<p>After reading around the financial forums, coming across this link made me laugh. It reminded me of the all the trite remarks my counselor/high school principal made about going to the best school possible, and not worrying about the cost since college graduates made soo much money. (My h.s. was proud for sending 99% or so of its graduates to college, even hassling the kids who had no inclination/ability for higher education). I feel that many of these myths that they try to debunk are more truth than fiction.</p>
<p>Look at the source of the article:<br>
College Board makes a TON of money off of financial aid. They charge families to fill out the CSS Profile for each school; they charge for their document handling service; and for families like mine there is a double-charge because the Noncustodial Parent gets dunned as well. (And let me tell you, the fee the ex has to pay to fill out the form does NOT help one bit in getting cooperation). </p>
<p>I haven’t done the math but its probably safe to assume that financial-aid related fees to college board totalled ~$250 for me over the years – and you multiply that by hundreds of thousands of families, and you can see why they want to encourage as many kids as possible to apply for financial aid.</p>
<p>Actually, some of these aren’t myths. College may be too expensive for one’s family, particularly certain colleges. I’m not sure where College Board is getting that $6,000+ figure from - the National Center for Education Statistics says the average cost for attending a public school in 2004 was over $15,000. Posting just the tuition and fees total is misleading.</p>
<p>Some families’ income IS to high to qualify for aid, and some people’s families have saved enough for college that it lowers how much aid they are qualified for. I almost laughed when I read the like “A family’s share of college costs is calculated based mostly on income, not assets such as savings.” Yeah, the “mostly” makes that sentence technically correct, but it is misleading.</p>
<p>Why they think living at home to cut costs is a myth is beyond me. It is probably one of the best ways to cut costs, if one lives close to the school one intends to attend. My younger sister lives at home and commutes to campus, and the costs of commuting and parking are nowhere near as much as the price tag of staying on campus (and wouldn’t be anywhere, unless you were flying to NYU from Wyoming every week or something). In addition, living on campus would’ve created less opportunities for work AND she would’ve gotten paid less than if she just stayed in the job she already had.</p>
<p>The CSS PROFILE is a scam in my opinion; I think colleges should just use the FAFSA. I think it’s wrong to calculate how much my parents should pay based on our home equity! I would never let my parents take out a home equity loan to pay for me to go to college, that’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>juillet: The fafsa was designed to determine federal eligibility, and it was designed to make politicians look like they were making it easier to get financial aid. Of course the politicians didn’t allocate the money to pay for all the aid people think they are going to get and therefore there is a lot of disappointment unless you are commuting to a community college.</p>
<p>Colleges simply don’t have the money to base what they provide on the fafsa. A hard fact of life. As a parent I accept the primary responsibility for helping my children get a college degree. The biggest problem I have seen with parents is that they simply have not been planning their lives and spending for the 18 years prior to their children going to college. The CSS is not perfect, but it does give the college a snapshot of a family’s financial situation so they can make reasonable decisions on how to distribute limited pools of money. If the parents have chosen not to save or otherwise prepare for the college years that is not the problem of the college, it is a family problem. If someone is actually poor, there is money enough available to make in-state colleges affordable.</p>