And falsifying information can lead to arrest:
http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/lynchburg-man-accused-of-university-of-georgia-tuition-fraud/article_11fcc97e-0d1b-11e4-b91f-0017a43b2370.html
Hope Spelman works out for your daughter.
Thanks thumper1!
If Spelman is affordable without parental loans then congratulations!!!
Thanks MYO!
She’s awaiting offers from a few others: Cal Berkely, NYU, Columbia and Southern California!
Well…Berkeley doesn’t offer need based aid to OOS students…and their merit aid is HIGHLY competitive and mostly for instate students. So…not probably going to be any better than UCLA.
I am indeed a proud Spelman alumna! I will also agree with @MYOS1634 and say that borrowing the full cost of attendance is not worth it!
But if your family can afford to pay for Spelman and it’s the most affordable option for you - then yes, it’s an amazing experience and a great education.
I would definitely contact the financial aid office and see if you can get a readjustment or extra consideration for merit aid. Sometimes, after the decision date, Spelman and other small colleges can reallocate merit aid from students who declined scholarships to attend elsewhere.
So contact them after May 1st the date students must confirm their acceptances?
Also… some kids may in fact have to borrow the full amount. Are you saying that it’s never ok to borrow the full amount for college in general? Or Are you saying it’s not worth it to borrow the full amount for Spelman specifically?
No, after April 1st. And if you don’t hear back, again after May first.
And yes it’s never a good idea to borrow the full amount for college, regardless of college. It’s risky to borrow more than 5.5k for freshman year /27k total for 4 years. The decision to borrow should be tied to the major and the minimum/average first salary (ie., if your major at your college has a minimum average salary of 45k then 45k is the maximum you should borrow TOTAL for ALL FOUR years.) It’s not a good idea to borrow full costs because it’s impossible to pay back that much.
Yes I understand you are the expert MYO, I wanted to hear from juillet on the part regarding “not worth it”
Just tag like this: @juillet
Boom, it worked!
MYOS is right - I don’t think you have to wait all the way until May 1. I’d ask next week and see what they say. They may ask you to wait until after May 1 when they get final decisions, but lots of people decide earlier than May 1, and making your intentions known early is a good idea.
Yes, unless the “full amount” is some amount of money that’s reasonable to repay. Some people would peg this aorund the $31,000 that the federal government will lend students without a co-signer. I say that the amount probably lies somewhere between $30K and $60K, and depends on a variety of factors, but I would heavily discourage any student from borrowing more than around $30-40K.
I don’t think that decision should be tied to major and average first salary, though. College students change their majors all the time - there are lots of students who go in thinking they’re going to be engineering majors and end up majoring in something else; or students who start off pre-med or pre-law thinking they’ll make a ton of money and end up doing something else completely. And even when students do major in fields that correspond to relatively high paying careers, having a lot of debt hamstrings their choices. A computer science major may do TFA for a few years and fall in love with teaching; a pre-med student may take a few years to do research and realize they’d rather become a researcher; an economics major decide to work at nonprofits instead of on Wall Street.
No. In fact, if a student had absolutely no choice but to borrow the full amount for an expensive private college (which is rare), then Spelman would be an excellent place to go. I’m commenting on the far more frequent choice of borrowing $175K to go to Spelman vs. borrowing a smaller amount of money (or none at all) to go to a different school, or attending a community college for a few years before transferring, or some other lower-cost option.