<p>I've been accepted early decision to my top pick, Scripps College, and I'm pretty content. The only issue is the money--Scripps has "meet all demonstrated need" policy and gave me a nice package which covers all but $7,891 of estimated cost per year. I'm predicted to receive a $2,200 work study and $3,500 direct sub stafford loan. Nonetheless, the money issue has been causing some stress.</p>
<p>Although both I and my parents appreciate this package, we're in (have been in) a very financially pressured state and I can feel them stressing--and that makes me stress. For myself, I feel confident that I can make it work and pay off the loans within a couple years of graduation.. but my mom wants to pay it for me (my dad probably prefers it the other way). She insists on the idea that parents are responsible for their children's education and talks about hypothetical situations where she would sell the house once the market turns around to pay my loans and so on. </p>
<p>We were sort of hoping for a full ride somewhere (the only thing that makes me regret applying ED) and so I can see this $8,000 figure hovering over my mom's head; she's visibly wondering about how she'll take care of it.. it's become something that is sort of a downer for me. It's become the dinner topic to discuss my package and options and every time I hear her talk with a stressed voice about this issue I just wish that she would let me pay for my own education and just let me take care of it after my carefree college experience. </p>
<p>Well, are parents responsible for children's education? I just wanted to get others' perspective. I understand her feelings because it's been her life goal to send her children to college, but I just don't know what to think and do and it's causing me some angst.</p>
<p>Parents are responsible for their children’s education to the extent that is not too much of a burden on them. They shouldn’t have to sell their house, unless it was something they were already planning to do. Of course that’s just my opinion. My parents only support me while I’m at school in the form of car insurance and health costs. (When I’m home on breaks they pay for me the same amount they do for my younger siblings). For full disclosure I have a full ride, but the situation would have been similar at a school where I was full pay (though my mother offered to pay room and board)
I know people who’s parents pay every cent plus $500+ a month in allowance and then complain about how little money they have. I know people who will be buried in debt, and people somewhere in the middle.
Honestly though, 8,000 is not that much. If you try to balance what they can actually pay, what you can realistically make over the summer and get the rest in loans. If the 8000 is much higher than your EFC you can attempt to appeal to the financial aid office, but if it’s not you don’t have much of a chance.</p>
<p>I feel much the same as your mother, and within reason will do whatever I can to help my daughter attend college. I think you should just work very hard to never forget the sacrifices your parents make for you, and be helpful, respectful, appreciative, work as hard as you can in college, and in the future, help your parents if they ever need your help. There may come a time when they need a little financial support, or rides to doctor appointments, help moving, etc. Be there, and let them know you remember their efforts for you!</p>
<p>*The only issue is the money–Scripps has “meet all demonstrated need” policy and gave me a nice package which covers all but $7,891 of estimated cost per year. I’m predicted to receive a $2,200 work study and $3,500 direct sub stafford loan. *</p>
<p>Is there already student loans in your FA package? If so, how much? $2,000?</p>
<p>If there only is a $2k loan in your FA package, then it’s not a bad thing for you to take out the other $3500 loan and do the work study.</p>
<p>There may also be some “pad” in your COA. how much did they put down for travel and personal expenses? you might be able to cover those costs with a summer job.</p>
<p>You can tell you mom this…while you’re in college, you don’t have to make payments on her loans. But…if she is able (and only if she’s able), she could make some payments towards those loans to reduce them. If she’s not able to, then you will be responsible for them after you graduate.</p>
<p>Congrats on your ED acceptance and very good package.</p>
<p>cocoyam, your post is one of the kindest, most generous and most thoughtful I’ve seen. I hope that your parents realize how fortunate they are to have you as their daughter.</p>
<p>The $7900 family contribution plus a $3500 subsidized loan, even if all done by loan, isn’t impossible. Summer job earnings can make up part of your family contribution. The rule of thumb is to keep your loan total at the level of your first year of post-college salary, and it seems like this is possible for you. I think if you can get some unbiased endorsements of your plan from the parents here and on the financial aid forum that you can then convince your mom that things will be OK. </p>
<p>The harder part is convincing your mother that this is truly OK, that she is not failing in her duty to help her child through school. We parents want to give our children the sun and the moon, especially when they’ve worked hard enough to earn them. It’s frustrating when we can’t give our children everything we think they deserve. I think that your continued patience with her will eventually sway her opinion.</p>
<p>Parents are under no obligation to pay for your college education, yet it is something that many parents want to do. I intend to pay for my daughter’s college. Suggestions let your mom help out and then when you are able pay her back.</p>
<p>Parents paying for their child’s college education is a social and moral obligation, it is in most cases not a legal obligation. Even then they is so much gray area as to if parents are paying, how much should they feel obligated to pay? Should parents only feel obligated to pay only what they truly can afford? Should they only pay for the cost to attend the public university where you live? Should they make it happen to pay up to the full cost to attend a 50k a year school? You will get as many different answers as there will be parents responding to the post.</p>
<p>Should your parents sell the house in order for you to attend college? IMHO, the answer is no.</p>
<p>My question is about the fact that you applied and were accepted ED at Scripps. As of March 1, you have either accepted the ED package and will be attending Scripps in the fall or you have turned down the ED package and you are hoping to get a full ride somewhere else. What is your status? </p>
<p>Unless you have already told Scripps that you will not be attending because it is not a financially feasible option for your family, to me, your only question is how can you make this work?</p>
<p>From this perspective I will ask how much can your family reasonably afford to pay without this being a major hardship on them? Are there sibling who will be startign college after you?</p>
<p>You can borrow another 2K in an unsub stafford loan, which means that your family will have to come up with ~5900.</p>
<p>Do you have a part time job? Can you get a part time job? Can you babysit, tutor, work at McDonalds in hopes of earning extra money?</p>
<p>Is your mother worried about your working too much and jeopardizing your grades?</p>
<p>You might point out that work-study and summer jobs will provide you with valuable work experience as well as helping monetarily. Having to work during college can keep one focused on the practicality of one’s studies, and being efficient with time. Working for money during college doesn’t have to be a burden – many students find it a boon.</p>
<p>Disagreement in parents can cause a lot of stress in a family - this can be as simple as who takes out the trash and rise up to big financial decisions. Ultimately the parents will have to come to some decisions which will hopefully lower the stress level. Unfortunately we parents sometimes put off decisions because they may be painful which leaves the family stress levels high.</p>
<p>My mother gave me a small amount of money for my first year and the rest was covered by grants and loans. The remaining years were covered by companies that paid for most of my education. One of my sisters had huge arguments with the family over funding as she wanted the family to cover a good chunk of her education. She ended up taking out a lot of loans. Could the family cover her education? I don’t know.</p>
<p>We’re paying for our kids but we saved the money beforehand so there isn’t any real stress in writing the checks. I can imagine the stress if we hadn’t saved.</p>
<p>The setup you have sounds doable with perhaps a part-time job during the school year (after your first semester) and full-time work or internships during the summer.</p>
<p>Parents are responsible for the welfare of their children. That’s the point of being a parent. This includes educational welfare; parents should provide the best education for their children that is within their means.</p>
<p>That said, a parent is not obligated to but their family into economic hardship over this. Many do, but it’s not always a good decision. Selling their house seems far too extreme.</p>
<p>If finances were a concern (in that you cannot easily pay the $8000), you shouldn’t have applied ED. My advice would be to get a job as soon as possible and work through the summer. Try to save everything but what’s required for your commute.</p>
<p>I do not think parents are obligated to pay for their children’s education. Neither my parents nor my husband’s parents contributed anything to pay for our college educations. That said, I think that if parents can afford to save for college over the years, they should, and if they can afford to help their children pay for college costs, they should do that also. It’s not an obligation, but IMO the right thing to do. I don’t think any parent should feel obligated (socially, morally or in any other way) to shell out $50,000 a year for a child’s dream school when there are less expensive options available, though. You’re lucky in that it’s possible for a student to come up with $8,000 a year on his or her own, through work study, loans and summer jobs. The kids who are very unfortunate are those whose parents make enough money that their EFCs are an amount too high for a student to realistically pay and/or borrow, but still can’t (or won’t) help with college costs.</p>
<p>$7891 is a manageable figure. You should get a part-time job now. Work this summer and get a part-time job while in college. A lot of kids do it. forget about the “carefree college experience” - that is just escapism. Identify all the challenges before you and address them. Focus on keeping the total loan amount down as low as possible.</p>
<p>My parents provided for my college education, so there is no doubt in my mind that I am responsible for the educations of my kids. To have received that benefit from one’s own parent and not pass it on if it’s in any way possible would strike me a severe moral and ethical failing. To have received that benefit and not be in a position to be able to do so for one’s own kids would be distressing, but a fact of life for many people.</p>
<p>In regard to parents who did not receive this kind of helping hand from their own parents, I could appreciate a differing point of view.</p>
<p>BTW, Cocoyam - congratulations; enjoy Scripps and Claremont! The experience will definitely be worth far more than $32,000!</p>
Just what I was going to say! Maybe they could also help with the interest payments for the loans that aren’t all deferred until after you graduate. </p>
<p>We are in a similar situation to you, except we have saved about 2 years of EFC. My son (who will be across the street from you to the north this fall) understands that we will do what we can out of savings and current income, but we don’t plan to take out any loans or cut into our 401Ks (or sell the house). When he graduates, we will help with his loans if our financial situation allows it. While it is an obligation for parents to do the best they can for their children, that has to be within reason. Your parents have done a great job so far, as evidenced by your desire to take over now that you are an adult. </p>
<p>That is an incredible FA package and I kind of agree with the pp, that $8,000 is not that much per year. You can probably work during your summers and pay some of your loans down too (I rec. that you do!). Scripps is a wonderful school and that is an unbelievable price for something so meaningful and important for you. I am not one for racking up loans, and certainly having tons of debt to pay off after college is a very unwise decision, but this is a reasonable amount to finance imho. </p>
<p>My parents paid for my undergrad education, but my husband paid for much of his own (but he did have a small trust fund set up by his uncles for college --absent father and mom at poverty). There are really two schools of thought on whether parents should foot the bill for higher education. I am happy to pay what ever we can, and we have saved for each child. I really do believe that your folks should be taking out the majority of the loans, but I know my husband would disagree ;). CONGRATULATIONS!!! PLEASE TAKE IT!</p>
<p>"We were sort of hoping for a full ride somewhere (the only thing that makes me regret applying ED)</p>
<p>Why in the world would you apply ED if finaid was so important an issue? If you were hoping for merit scholarships covering the full COA, or hoping that some other full-need school’s institutional formula would result in an EFC lower than what Scripps, calculated you should never have applied ED. </p>
<p>The Scripps award is qutie generous and I fully understand why you don’t want to back out of the ED agreement. Still, since it sounds like a few thou more would make a big difference to your family, you should have appled RD, which would have allowed you to compare all offers.</p>
<p>And why is this just becomming an issue? Didn’t you get your award letter back in December with your acceptance? Or did you apply EDII?</p>
<p>I’m not familiar with the all the details of financial aid but as for helping your mom not stress, could you maybe suggest to her that you take out loans for your expected contributions and then you decide who will pay them in four years. By then your family may be in a better financial situation so your mom might be able to pay the way she wants to without going broke or, if not, you may already have a job lined up that will allow you to pay off the loans without your mom worrying about not being able to provide for you. Or you guys could split it in some way just depending on where you both are financially.</p>
<p>From the cultural milieu I come from, paying for a child’s education is considered a moral and ethical obligation by the parents so long as they are financially able, the child shows some academic promise (i.e. Strong B level students and above), and the child maintains decent college grades(i.e. Above a 3.0 at the bare minimum…sometimes above a 3.25). In the eyes of most people in that milieu, it is incumbent on the financially able parents to do all they can to support their child’s college educations so long as they’ve shown themselves worthy of that support in terms of academic performance and maturity. </p>
<p>My parents received a pass on that because their financial state was such that it wasn’t possible for them to help me with my college expenses and considering my high school performance, I would not have had much right to expect anything. Fortunately, I received a near-full ride college scholarship where the remaining expense/year was actually slightly higher than what you received from Scripps when it is adjusted for inflation. Good for you! </p>
<p>If you can work during the summers and part-time during the year, you can pay off a substantial part of that outstanding balance. Better if you pick up skills that can provide a decent hourly fee such as IT or tutoring in an in-demand course such as STEM, foreign languages like Mandarin Chinese, or basic writing. IME, the $8000 outstanding amount in 2011 dollars can be worked off during one’s college years if you manage your finances right and stay focused on your end-goal of graduation with minimal or even no post-college debt. Even with a tiny loan, I was able to graduate practically debt-free as that loan was repaid within a year of graduation from my first-job’s income. Knew several other classmates from high school and college who did the same.</p>
<p>I think this is a very personal decision. There is no one right way or wrong way. I personally paid for my own college for years 2, 3, and 4 after leaving college after the first year (paid by my parents). I returned almost four years later and, for me, I can say with certainty that I worked MUCH harder knowing that the person impacted by repaying for a course would be me and not my parents. </p>
<p>That being said, I am trying my best to cover college costs for all my children. The only thing I require from them is paying for books and incidentals. I say “only” but those two things could easily be $5k a year. We are approaching it as a shared responsibility. And, the other caveat is: Any class with less than a ‘C’ will be repaid to us by kid. </p>
<p>This works for us but, again, this is a very personal decision and should work for the financial resources of the family.</p>
Legally - no. Whether the parents either feel obliged to pay or whether they just want to pay (two different things) is completely up to those parents and something others should be careful about judging them on. Whether the parents feel they should pay usually comes down to their own background, especially if they’re college grads themselves (who, from what I’ve seen, are more inclined to pay), their financial situation, customs within their background, etc. One could extend the question and ask - “should my parents be obliged to pay for the college of my choice as opposed to the more cost effective college” and the area becomes even more gray.</p>
<p>It’s great that you’re thinking about this the way you do and don’t have a sense of entitlement. It’s also great that your parents are considering helping out. Regardless, I agree that the costs you’ve stated aren’t unmanageable and some of it might be able to be taken care of through summer jobs but don’t forget the cost of living as well - you’ll have some costs outside of the straight college costs. If your mother is talking about a windfall when they sell the house someday - I hope they have one and maybe it can help pay down some or all of your loans but I don’t think that should be “the plan” because it’s far enough down the road that none of us know what the housing marketplace will be like then, what your parents’ financial situation will be then, etc.</p>
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