@nynycasino1234 Yes, I am a rising senior at a residential stem high school (boarding school). It’s public though, so it’s nowhere near as expensive as my college tuition would be.
@compmom My parents income is about $300,000, I feel like a lot of the inconsistencies are from their unusual assets. I’ll make sure to talk to them though, even though they’ve been avoiding the conversation it’s important for us to be on the same page.
@jym626 I think so, but I think their assets are inflating our EFC
@MazeArtCrew Thank you so much for your advice! I’ll definitely look into UX design. I love the idea of going to art school or getting a design degree but my parents are worried about me being a “starving artist”, though I’m sure I’d be able to sell this to them somehow
@Proudpatriot Thank you!
Parents avoid this conversation when they feel sad/guilty/bad. They want to afford college, they think college is important, they know they make “good” money, and yet…
Only with knowledge can you make a plan that works for everyone.
@happymomof1 Thank you so much, I hadn’t thought about it like that.
@am9799 I feel like my parents are in the second category. I’ve always been really confused about where we stand financially that I’m probably not viewing their tax returns the way other people would. I’m associating their tax bracket with the lifestyle we’ve been living (which might be below our needs) and in the context of the external costs that their income is funneled into (my brother, sister’s tuition, family abroad, etc). Thank you for your advice, it’s clear now that I’m going to have to convince my parents to talk to me about the nuances of our financial situation so that we’ll be on the same page. I really appreciate it!
@blossom I can’t say my state options by name for the sake of privacy (there’s only one high school like mine in my state). But it’s a huge football school in the deep south. I didn’t know it was widely respected until I joined CC (but it makes sense because of their athletic reputation). There’s also a few privates here, but I’m not sure they’d offer the best fit (partially because of my state’s culture).
@Wien2NC I qualify for automatic full rides at my state school, Howard, and Spelman. I hadn’t looked into many others because I only loosely understood the importance of having financial safeties, but my profile fits competitive full tuition merit scholarships at Duke, NYU, and USC. A few minority students from my school got accepted to a diversity scholarship at Vanderbilt, so I’ll look into that too.
To everyone that’s replied - thank you all sooo much for your advice. I can’t even explain how much better you’ve all made me feel about my situation. Even though I’d only planned on applying to 6 schools this cycle, I realize now that in order to minimize the possibility of ending up in a compromising financial situation I’ll definitely have to apply to a lot more. I really appreciate all of your help!
@TempeMom Exactly! I don’t think we can avoid this conversation any longer (and I wish we could’ve had it much earlier). Because it’s so touchy, I’m going to make sure that they know that no matter what, I don’t blame them at all and that regardless of how this situation shakes out, I’ll be okay.
@nynycasino1234 Because my high school is public, the tuition is free. My parents only pay a ~$1000 activity fee. I feel like in this situation, it’s more likely for my parents to be unable to afford paying full price than otherwise. Even though the NPC rounds out their contributions to 60k, we’re still only upper middle class. They may appear to be wealthy on paper, but realistically there’s no way that they’re going to be able to write a check for 240k, even if it’s over the course of 4 years, especially considering our situation, but I’m still going to talk to them so that I know for sure. We do have health insurance, but his medications are expensive and I think we’re still required to pay half for all of my brother’s treatments. Sadly, our insurance doesn’t cover the additional speech and behavioural therapy he attends so my parents have been paying for that out of pocket. Thank you for your insight! I’m going to look into schools that offer merit aid
Did you take the PSAT last year? If so, did you score at or above your states National Merit cut score?
If the answer to both is YES, then there are colleges you SHOULD apply because they award full tuition scholarships to NMSF’s.
Here are lists of colleges that offer National Merit Scholarship, and others that award AUTOMATIC merit scholarships based on SAT scores.
http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/
go over these listings carefully and build your list of colleges to apply to from the bottom up, STARTING with your ‘safety’ colleges- those where you are GUARANTEED acceptance AND which your parents CAN afford to send you.
Bottom line-
What EVER you do , do NOT waste your time applying to ANY college that your parents CAN’T afford to send you to.
That would be pointless.
SOOOOO many students make that mistake each year, and in the end ,its gives them nothing but grief.
You DO have many colleges that you CAN afford to go to.
THAT’S what’s important!
Make sure to ask financial aid offices which assets they count when figuring out EFC and aid itself (which doesn’t always match the NPC’s EFC). Some schools count fewer assets then others. You can include this info in your conversation with parents.
You have great financial safeties already so no matter what, you are going to end up fine. I think all of us here are quite impressed with you 
@zahmata, please do keep us posted as you talk to your parents and decide on your list. We are rooting for you.
Regarding the scholarship lists in reply #45, verify them on the school web sites, because some of them have changed since they were posted in those lists (some of them are smaller than before, or have higher requirements than before).
What part of the country do you live in? What is the cost of living there? $300k plus assets is substantial and it is unlikely, even with a reconsideration on light of your siblings expenses, you’ll get much. If anything.
@menloparkmom I think I’m going to prioritize the competitive merit schools more, and apply to those early (if they have non binding ea), and save the dicier need based FA schools for the RD round so that I don’t end up putting more effort into schools we may not be able to afford. I actually already started my Yale and Stanford applications, but I’ll try to repurpose the supplements for the merit schools (it seems like the competitive ones are all ED unfortunately). I’m cutting schools that we can’t afford at all off of the list entirely (like the UCs, UMich, UNC CH). My PSAT score is bordering on qualifying, so I’m not sure if I’ll get NMSF. I might get commended, but I’m sure that does count for much. Thank you for those links!
@ucbalumnus I’ll make sure to double check everything, thank you for pointing that out!
@compmom Thank you! I’ll definitely reach out to the FA offices if I get accepted to my reach schools. I really wanted to apply ED to Brown, so I’ll call them tomorrow to see if there’s any way we could make it work. I ran the NPC for Stanford and they gave us a lot more aid than HYP did - our EFC there was only about 30k, so that made me a little more hopeful. I really appreciate your advice (:
@GnocchiB I will, thank you! I’m so glad that I made this post, the advice you’ve all given me has helped me out a lot.
UPDATE: I brought the idea of talking about our financial prospects up with my mom, and she encouraged me to ask my dad about it because he handles that sort of thing. I was able to gauge the way my mom felt about the situation though. I explained the difference between merit and need based scholarships to her (and the fact that super selective schools usually only offer need based scholarships) so that she had a better understanding of the situation. She said that she personally didn’t see the purpose of spending upwards of 60k on an undergraduate degree or taking out loans, and that even though it’s a sad situation, we most likely will not be able to afford need only schools. I understand why she feels the way she does - on one hand, the way the education system works where my mom is from most degrees are usually professional or vocational, so you wouldn’t need a degree with a certain “brand name” to be successful or have connections, and on the other, 60k a year is just too much. My parents thought that the scholarships I told them I qualified for at other schools were universal and would be available at other schools as well, and I understand how unlikely it is for me to be able to cover the cost of my degree purely through outside scholarships. The most practical solution to my problem are competitive merit schools, but I’ll still apply to a few selective schools RD to see what happens. If our EFC is 30k less at Stanford, maybe we’d be able to appeal the financial aid at other schools. Again, thank you all so so much for helping me!
@jym626 I live in the southeast near the gulf. The cost of living for my state is below the median value, but it’s more expensive in my area because I live in a college town. Realistically, it’s very unlikely that appealing our financial aid package would yield much of a difference because we’re upper middle class, but I guess it’d be worth trying. We can’t afford our EFC at most of the need schools (excluding Stanford) as it is, so I’m not expecting much. Although I’m going to apply to these schools RD, I’m still going to be realistic and focus more on competitive merit and other things that are within my control.
(if they have non binding ea),
There is no such thing as binding EA.
There is only Binding ED. And ANYONE needing FA/ merit $$ should NOT apply
ED to ANY college.
Applying to colleges that REQUIRE early applications in order to be eligible for Merit consideration [ such as USC, which has a Dec 1 merit scholarship application deadline] will NOT preclude you, in most cases, from applying to an SCEA college early as well.
Double check with the SCEA colleges for their early application rules.
@menloparkmom ED is what I intended to refer to, but I know that I was unclear (although there is the limited restrictive early action/single choice early action that I’ll have to make note of as well). The main reason why I wanted to ED to Brown was to relieve the stress of additional applications, but I know that that’s not possible now. I understood the financial restraints of ED, but unfortunately, I had no knowledge of my parent’s financial situation until two days ago. I have a spreadsheet of the schools I’m applying to plus their deadlines and any additional factors I’ll need to take notice of (separate scholarship application, honors college, etc), and I’m going to continue optimizing it to ensure that I’ll have a decent amount of viable opportunities. Thank you!
You should also research automatic merit schools and apply to your two favorites, giving you a choice if you don’t receive any of the competitive scholarships. Good luck on your journey. You will do well wherever you attend.
@Yankee Belle Thank you!
Agree that it is best to include some automatic large merit scholarship colleges, because the competitive large merit scholarships are often very hard to get (i.e. consider the scholarships to be reaches similar in difficulty to getting admitted to super-selective colleges).
Remember that some large merit scholarships (both automatic and competitive) require early application. Some automatic ones are first come first served, so apply to them as early as possible if interested.
we got OOS scholarships from Ohio State and Michigan State that reduced the COA to about $18K per year. we also tried for the big competitive scholarships for both, but did not win them. if $18K per year is doable, you could likely get similar scholarship packages for a start, and shoot for the same big full-ride scholarships.
http://undergrad.osu.edu/cost-and-aid/merit-based-scholarships
https://admissions.msu.edu/cost-aid/merit-based-aid/freshman/high-achieving.aspx
UNC-CH has the huge Morehead-Cain scholarship so I don’t know if I would rule them out:
http://www.moreheadcain.org/
Utah has a full-tuition scholarship that you could win, and in addition a more competitive full-ride Honors College scholarship.
https://financialaid.utah.edu/types-of-aid/scholarships/freshman/presidents-scholarship.php
https://honors.utah.edu/scholarships/eccles-distinguished-scholarship/
UT-Dallas has what appears to be automatic full-tuition merit awards, in addition to the competitive full-ride+ McDermott scholarship:
http://aes.utdallas.edu/prospective-freshmen/awards
http://www.utdallas.edu/mcdermott/
you would almost certainly get darn near full-ride at New Mexico:
http://scholarship.unm.edu/scholarships/non-resident.html
if you live where I think you do then Auburn makes sense. you likely also know that you could probably get full rides at Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
the fact that you have already locked in full rides to Howard, Spelman, and your state flagship puts you well ahead of the game compared to the vast majority of upcoming HS seniors. your accomplishments are nothing to sneeze at. i would think virtually every school in the country would want a student like you. the trick is figuring out which ones will give you the $$$ to back it up.
@zahmata Stanford has extremely generous (some would say uniquely generous) financial aid. In recent years, only Harvard and Princeton have offered similar need-based aid packages. So no, that projected 30k is not something that you would be able to use to negotiate a better package elsewhere. And frankly, why would you want to? If you would make the cut at Stanford, and you could afford that 30k, then I expect you would just grab it instead of a peer institution at 60k.
The financial aid formulas are heavily weighted to income. Your parents’ 300k income is almost certainly the primary cause of the 60k EFC that you have been getting. Depending on how your sister’s college fund is held, if she doesn’t use all of it up, it might be possible for your parents to use the remainder for you. If it is in a 529 fund, that is an easy switch. So find out about that money when you talk with your parents.
If you like Spelman, you could take a look at some of the other women’s colleges. Bryn Mawr and Mt. Holyoke do have some merit-based scholarships, but I don’t know if they can bring the cost down to the range that you need.
Once you do have a “my parents can pay X” figure, you might want to take some of your questions to the Financial Aid Forum. The experts there may have a few more ideas for you that have been missed here.
How can you tell how much your parents can afford for college from their tax returns?