<p>I have quite a few friends in my college who pay for college themselves, but for me, my parents pay my college for me. Anything that is not related to my college education, such as buying food or drinks not covered with my meal plan is on my money. This leads me to an interesting question:</p>
<p>How many percentage of students have their parents pay for their college education and how many percentage of students pay for their college education themselves?</p>
<p>Some years ago, not quite 10, I saw some study about the average college student in this country. S/he’s in mid twenties, works at least part time, does not live on campus and tends to live with other family members, and goes to school part time. Pays for college over time. </p>
<p>Whether that student got some parental help at any given time over the years of going to college before stopping with or without degree, I don’t know. But I assure you that most college students are not at sleep away colleges. </p>
<p>Now for those students who are away at a sleep away college, most of them are getting parental assistance for the simple reason that most of such ug students are 18-23 years old, and that age group can’t afford to pay for themselves and can’t their hands on enough loans to borrow it, and there is not enough financial aid and scholarship money to go around.</p>
<p>When I attended college, I paid for it all.</p>
<p>My S, at this point, is paying for it all. If we had the financial resources to help him out, we would pay for it all.</p>
<p>What defines “paying for it all”? If a child gets large merit or need-based aid, and then the parent or child pays the rest, I don’t know if you can say one or the other paid for it all.</p>
<p>In many cases the school or taxpayer has paid for it or a lot of it.</p>
<p>I paid my own way through college, with a combination of merit and need based scholarshps, working 20 hours per week (fulltime over summers), and loans.</p>
<p>My older daughter put herself through with very limited financial aid (state school), work study, summer employment, and ginormous loans. We sent some spending money, and paid her car insurance when she student taught (my folks gave her their old beater car) and covered her fairly expensive medical costs. We also cosigned the private loans, but she is for the most part paying them off on her own. </p>
<p>Younger daughter had very generous merit scholarships (still has that and a generous government grant for grad school), being an RA for free room and board), fulltime summer jobs and some loans. The grant let her pay off her private undergrad loans and then she took out new loans for part of her grad school costs, so that the interest accruing was less. That also got rid of the ones that we co-signed with her. The ones for her junior year through grad school didn’t require a co-signer since she is going into a medical career.</p>
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Lucky you. Very few middle class parents could pay for all their children’s school expenses.</p>
<p>My H and I both paid 100% of our college expenses way back when. Our families could not afford to help.</p>
<p>Our D has generous merit scholarships, but we’re paying everything that her scholarships don’t cover. We live in a fairly affluent area, and it’s common here for parents to contribute in a significant way to college expenses. I think a family’s financial circumstances probably have the most to do with how college expenses are handled.</p>
<p>My D will be starting Penn State in the fall as an OOS student. She got a 6k merit award for each year. She will also take out the maximum Stafford loans very year. We will pay the remainder of tuition, room/board, books, etc. We are upper income and will pay from current income, future income, and savings.</p>
<p>My mother gave me $1,000 for college. I had a $1,000 grant and a $1,000 loan and savings. That paid for my first year. I went to work after that and various employers paid for the rest of my BA and all of my MS.</p>
<p>We covered all college bills for our kids. There was some merit money and taxpayer money too. I am in the process of paying back the merit money.</p>