<p>Does your $50,000 a year college use the CSS Profile or a school form in addition to the FAFSA? If so, you need to find out if the school uses home equity in the need based financial aid calculation, and how.</p>
<p>The other thing you need to know…eligibility for need based aid is largely based on income. You maybe going through these financial gymnastics for no net gain…depending on your family income. That income is the main driver in the financial aid calculation.</p>
<p>Agree with thumper1’s points. Also, your parents may lose an income tax deduction for the interest paid on their mortgage.</p>
<p>Schools vary widely by how many students get merit aid at all. There aren’t too many schools where all students over certain stats get merit aid. Look at the automatic scholarship pinned thread at the top of this forum for colleges that spell it out. For most colleges, only a few people get merit aid. It is a guessing game whether you will get any or not. Someone posted a comprehensive list recently of colleges that give the most merit aid.</p>
<p>Also for some colleges are going to want to see demonstrated interest in their school before they are going to give you aid, or even accept you, even if your stats are high.</p>
<p>Many schools,that give merit scholarships do NOT give them to all students in that top 25%'of admitted students. Think of it this way…that would mean that 25% of all admitted students would receive merit awards. Most schools don’t have that amount of money dedicated to merit awards. These awards are selectively given to SOME students who the school really desires to have enroll.</p>
<p>Now there are some schools with guaranteed merit awards based on your SAT/ACT and GPA scores. If a school guarantees such merit awards, all students within that criteria will bet the award.</p>
<p>You need to check each college. If they don’t guarantee the scholarship award based on stats, there is no guarantee you will receive an award in any amount.</p>
<p>Depending on the effort it takes, the amount of the scholarship, and the chances of receiving the award, it can definitely be worth it to apply for small scholarships. I applied for quite a few small scholarships throught my high school, and because there was a lot of similarity, I could end up re-working essays for a lot of them and simplify the process. Most of them weren’t a lot of money, but a few hundred dollars is still nothing to laugh at, and I got a couple thousand dollars this way.
Also keep an eye out for some local scholarships that you may be a really goot candidate for. I applied for a scholarship from my church, and since there weren’t many high schoolers in the congregation, I knew I stood a good chance. I ended up getting a $2,000 a year, 4 year scholarship.
Yes, a lot of the time these small scholarships pale in comparison to the total cost, but if you focus your efforts, it can be worth it.</p>
<p>Some schools will let you keep outside monies, as long as your total awards don’t exceed COA and you’re not the policies for receiving need-based aid. In other words, if you award is all merit or you’ve been gapped (and most of us will be). Those smaller scholarships, even if only for a year, can be worth the effort. What’s dangerous is assuming one can get enough outside scholarships to substantially reduce college costs. That is rare.</p>
<p>Are there websites you can sign up to in order to receive Scholarship notifications?</p>
<p>Can you guys mention some of the FA/how to pay for college must read books.</p>
<p>Moderator’s note:</p>
<p>One person should not be monopolizing the forum by opening many threads. You should ask the questions in one thread that you already started.</p>
<p>Bella…</p>
<p>It sounds like your family won’t qualify for the need-based aid that you need/want. </p>
<p>Private scholarships aren’t likely going to work because the ones that provide aid for 4 years are ones for low income students.</p>
<p>You need to find out how much your parents will pay each year, and then find colleges that will give you merit awards for the rest of what you need.</p>
<p>Start by reading the FA FAQs and FA Resource Thread stickied at the top of this forum.</p>
<p>As an accountant this type of thinking makes me shudder…</p>
<p>“Also, your parents may lose an income tax deduction for the interest paid on their mortgage.”</p>
<p>The mortgage interest ONLY, not the whole mortgage payment is subtracted from income along with other itemized deductions. Say your mortgage interest is $5000 and you are in the 28% tax bracket. Your potential tax savings would be $1400. In reality, after accounting for the amount of your itemized deduction that you use to exceed the standard deduction, you may not even have a full $5000 overage and will not get the benefit of the entire $5000. If you have liquid assets to pay off a mortgage, there may be several arguments for not paying it off, but tax savings should not be one of them. Why would anyone find it sensible to continue paying mortgage interest simply to get a percentage of it as a tax discount?</p>
<p>
No, all top 25% will not get the same scholarship. Usually there are several levels of scholarships with the students with the higher stats getting better scholarships. For instance, ACT/SAT scholarships at my daughter’s school ranged from partial tuition waivers, to full tuition waivers, to full tuition waivers plus some cash (the one she got), to full tuition waivers and a few thousand more in cash (she missed this by 1 ACT point), to basically a full ride (national merit). There was a HUGE $$$ difference between the lower range scholarships and the higher.</p>
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<p>Sorry to make you shudder, planner03, but I’m not sure what I said wrong. I said they <em>may</em> lose a deduction for the <em>interest</em>, which I’m pretty sure is what you said. Since the OP was asking about whether or not to pay off the mortgage <em>to reduce their assets for FA purposes</em>, I thought I should point out that there may be other financial consequences that should be folded in to any such calculation. Is that wrong? Should they ignore this possible effect when evaluating whether or not to do this?</p>
<p>Not even considering FA, let’s say I had a 3% mortgage as well as money stashed away earning 3% in investment income. If I use the assets to pay off the mortgage, then I stop earning 3% on those assets, but I stop paying (3-x)% on the mortgage (where x is the effective reduction in interest rate due to income tax deduction). If x is 0, then no big deal. But if x is non-zero, then it’s not so clear what the best move is.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems like a factor to consider.</p>
<p>yotommy…
Yes you did specify interest, and although I quoted you I really didn’t mean to single you out and that’s why I didn’t use your name. Sorry, I should have just paraphrased to make my point. I have just heard people say so many times that they want to keep a mortgage because it lowers their taxes and they don’t seem to get the concept, (referring back to my previous post) that although they are saving $1400 in taxes it is only because they are paying out $5000 in interest in exchange. You seem to understand that, but you would be shocked with how many people genuinely think mortgages are a good idea for that reason.
As I said, there are many other considerations that do make some logical arguments for not paying off a mortgage. If you have a super low rate, and can make considerably more on investments then that is a good reason. Most of the FA gurus do say to pay off a mortgage and any other debts to decrease assets, but I suppose that can back fire in other ways too if that leaves you with no money to pay for college…and then you have to turn around and take out a home equity loan!</p>
<p>So I searched 4 yr large, selective colleges with Find colleges by average net price what the average student pays less than $15K, $20K in 400 miles radius and about 70 colleges returned in search for a Major in Business. </p>
<p>I was surprised, I thought you have to pay lot more than that , some of them were state colleges but there were also schools like Boston college, Boston University, Carnegie Melon, American University, NYU, Northeastern, Boston etc. </p>
<p>Is it truly possible to go to one of the good college in $15K, $20K out of pocket expenses? </p>
<p>Mind you this is what average student pays not necessarily the top 25%.</p>
<p>When they are saying “average”…they are talking about the number of students receiving this aid…not the academic qualifications of the students. “the average student aid is$___” refers to the average dollars in aid…to the average number of students.</p>
<p>I think you are misinterpreting what was written.</p>
<p>Is it POSSIBLE to attend with this net price…? Sure it is possible.</p>
<p>For YOUR specific estimate, you need to run the net price calculator for each of these schools using YOUR family’s financial information.</p>
<p>Anything else is just guessing.</p>
<p>By what Average student pays - I would interpret that as Some will pay more than X dollars, some will pay less than X dollars, average price being X dollars per annum. You are right that doesn’t tell you what would be your price. As some may be paying 10% of sticker, some 30% sticker, some sticker price. This what average student pays is quite misleading.</p>
<p>Searching by average net price is useless. Don’t do that.</p>
<p>To find readily affordable options, subtract $12k for housing and meals from what you can afford, and then use the figure that remains to search by cost of tuition and fees. Remember to check the box for out-of-state if you are looking outside your home state.</p>
<p>For everything else, pick the place, run the NPC and see if it might work for you.</p>
<p>Thanks happymom</p>
<p>If you search by the way you recommend, wouldn’t it leave out good colleges whose sticker price may be high but depending upon the aid they give you, your COA/net price could be much lower.</p>
<p>If you search by the way you recommend, then the search will return hits with colleges whose tution is less than what you can afford but it scholarship won’t be factored in.</p>