truly can afford $20K per year, you should have a lot of good options with your stats.</p>

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<p>Your in state school is UVA and you’re not sure what to do? UVA is such a good school that people pay out of state tuition to go there.</p>

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<p>“If this student is likely to be accepted to John Hopkins and or Vandy, going to a CC is a big waste of time…sorry…There wouldn’t be a student ,and likley teacher,at a CC that could carry his laptop,let alone challenge him”</p>

<p>Many of our local CCs have transfer agreements with state schools for medical programs. All you’re doing at the CC is pretty much general education classes. You’re right though, it’s a completely brilliant idea to pay $20K a year (or even a semester!) to take math and science 101. </p>

<p>The costs of medical school are so severe that you’ll be wanting to save money everywhere you can. Saving on general eduction is usually a very smart place to begin. I’m not saying a CC is the right choice for you, but you should be looking at places that you know you will be able to afford for 4 years.</p>

<p>“One of the reasons that CC grad rates are low is that they take pretty much anyone who wants to attend.”</p>

<p>Actually a lot of students don’t go to a CC with the intent to graduate. Many go just to get general education classes over with, and they just take those classes and transfer. Others go just to take a class or two that they’re interested with.</p>

<p>If you’re smart enough to get into a private school then that’s fantastic! But you still have to be able to afford to go. You want to be realistic about this because otherwise you might be spending much of your life after graduation miserable with debt. We might even be reading about you in one of these “I graduated with $200K in debt and I have no clue how I got here!” articles. You don’t want to be that person!</p>

<p>Oh, and OP, I totally think it’s awesome that you’re so concerned about your parents. You even mentioned that your sister will be going to school and that you were worried about that. It’s great that even though your parents are willing to give you a lot of money for school that you’re not going to completely take advantage of them.</p>

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<p>I stand by what i said…CC is a waste for this student…As others noted above,the OP will be hardpressed to be challenged by peers and teachers,and hardpressed might be a generous word…For the most part, CC’ers are not particularly driven,few finish the 2 year program,and of those that do,even fewer transfer to a 4 year institution,taking advantage of the program you note…</p>

<p>And the state school UVA is significantly better then most CC’s…So the Op does have a very solid safety</p>

<p>"At least CC are smart enough to not graduate from an undergrad school with $100K in debt! "
Most cc’ers can only dream of Hopkins/Vandy</p>

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<p>Rather moot, since it doesn’t appear OP will consider CC’s as he considers them beneath him. It did allow our D to get a LOT of GEs out of the way, so she could focus on the courses that her dream private U are world-famous for rather than having to take basics there. I’m glad she saved us & herself over $75K by the 3 semesters she took there!</p>

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<p>I have no problem with saying that the smartest choice for the OP might not be a CC because UVA sounds like it might be a great choice for them, if they wanted that. But I’m just saying that when I hear:</p>

<p>“For the most part, CC’ers are not particularly driven,few finish the 2 year program,and of those that do,even fewer transfer to a 4 year institution,taking advantage of the program you note…”</p>

<p>I find that insulting. A lot of the students I’ve met in community college are the most driven people I know. These are people who are fighting the odds. They’re poor and can’t afford a 4-year school. They’re parents who work full-time but still want a degree. Most of the students I knew worked full-time to afford school and really knew the value of an education. For most of us, being given $20K a year for school is a fantasy. A lot of us our paying for our own education so we have to take the realistic option, and for many students and families saving $80K (tuition is $40K/year at Vandy! That’s only tuition!) for the first two years of school sounds amazing.</p>

<p>“Most cc’ers can only dream of Hopkins/Vandy”</p>

<p>Most people period would only dream of Vandy because $40K a year <em>just for tuition</em> is a little much to most of us. If you can afford it then that’s great, but please don’t insult people because they can’t pay $160K in tuition costs for an undergraduate degree.</p>

<p>To the OP: UVA sounds like it might be a great option. Vandy is an amazing school, but it’s also an amazingly expensive school. You should do tours of UVA and other colleges in your state & surrounding states. You might find somewhere completely unexpected and fall in love with it :)</p>

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<p>If you can get GE credits for CC & then transfer to UVA, you could save the money that would have been paid for UVA those 1st years when you get GEs to apply toward your med school or whatever else you might need down the road (e.g. so you can do internships as volunteer instead of having to work all the time, making you more attractive to med schools). I agree that it would be good to sit down & talk to BOTH parents realistically about what the family can contribute toward YOUR schooling as well as your sibblings–undergrad & med school before you chart your path.</p>

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<p>qdogpa -</p>

<p>ipepper94 would be a competitive applicant for at least one of the honors programs at Happykid’s CC. If ipepper94 made the cut, he/she would be in a selective honors program with a full-ride scholarship and nearly every bell and whistle you can imagine, and would be groomed for transfer (with as close to a full-ride as possible) into a top 4-year institution. Maybe our CC is unique because of our local population base. Not knowing ipepper94’s CC options, I can’t speak to them. But, if they are like ours, they are worth considering.</p>

<p>ipepper94 -</p>

<p>Here are some useful links for you. Read through the first one to see if you can find any good matches for yourself, and read through the other two for good ideas on how to track down merit-based aid. In the end, if ODU is what you can afford, and you want to go to med school, then go to ODU, do your level best to get the best grades and MCAT score possible, and don’t look back. It isn’t necessary to have a “name brand” or “private school” degree to get into med school.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Glad to hear CC works for you,and your situation …That said,CC for this student makes little sense…Can’t speak for all CC’s,but those i know don’t have the caliber student or anywhere near him/her…And i’d bet that if this student met with an advisor,they’d be honest enough to say go elsewhere…</p>

<p>As i said prior,CC’s fill a need,but buyer beware…</p>

<p>Here is an excerpt on an article"</p>

<p>The graduation problem isn’t generally evident at elite colleges and universities, both private and public, whose graduation rates are comparatively high. It’s concentrated at community colleges and lower-tier public universities, which enroll most of America’s students. Such institutions increasingly serve the fastest-growing segment of American college enrollment: low-income, nonwhite, non-native-English-speaking students who are the first in their families to go to college.</p>

<p>Community colleges enroll much higher percentages of students who work full or part time and are considered at risk for dropping out—and who are also more likely to have children at home and have interrupted their education, in some cases for years.</p>

<p>In addition, the vast majority arrive unprepared for college-level work, with 60 percent or more steered into remedial education, according to Thomas Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.</p>

<p>“They don’t have money, they’re working, they’re the people who are least likely to afford the tuition increases,” says Stan Jones,* president of Complete College America, a national nonprofit working to increase the number of Americans with a college degree or credential. “We have a lot of work to do so that we don’t fail them.”</p>

<p>Here is the link:
[Hechinger</a> Report | New efforts to raise U.S. college graduation rates](<a href=“http://hechingerreport.org/content/new-efforts-to-raise-u-s-graduation-rates_5955/comment-page-1/]Hechinger”>http://hechingerreport.org/content/new-efforts-to-raise-u-s-graduation-rates_5955/comment-page-1/)</p>

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<p>One of my close friends took most of her premed courses at a community college. Got into medical school and is now a physician. I would not put my nose up at community colleges. They come in all kinds of qualities. </p>

<p>Personally, I don’t think schools like JHU are the best places to go for the best chance to get into med school. The word “cut throat” comes to mind. Schools with so many premed, all with high abilities end up going through a gauntlet of sorts. The school ends up gatekeeping instead of promoting every single premed wanna be. The med school accept stats are calculated using only those kids who end up applying to medical school. Some schools “pre select” who gets their recs and can use their premed rec services, so of course the accept stats are high. Hopkins does this. </p>

<p>Also, with managed care and the direction health care is going, I would think long and hard about taking out a lot of debt for undergrad when you know you will have to borrow for medical school. That’s a long stretch there. With your parents’ income where it is, you may not get much financial aid, from some of these high cost schools. You are going to be struggling financially for a long time if becoming a doctor is your goal, so you may want to make a good effort in keeping ug costs down.</p>

<p>How much are your parents able to comfortably afford? Work on getting into schools that are less than that amount and see if they can put some money away for you for med school as well. My friend did that for their daughter and grad school. It’s really going to make life a lot easier for her to have that $5K a year breathing room and no loans from ug. Not a huge amount, but can make all the difference in the world. </p>

<p>Look for schools where your stats will make you a prized catch and where there are merit scholarships where you have a realistic chance of snagging one. Pitt is such a school. Look at your state school. Some of the small Catholic schools have some nice awards. Vanderbilt is often generous to families at higher income ranges than many PROFILE schools it seems, so give it a whirl. You should throw some schools in the mix where just maybe you can get something, but make sure you have some good solid financial safeties.</p>

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<p>Well once again, thank you for the responses everyone, I’m really starting to get an eye opening onto the whole realities of finance and how student loans really may not be the best idea. I thought I’d add some additional info though. Using a pretty detailed EFC calculator, my family’s EFC came out to be $42,220 a year. The value came mainly from the large amount of mutual funds/bonds/etc. that we have (200k in value). From what I understand with Vandy, they guarantee 100% of demonstrated need. Does this mean I’d be guaranteed to get at least $16,000 in need-based aid if I get accepted. Also, I’m a little leary about that figure for the EFC. I know that’s what’ll get sent to the college. I’m no finance expert, but aren’t mutual funds not able to be withdrawn to be used for college payment?</p>

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<p>The 16,000 figure came from subtracting the EFC from Vandy’s estimated COA. I really am surprised by the figure though, if it’s true then I probably could end up at UVA with little stress on my family if it really comes to that. But still though, I don’t see how they can dole out that much straight out of pocket unless that 200k in mutual funds in such is useful for that purpose.</p>

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<p>Unless the mutual funds are held in a retirement account, they are ‘useable assets’</p>

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<p>Does your calculator replicate the function of a CSS Profile or is it just a FAFSA estimator? Vanderbilt uses both at the same time.</p>

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<p>If you used the Institutional Method for FAFSA I think it should be a close estimate.</p>

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<p>In my daughter’s experience, a couple of years ago, private colleges and OOS publics expected us to pay about $10,000 a year more than our FAFSA EFC. Your mileage may vary, as they say.</p>

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<p>Warning: Some/many schools consider LOANS to be FAid, so not sure about whether the ones you’re looking at do so or not. This means that they can give you $16K of LOANS and say they met your need, even tho you or your family will have to pay it all back, ON TOP of whatever you need for med school. </p>

<p>Some schools offer a better package for freshmen & than make more of it loan for the subsequent years you’re at their U. Best to check that out as well, so you aren’t disappointed.</p>

<p>Also, mutual funds can be withdrawn at any time for any reason by whomever owns them. It’s like buying a basket of stocks and/or securities. Your folks may need these assets for other purposes, retirement, sibblings, medical needs, etc., but if the family has them, they are considered in calculating FAFSA and other potential need-based loans/grants.</p>

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<p>You are not guaranteed to get that much in grants even at a needs met school. No one knows what vandy is going to determine. That 16 number does not get sent to schools for css profile.</p>