<p>My dad lives in another city, so we have to pay a mortgage for our house as well as a rent for my dad who moved for a new job. But my parents aren't divorced. I have two younger sisters who are also college bound. Currently, we are not SAVING money as we should be. We are losing it every month. My dad is discouraging me from applying to Ivy League schools because he thinks we won't be able to afford it, with my sisters also needing to go to college sometime...</p>
<p>1) apply. you don’t know if you’ll get in, when you get in then you can deal with the money issue. ya know, you don’t have to go to a school just because they admit you.<br>
2) read the finaid website: [Columbia</a> University Office of Undergraduate Financial Aid and Educational Financing - Financial Aid Home](<a href=“http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/finaid/]Columbia”>Columbia Financial Aid and Educational Financing) for information about how colunbia gives out money. it is only need-based aid, and there is only 1 tuition, no instate/outofstate divide.
3) columbia is probably in the top 5 in terms of how generous it is with need-based financial aid. so if you don’t get it from columbia, you are probably not gonna get it from anyone else.
4) finaid works like this - there is an estimate that goes out on what your family should contribute for that year toward college education (as a whole) based mostly on income, number of kids in the family and taking into account things that your family must pay (which here includes a house and rental, plus cars, or whatever else you have). you can look up calculators out there (MIT has a good one) to get a perspective on how much you will pay.
5) having sisters sounds like a bigger burden, but see what i said in point 4. so let’s say that they ask for a family contribution of about 35000, that sounds like a lot. but then let’s say your sister goes to college before you graduate, that contribution is spread across both kids, so that per year your family still pays about 35k. so supposing you and your sisters are close enough in age, it actually is not too much of a burden. where it is difficult is when the family is spread out, and as much as there might be sympathy with the family, finaid folks aren’t family planners or financial planners. in the end they conclude what is reasonable based on finances, and it is then up to the family to make the tough choices.</p>