Rice fails to equal williams and Carleton on demonstrated need

Paying for College
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<p>*And no, undergraduate institution won’t matter to someone with a graduate degree.
CC myth alert!! CC myth alert!!</p>

<p>I’m so sick of seeing this here, because it’s just not true. The right answer is: it depends. *</p>

<p>Well…the “it depends” only depends on very few degrees…for instance: for a finance/econ major for who wants to work on Wall Street. There is some old-school thought process that elite undergrad/grad is necessary to work at GS and others. </p>

<p>There are few, few, few careers that give a rat’s patootie about where a person went to undergrad if his terminal degree is from a top school. </p>

<p>For engineering, it doesn’t matter at all, unless the undergrad is sub-standard that getting accepted to a good grad school is unlikely.</p>

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<p>The important thing in finance is where you get your MBA. In some places they will take an MIT quant with an undergrad, but, quite frankly, if an top engineering student from a state flagship were to apply, they’d be considered as well. They don’t tend to apply.</p>

<p>You aren’t going anywhere at GS, or Morgan, or BA without a law or MBA degree. Undergrad degrees are important only in terms of GPA. Get a good GPA. Which can be done nearly anywhere but Princeton and Berkeley.</p>

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<p>It is a Williams work study. It definitely was confusing to me how williams, carleton and rice interpret our family’s need based on the css and fafsa.</p>

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<p>Williams is an excellent school.</p>

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<p>Shell, your post is very confusing to others who might read it, because you are using some words to mean something different than what is ordinarily meant in terms of discussing financial aid. </p>

<p>The word “gap” is usually meant to mean the amount that a college expects a family to pay after providing financial aid.</p>

<p>So if your EFC is $50K – and a college expects you to pay $47K - there is no “gap”. That college has simply determined you ineligible for aid and expects you to pay your full EFC.</p>

<p>If your EFC is $50K and a college expects you to pay $37K and is giving you $18K with a combination of loan, work-study, and grant – again, there is no “gap”. That is meeting full need, and the college has simply determined your need in a way that is more generous than FAFSA – for whatever reason, they have decided that your family is able to pay $37K and they are providing need-based aid for the balance.</p>

<p>Now, if your EFC was $20K instead of $50K, and a college that cost the same as Williams ($55K) but did not promise to meed full need was giving you $18K of need based aid, then there would be a “gap” of $17K – the amount beyond your EFC for which you received no aid.</p>

<p>I do not mean to criticize you in any way and I understand your frustration completely – both my kids had to walk away from their top choice schools because of insufficient aid – but the problem is that you could inadvertently mislead other parents by referring to a generous aid award as a “gap”. </p>

<p>A “gap” is not something “filled” by college financial aid. Rather, the term “gap” is used to mean the empty hole that is left after you account for the family EFC and all of the aid awarded by the college. </p>

<p>Anyway – I wish your family the best of luck. If your FAFSA EFC is $50K and Williams has offered enough need based aid to reduce your family contribution to $37K, then they are being extremely generous and it is important for other, future applicants to know that (at least anecdotally), Williams can be very generous to families whose EFC’s seem to make them ineligible for aid.</p>

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<p>Re post #63:

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<p>If your FAFSA EFC is $50K and Williams has determined your need to be $37K – it is essential that you discuss with Williams financial aid how they made that determination before enrolling. Obviously that is not an “appeal” – but rather the discussion should be framed as you wanting to know what is likely to happen in future years. </p>

<p>The potential problem - for you – is that Williams may have taken some factor into account that will not apply in future years – something they picked up from the CSS Profile form or reviewing your tax records – and you could opt for Williams’ very generous offer this year, and then turn around and next year find that without that special, extra consideration, you no longer qualify for need based aid and are paying full tuition. </p>

<p>Since Williams seems to have an overall COA that is higher than Rice, that could mean that you pay less in year #1 and more in subsequent years. </p>

<p>On the other hand, it may be a factor that will hold up all 4 years – for example, Williams may be considering a family expense that is continuous, such as the cost to send younger siblings to private school. But it is very important that you know and understand how the calculation is being made.</p>

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<p>shelldemeo - Is your FAFSA EFC $50K, as you said in a recent post, or $40k, as you stated in your OP?
I can see how PJ adjustments by Williams might bring your EFC down by $3K, but it’s hard to see how they could decrease your EFC by $13K, unless you have some unusual family circumstances - huge medical or elder care expenses, complicated family businesses or rental property, etc.
(kind of echoing what calmom said in her posts above - and hoping to clarify what the FAFSA EFC actually is…)</p>

<p>And the job - is it funded by Williams funds, or is it Federal Work-study?</p>

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<p>You may be correct in general, but I believe that “it depends” really does apply more often than you do. Especially with the following statement, I believe you go astray:</p>

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<p>First of all, let me acknowledge that mom2ck has a wealth of knowledge about a variety of topics, with particular expertise on financial aid and similar issues. Her advice is very good in general, and I hate to be in the position of contradicting her. But some of the statements that I read here regarding sci/tech/engineering (salaries, opportunities, grad vs. undergrad, etc.) don’t at all fit with my experience, and I’d like to offer different opinions. I’m well into a varied engineering career, involving a number of cities/regions/positions/established companies/startups/capacities/roles/experiences, with many contacts in related fields, and I’ve come to quite different conclusions. So maybe I’ve got some credibility when I say that this is CC mythology, and maybe not; I certainly don’t have a massive post count.</p>

<p>Undergrad engineering programs do matter, even with a PhD, and they matter especially when they are very strong. In fact, there are sci/tech/eng UG programs that are so substantial as to be flat out more desirable than pure PhD’s from top schools for a working engineer - and the salaries, opportunities and range of offers reflect that. Comparing an average/unrelated undergrad plus a very strong PhD with a strong undergrad/no PhD, some doors close and others open in both directions. And some of the the doors that aren’t open to the PhD w/o the strong undergrad are very excellent doors. The undergrad degree matters greatly, even with the PhD.</p>

<p>The sci/tech/engineering PhD is often only an entry into academia or research, but without the strong undergraduate core, the base competence in practical skills is often missing - even for PhD’s from top schools. For that reason, the PhD could be less valuable for employment in general (as it represents a tougher match); the fact is that undergrad is where the broad base of working skills are developed, and especially so in the very excellent UG programs. There are employers that will pay very well for those skills; they know these programs, they watch them carefully, and they’re not interested in other programs. Great opportunities arise for undergrads at top-notch engineering programs, whereas PhDs from those same schools (w/o equivalent undergrad skills) need to find a much finer fit.</p>

<p>Those are facts in my own experience. You’ll need to do your own research, ask the right questions, and get to the truth.</p>

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<p>The problem with trying to make a prospective degree => employment analysis is that it is impossible to foresee the future – and the biggest myth of all is the idea that people who start out on a weaker footing academically are doomed to a life of underemployment and rejection. In fact if you were to look at the resumes of long-term employees at any company or agency, you would find that they come from very diverse backgrounds. Of course it is always valuable to have something attention-grabbing in a resume, and an engineer who graduated from Podunk U. is naturally going to rely more on demonstrated ability through work experience than the name of his university in order to get that attention. </p>

<p>But when choosing a college, I think that if you look at anything other than whether X college will provide the student with a good fit and a strong educational foundation for the rest of his life, you are on shaky grounds. How many kids enter a college with that idea in mind, and then a year into their studies have decided to change majors, or stick it through but find that they are at the bottom of the curve in their classes and graduate with a weak GPA and correspondingly weaker prospects for the future? </p>

<p>You don’t know and you can’t know where your kid will end up along that spectrum. </p>

<p>Obviously if the kid goes to college A vs. college B, down the line their paths through life may be different because of that choice. But you can’t know at the time you make the choice how it will be different - and it may very well be that the choice that seems “weaker” at the outset ends up being the one that presents more opportunities along the way. Just because life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.</p>

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<p>I apologize if I am confusing others as I am confused by our two different school’s assessment.</p>

<p>My EFC on the fafsa has bounced around as colleges have gone in and edited it. It has bounced from around 40 to 50, etc. I have no idea about the CSS and how each school weighs it.</p>

<p>I am going to call Rice and Williams and ask what they have my family contribution as being. My husband was laid off during that year and took a new job at a lower income so perhaps they took that into consideration? I have no idea. </p>

<p>Williams has a very straightforward and helpful award letter.</p>

<p>I can state what it says:</p>

<p>“Resources”
parents: 36809
student income: 1500
student assets: 498</p>

<p>Total Resources: 38,807</p>

<p>“Budget”
tuition and fees, 43,190
Room and board, 11370
Books 800
Personal 1200
Travel 100</p>

<p>Total Budget: 56660</p>

<p>need (total budget) less total resources: 17,853</p>

<p>This was met by:</p>

<p>Williams scholarship, 11253.00
Williams book grant: 800 (or whatever the books will cost)
federal direct stafford unsub 4,000
campus employment: 1800 (7 to 10 hours a week)</p>

<p>total financial aid: 17,853</p>

<p>Rice is basically going on Esther (the online portal for rice) it says: No award.</p>

<p>The amount for Rice attendance is 47,170</p>

<p>Does this help clear things up?</p>

<p>Since that time, Rice has come back and offered my son 1500k in a rice grant, and 4k in loans. They recommend Rice Works but do not put it in the package.</p>

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<p>MisterK…</p>

<p>My H and I come from VERY LARGE families that consist mostly of engineering, physics, comp engineering, and math majors. Only a small number went to top schools for their undergrads. Most went to their state schools (think CSU Fullerton, UCI, Cal Poly Pomona, Iowa St, Purdue, Colorado Mines, etc) or to good privates like LMU and SLU. All who chose to pursue grad schools were admitted to top schools. No one cared that their undergrads weren’t elite schools. It mattered that their GREs, GPAs, LORs, etc, were strong. </p>

<p>As I alluded to above, the student’s undergrad must offer a qualified/respectable/accredited program…otherwise, their grades would be rather meaningless and likely GRE scores would not be strong. </p>

<p>As I’ve mention on other threads, my own son has just gone thru the PhD app process so I know that this is still true.</p>

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<p>mom2ck - Please, let’s simply agree not to state these opinions as facts. “It depends” really is the correct (and the middle ground) answer, and it would be wrong to mislead the young folks here with overgeneralization.</p>

<p>We’ve had different experiences, and we may be describing different parts of the elephant. Each of us has seen things that the other has not.</p>

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<p>So what is the actual difference between Rice and Williams?</p>

<p>Williams – 4K loan and out of pocket: $38807 AND Student’s work study: $1800</p>

<p>Rice – 4K loan and out of pocket (47170 less 4K loan and $1500 grant): $41670 </p>

<p>I assume Rice Works is some type of student job on campus?</p>

<p>Anywho, $41670 - $38807 = difference between Rice and Williams </p>

<p>About $2800 a year.</p>

<p>Do you/will you qualify for the educational tax credit on your taxes? That might defray the</p>

<p>$2800.</p>

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<p>mom4college: Does that tax credit have an income level phase out? He is my first to attend college so not sure.</p>

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<p>Speaking of tuition tax credits----I have a question. Since this is my first time out and I haven’t had to deal with this before, I am confused about the tuition and fee credit (form 8917) line 34 and the American opportunity credit from Form 8863 line 66 on the 1040 (referring to the 2010 form). Can one claim both? Then there is the issue of the 529 double dipping which was discussed on other posts. It seems that if I pay for college with a certain amount of money not from our 529 (is it $4000; married filling together), then I can claim some kind of credit on our 1040 and still contribute to the 529 and get our state tax credit.</p>

<p>Even though my d has not decided where she is going to college, I’m looking ahead and trying to project our income/expenses = EFC for next year.</p>

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<p>upstatemom, I’m not a tax expert but I know that you can never double-dip. That is, if you have qualified educational expenses of $10,000 and you pay $5000 of that from a 529… then for any other credit or deduction, you’ve only got $5000 of expense to claim. </p>

<p>It’s difficult to plan because specific provisions change from year to year, and also some benefits phase out at depending on family income. If you use a software program to do your taxes, then usually it will ask the information and the software will figure the most advantageous way to apply or deduct whatever is available.</p>

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<p>Shell, the “total resources” in Williams award is their phrase for how they define your EFC. It looks like with your husband’s unemployment, Williams made a p.j. adjustment – and Rice won’t do the same.</p>

<p>I don’t really see a big difference between the awards.</p>

<p>If you leave aside the grants and campus job for, then Rice wanted you to pay $47,200 and Williams wants you to pay $44,600. But you say Rice has now offered a $1500 grant – that will bring down’ Rice’s price to $45,700 – only $1100 more than Williams. </p>

<p>I’m leaving out loans for the moment because (a) your son is entitled to the same unsubsidized Stafford at either school, and (b) a loan is money YOU (or your son) pay. Colleges use loans to “meet need” – but in the end a loan costs the borrower more-- there’s a loan origination fee + interest. </p>

<p>And I’m leaving out the campus jobs because that is money your son has to earn, not cash up front. When I compare aid awards I never look at jobs/work-study because I just can’t see the offer of a paid job as being a gift. In any case, it never impacted my parental out of pocket because I didn’t give my kids’ allowances, so I just saw their work-study or campus jobs as their source of spending money at college.</p>

<p>Another way to look at the award is to take the books & incidentals (like travel) out of the picture for a moment, because that’s either going to cost the same at just about any college, or the difference is something that you can figure out better than the college. For example the college may give you a certain allotment for travel, but you might pay more if your son comes home more frequently, or less if he uses a cheaper form of transportation to get home. </p>

<p>So Williams is $43,190 tuition & fees, + $11,370 room & board
Rice (from their web site) is $33,771 tuition & fees + $11,750 room & board.</p>

<p>I’m going to toss out the room & board as being roughly equivalent and do some rounding -
I’ve got Williams tuition = $43,200, Rice tuition = $33,800</p>

<p>So you are looking at Williams as being the better offer, because they have given you that nice fat grant – but bottom line there’s only a very small cost differential for the first year. And what is going to happen after the first year? </p>

<p>Does your husband have a job now? Is 2011 income going to be the same as or more than 2010 income? I’m thinking that it looks like Williams is going to be more sympathetic than Rice when it comes to any financial hardship your family faces over the next 3 years – but if things improve for you financially, Rice is likely to be the less expensive college over all 4 years. Because you can’t be sure what your need-based aid will be in the future, but it’s a pretty good bet that Rice’s tuition is going to continue to be roughly $10K a year less than Williams. </p>

<p>To put it a different way – the Williams “scholarship” your son was given just about covers the difference in tuition between the two schools – but Rice is the less expensive school. </p>

<p>I know my post is probably giving you a huge headache – but you have to look at the bottom line. If your family income goes up over the next 4 years, Rice is going to be the less expensive option. If income goes down… probably Williams will end up costing less.</p>

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<p>@Shell: Here is some IRS info about education credits:</p>

<p>[Tax</a> Benefits for Education: Information Center](<a href=“http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=213044,00.html]Tax”>http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=213044,00.html)</p>

<p>Personally, if the difference is either $1000 or $2800, I would opt for the kid’s first choice and figure out a way to make up the extra. </p>

<p>You know, I have always heard about Rice…and I never heard of Williams until two yrs ago</p>

<p>when my D’s best friend applied there. For me, it would be worth it to pay a bit extra for </p>

<p>the kid’s first choice AND for a school that has name recognition to more people.</p>

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<p>Contributions to 529 plans are taxed, but not the interest. My understanding is that interest or dividends accrued can’t be used towards the tax credit. Am I wrong?</p>

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<p>Calmom- “if you have qualified educational expenses of $10,000 and you pay $5000 of that from a 529… then for any other credit or deduction, you’ve only got $5000 of expense to claim.” That’s exactly what I meant and thanks for confirming my thoughts; sorry I was a little confusing.</p>

<p>And beautiful analysis of shell’s school/aid issue. I have used a similar system when analyzing my d’s packages–I took out the book, travel, personal equation first for exactly your same reasons. The unsub loans go and I set the work/study off to the side as well. I also looked at who gave her the most loans overall and whether or not the school “meets need.” </p>

<p>One of her colleges that is $3100 lower in costs (tuition/room/board) and gave her a nice merit scholarship is actually only about $600 cheaper than one of her “meets needs” schools that gave her a grant when I take out the loan and work study issue. I also feel that with the “meets needs” school, I can project our costs better. That school has told me they figure aid over a 4 year period so with all things being equal, we can expect the same kind of aid/COA in the future. The “cheaper” school can’t.</p>