<p>There are publics (with their own thread here on CC) that offer guaranteed full rides to students with certain stats, there are a handful of work colleges that offer free rides to all accepted students, there are LACs and Us that don’t offer full rides to everyone but do to their top applicants.</p>
<p>I would like to make a distinction between the very few, very competitive colleges that guarantee full need is met for all accepted students, and the much larger number of colleges that meet full need for some less-than-100% number of accepted students.</p>
<p>That’s an important point. There’s a tendency on CC to dismiss schools that don’t meet 100% of need for 100% of their students, as if they didn’t meet full need for anyone. In many cases they do meet full need for a substantial fraction of their students.</p>
<p>I fear, however, that many schools that don’t have the financial resources to meet full need for everyone will be tempted to use their last $30,000 to “meet full need” for 5 students with $6,000 of need each, rather than concentrating those resources on a single student with $30,000 of need.</p>
<p>For those who popped in here looking for near-term solutions - it’s too late this year for QuestBridge, but not too late to apply to the partner schools, all of which are supposed to provide excellent financial aid. It’s a place to start - the QB website has information about all of them. I know there are other programs like that too, but don’t know the names of any offhand. </p>
<p>Also, look in your area (the area you want to be in) for smaller colleges that you never heard of, and run the calculators. Over and over. I found a couple (i.e., Columbia University of Chicago - River Forest) that had unbelievably good aid. And aid with loans less than $4K a year is an option for us, because that is actually cheaper long term than community college with a transfer. </p>
<p>I think that a big part of the overall problem – assuming the problem is low-SES students not applying to “the best” schools and therefore not attending – is that “college advice” is often presented as a “one-size-fits-all” even from GCs and other interested, invested adults. It takes a great deal of time to figure out the best, or a possible, financial path to college for any given student. </p>
<p>Some QuestBridge graduate should create a program to do that (gauntlet cast down)! Seriously, though - if every person who struggled through this problem and succeeded could help one other un-related person in the same situation it wouldn’t take too long to make a difference. Until a group is regularly applying, there’s no way to know if they will regularly be accepted or regularly attend or regularly succeed.</p>
<p>I will always be grateful to CC for educating me about full need schools, and the concept of students in the upper % stat-wise, or desirable for some other reason, getting good aid even at schools that don’t guarantee it for all. Money was the main consideration when we made S’ list and he applied to no “guarantees to meet full need” schools. Nonetheless, full need was met at two and luckily one of those two was his first choice.</p>
<p>One of the ones that left too big a gap for us to bridge is the one where his friend got 100% of need met. I know our need was the same because I am close to that family, but her stats were better. She was given a batter FA package for that reason. I’ve seen this play out over and over again. So it seems to me that the kids we are discussing in the thread, the ones with top stats and low income, have a very good chance of getting what they need from some “not top 50 but excellent” schools and I would not advise anyone to write them off. Many of these schools are also the ones that waive app fees for apps submitted by a certain date, or online, or whatever. </p>
<p>I’ll add that my son was not a top stats student and none of these schools were in the USNWR top 50…my time on CC was mostly spent on the parents of B students threads. And still, very generous packages were offered to him.</p>
<p>So what is needed here is a sort of aggregator website that automatically runs financial aid calculations on hundreds of college websites and then spits out a list of best recommendations?</p>
<p>Who runs CC? What are their programmers doing now that they are done adding green squares?</p>
<p>Not always accurate in my experience, perhaps because it doesn’t include merit awards at all (it calculated lower FA than S was offered), but not bad: </p>
<p>ucb:
You didn’t count retirement 30k and medical/dental/vision/auto insurance which can add up to >10k. Now what’s left is less than most private school full pay cost.
Also soc. security + medicare for 2 people is more than 10k. and your fed income tax is really low. (maybe I need some tips from you)</p>
<p>Ok, additional social security payroll tax could add up to about $7,000.</p>
<p>Medical/dental/vision is usually provided (perhaps with deductions, but nowhere near the full price) with at least one of the jobs that gets a household to the $200,000 range. Auto insurance is usually measured in the hundreds, not thousands, of dollars.</p>
<p>Retirement savings is at the discretion of the people involved.</p>
<p>But those were not mentioned in your previous message.</p>
<p>We are talking about you have a college kid, your auto insurance can be close to
3k for 2 parent + a kid. if you have another highschooler it can be higher.
retirement savings is not discretion it is necessity.</p>
<h2>Xiggi, where did those great kids end up going to college? Was the nature of your help focused on finaincial or did it include suggesting ECs and support with writing approaches? And/or testing? If it’s a more whole approach, do you often find kids willing to follow through on your advice? Asking because I also help kids- and find that only a segment have the drive to revamp some of their thinking. This is not a slam on any kid. We see someof this resistance with the kids on CC who already know what the myths are- cancer research, walkathons, founding a club. And want to write about their liabilities.</h2>
<p>We had a long, volatile thread a few years ago about the problems faced by a 250k family, often citing some web report. That stated how poor the top earning families are, after subtracting the cost of business attire, dry cleaning, lunches out, business parking, club memberships, maid service, after school enrichment programs, sports equipment, music equipment and lessons, family vacations, cost of car payments, mortgage to live in a desirable neighborhood consistent with the family “status” and on and on. </p>
<p>ucb - medical/dental/vision may be provided, but either with very high deductibles, or the employee pays a significant portion of the premiums these days. And for auto insurance, remember we are talking families with teens - it could indeed be measured in the thousands.</p>
<p>That said, families that have been earning $200,000 per year for some time shouldn’t have too much trouble paying tuition, unless they’ve been living beyond their means. Unfortunately, a large percentage of Americans do just that. For those who only recently started earning that kind of money, one would hope with a child near college age that they wouldn’t take on a significant new mortgage or car payments, knowing of impending tuition payments.</p>
<p>We make enough to have an EFC in the range of $25,000. While I’m not happy about being expected to come up with that amount, we can do it, because we planned ahead, and lived within our means.</p>
<p>Lookingforward, in the beginning stages, the focus was on working with individual students and helping with pedestrian things such as the SAT (a bit of my wheelhouse) and helping to navigate the financial landmines. The problem with that is it is highly dependent on the time and availability of the “mentor.” For that reason, I found it more effective to work on systemic changes (a fav’ buzzword in education) and try to change the culture through examples of successes and … repetition. The idea was to follow the clich</p>
<p>Hmm I guess this just proves the upthread comment that people are unaware of how others live. </p>
<p>I am not saying that there are no employers pay everything with full deductible, but I havent found it true in the private sector. For a family you might be paying $3-7K and that depends on not having anything major go on. </p>
<p>Then you have all sorts of other non-discretionary expenses going on- did you allot money for these people to eat before they pay a college? And you might have to dress up for that $200K job. Maybe car payment. Heating bill? And the bigger the house the more maintenance. You are suppose to budget about 2% annually of the house price for maintenance so that could be another $10-15K a year to keep the old pile of bricks from falling down. </p>
<p>If these parents had their kids more towards 40, retirement contributions arent optional and they ought to be maxing them out. </p>
<p>Was there any alimony or spousal support in the mix?</p>
<p>I’d expect that the average family making $200K does have disposable income. It nothing like these fake full list prices at universities but probably somewhere under $30K.</p>
<p>However, the amount of such is discretionary (and there are tax incentives if one does so).</p>
<p>But also, $56,000 per year of mortgage PITI probably means a $1,000,000 house at today’s interest rates. Surely, part of that is discretionary for the household with a $200,000 per year income (even in a high cost area, there are plenty of houses that cost half of that).</p>
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<p>I wonder how the people crying poverty on an income of $200,000 per year can be aware of how people living on the median income of their area live.</p>
<p>Well, those with upwards of 200,000, depending on the area, really are middle class, in some cases. But, and this is important, even if they can only afford 30K a year for tuition, the amount they will have to borrow is neglible and easy to pay off.</p>
<p>There are, however, some in the Less than 100K range, in these same areas of the country, who I really do think absolutely have to be smart and search for merit and in-state options.</p>
<p>All that said, these are still first world problems when compared with those who are pell eligible, who have a myriad of concerns, including family relying on their minimum wage income to help with expenses, that nobody else can truly even “get.”</p>
<p>^^^Holy crap- the subect of the poor privileged folks definitely belongs on another thread. There are so many CC members who will happily argue about the true costs of wealth- start a thread. This one is about bright lights who may deserve a shot at what has not already landed in their front yard.</p>
<p>LF, although private and religious, the school operates with a much smaller budget than most under-resources schools. The facilities are spartan but efficient. Hardly the glorified country clubs that are built in the Texas Suburban Shangri-Las.</p>
<p>Well. I just thought I’d mention something. </p>
<p>I think to top schools give incredible financial aid packages. But, in order to apply, its expensive. You have to pay for a transcript, pay for the CSS, pay to send ACT, and pay to send your SAT2 scores. Of course, low income students get fee waivers to apply but that covers none of the other stuff. And yeah, that $50 can prevent a student from applying to a dream school- even if it can provide the needed financial aid.</p>