Surprised by financial aid appeal!

<p>Vince, why with a billion jillion dollars as an endowment isn’t BC providing generous FA to get the students in that it offers admission to?</p>

<p>laplatinum,</p>

<p>The only thing at colleges more baffling than admissions is the financial aid process. For both of my sons their financial aid offers followed no discernible pattern even though all of their schools said they “met full need”. I have a few theories on the endowment-financial aid disconnect but I also lack any real knowledge. For what it’s worth…</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Over the last half decade the upheavals in the financial markets have left already conservative universities even more gun shy. I remember reading about some schools having to dip into endowments just to fund day to day operations; that makes it hard to be generous.</p></li>
<li><p>Not all endowments are equal. Portions of these endowments were restricted for specific purposes at the time of their donation. Buildings, sports teams, specific programs - benefactors get to decide how their money is going to be spent, at least in the first few decades.</p></li>
<li><p>Size matters. For a while the college ratings war used endowments as a factor in rating the “quality” of a school’s education. The theory being if you have more money to spend you’ll spend it on better professors and facilities. Of course all that really did was reinforce the behavior of holding onto your endowment so you could brag about how big it had become. Another ego-driven, ‘mine-is-bigger-than-yours’ argument.</p></li>
<li><p>Incomplete information meets “It’s always easier to spend someone else’s money”. This one is the toughest theory for me to assess. We as outsiders don’t get to see the full breadth of the demands on a given school. We don’t really know how much is being given to all the students except, maybe, in the broadest of terms. So a school may be being generous by giving every student some aid or they may have the philosophy of being stingy with some in order to meet the needs of the vastly underprivileged. Of course this doesn’t help me when their definition of my need is vastly lower than my definition. It’s too easy for me to point at their pile of money and say I should have some. Multiplied by 2,500 new students a year and the problem gets unmanageable very quickly.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I don’t know if any or all of these factors apply at BC. But I do know that like the disappearance of the Anasazi, Stonehenge and the persistent popularity of anything Kardashian, financial aid remains an inexplicable human mystery.</p>

<p>Bravo, Vince. Great analysis of je ne sais quoi. Hahaha. Exactly, it is the mystery of the cosmos. I made a spreadsheet for my son tonight so he could see exactly what the various universities are offering him for each type of aid compared to what their tuition/fees, room & board are. It was enlightening for us both to compare the offers and to see how vastly they differ one from the other in so many respects. Inscrutable. Must go now to give sacrifice to the gods of FA so he gets more coin.</p>

<p>laplatinum & vinceh - the finaid answer is rather simple in my estimation…why would BC discount their product if they’re able to attract the student body they want at full price? Their exceptions are a few merit scholarships and students with smarts but no money. As I have it figured they know the rest of the kids can find a school within their parents financial reach. </p>

<p>The answer to your other question laplatinum is a little tougher…why doesn’t BC work harder to get their admitted students enrolled…frankly I have no idea how hard they work at this (not very in our case). The questions I’ve asked and the replies rec’d have simply been in a nice way BC believes we can afford it. </p>

<p>It’s simple, BC has their goals, we have ours and they don’t cross. As I’ve previosuly stated I’m fine with our options and my 17 year old will eventually come to the same realization…we’re now down to Denison & Ohio State…she decided not to visit Miami today and frankly I don’t think Dension has a chance even though they’ve been unbelievable in their approach.</p>

<p>Just wanted to say that it does pay to appeal. Or is worth a try. Original offer was standard govt supported loans & work-study. Today we got a scholarship offer big enough to make BC just doable, though at greater cost than several other schools. Probably too late though, since we decided not to go to Honors Day, which might have made a case that the greater financial sacrifice was worth it.</p>

<p>Unfortunately our appeal was turned down. Even though our EFC was $XX,000, BC’s own calculations came up with $10,000 more and that made it such that D needed no aid. To top it, we showed that the situation has changed in 2012 and I got a terse response that essentially said, “Then you will qualify for aid next academic year”. Fair enough!</p>

<p>Who is to say they won’t ‘magically’ come up with an EFC that mets all expenses again next year?</p>

<p>Not trying to start an anti-BC sentiment here (I like the school) and not trying to start a class war, but this issue is a hot button one: In order to attend college, I had to take the maximum Stafford loans ($5500 per year) and some other loans. I will personally owe almost $32K upon graduation. My parents pay a good chunk of my tuition out of their home equity and also have taken PLUS loans. </p>

<p>I do not understand why it is expected for me as a middle class college student to have to agree that if I want to attend a school like BC, then I am required to start my working life with $30K+ in loan debt (plus work a Work Study job) when right down the dorm hall is someone as able-bodied and as likely or unlikely to get a job after college, who is not expected or required to do the same simply based on their parents’ income. Why have me take on loans, when my roommate goes for free and has more pocket money than me because her parents don’t need to cut back to pay for her to be here (in fact they just got back from Disneyworld – true story! My parents who have to cough up almost $3000 a month can’t afford a trip until I get out of college). Why is it fair for me to accumulate $30K+ in loans when she is not required to? My earning power upon graduating is no greater than that of the kids who pay nothing at all. Why not treat them as such?</p>

<p>If the system was set up such that *everyone *had to assume a minimum amount of student loans, it would free up more funds for those on the bubble like people above who are just a few thousand shy of being able to go to BC and other schools. </p>

<p>And please don’t answer with “You are made to take loans because your parents can afford to pay them off for you” because (a) They won’t, (b) They can’t afford to, and (c) It’s my debt under my name and not theirs in any way so I will be on the hook for it. I fully support making college affordable for as many students as possible; it’s important to the country and our society to have that happen. It just seems that if you are rich you dont have to worry and if your family makes less than $80K you get a free ride. But if your family has income of low/mid 100K range, then the colleges want to take half of it unless you cry uncle and go to state school. There is a cusp of middle class students who are ending up having to give up their dream to fund the free ride of others. Every student should have to incur personal loans in order to attend a top college like BC. </p>

<p>Somewhere in the past couple of decades we crossed the line where a modicum of success in this country results in punitive action. Schools like BC that are lagging in this area run the real risk of abandoning the middle class as a pool of potential students, preferring instead to chase the easy cash of “rich” students, and suck on the lucrative federal teat that provides the cash for the “poor” students. The system is broken. And BC, like the middle class students I mention above, is neither elite enough nor pedestrian enough to survive it. Do they really want to become a school half-filled with commuters like they were in the 1970’s?</p>

<p>Dear umboFever09 : Each year, I personally spend hundreds of hours coaching students through the application process for Boston College here on College Confidential and elsewhere. Every year after acceptances are announced, there will be a post reminding folks that meeting 100% of demonstrated need means something different to the college and to the family. For the college, it means that we will calculate your family assets, home value, and other assets in order to show you a plan to pay for the four years of Boston College. To families, the demonstrated need promise implies that financial aid will allow a similar lifestyle to precollege days. More families run into the financial aid brick wall than one would believe.</p>

<p>Here’s the fact : Boston College is a $50,000-$55,000 per year school. Period. Although painful to say this, one should be going into this situation recognizing that the bill will have to be covered by someone - and that someone is usually the person (or family) with the vested interest in the outcome.</p>

<p>The fact is that the system is not broken. You have just experienced Economics 101 as a high school senior. Shopping for a Ferrari is great until you realize that you have a Chevy budget. With a $1.5B endowment, BC throws off financial aid for 65% of attendees at the campus at varying levels. Remember that Boston College also does its best to take care of the needs of those on-campus first. Was this year particularly overtaxing on financial resources? At this point, we both have no idea.</p>

<p>The financial aid system calculates family assets. While you view the world as unfair with your hold $30,000 in notes while your dormmates hold nothing, three questions come to mind :</p>

<p>[1] You personally decided that Boston College was WORTH the $200,000 over the four years of matriculation. The fact that you are handed the bill is the cost of admission.</p>

<p>[2] The fact that your family has resources beyond those families represented down the hall should mean little to you; if anything, it indicates that you might have already experienced advantages that others have not.</p>

<p>[3] As a family that has put two through Boston College at full price, we can understand the sacrifice that your family experiences - truth be told, we have been there for the last fifteen years preparing for these moments.</p>

<p>Apologies that some of this material might sound harsh - however, more folks have to come to grips with the true costs of a private undergraduate education.</p>

<p>Does Boston College face a barbell situation with top end and lower end financially ranked families squeezing the true middle class? Yes. It is a situation being addressed at many private institutions. Will Boston College revert to being a commuter school ? Absolutely not.</p>

<p>The fact is that there is a college for everyone at the right price point. It might just be the case that Boston College was not the right option financially for your family.</p>

<p>Thank you for your well-thought-out response, scottj. And I, too, apologize if I came across as harsh. I did warn at the outset that it was a hotbutton issue. Your description of the “barbell” effect is exactly what I was driving at. I just see the middle class students eventually giving up on even applying to the BCs or Georgetowns or Tufts or Villanovas of the world, so that we end up with a two-class environment at those schools – like Harvard in the 1950’s when they would take in a group of charity cases who would then be ignored by the elites. And we can talk all day about whether $200K+ is a ludricrous amount to spend on *any *college, whether a top one like BC or a mediocre one. In fact everything you say above I have to mostly agree with.</p>

<p>But I do want to follow up on one comment, at least with what it implies, where you say that I have probably “experienced advantages others have not”. In other FA discussions here on CC, I have seen similar thoughts, basically saying “Well you come from more money and have had things handed to you so your parents have connections and you’re more likely to get a job than the other student”. This has as much credence as me generalizing by saying “Well, if the other student’s parents had worked harder and gone to school at nights to get degrees to increase their earning power like my parents did, instead of doing whatever, then they would have advanced in their jobs and made more money”. I hope that’s not what we’re implying, that my parents have ability more than any other parent pave the way for me, because that is not the case. I don’t know if this kind of thinking is a result of politicians trying to curry votes by labeling as “rich” those families who make $150K, but any advantages I have experienced have been modest.</p>

<p>Your analogy about Ferrari budget vs Chevy budget is a good one. I agree and understand that expecting to attend a “Ferrari” school when one’s family has a “Chevy” budget is unreasonable. But shouldn’t that apply to everyone? If I am saving all that I have left over and all I can afford is a Chevy, so be it. But if I have saved not a dime and fritter opportunities, then why should I then expect someone to hand me the keys to a Ferrari? Even getting the keys to a Chevy for nothing would be more palatable.</p>

<p>In the end, my core point and question is left unaddressed: Assuming that earning power and job prospects are equivalent for one BC student vs another, why are some students expected to incur personal debt when others are not? In short, why is any college student allowed to graduate debt-free in this country? Provide full rides to those who could not attend college without them. Absolutely! But the first chunk of aid that is assigned should be Stafford loans, for everybody who gets aid. It will free up that much more cash for others in need, and it is the equitable solution.</p>

<p>Good discussion, but I hope I have not dragged it too far off topic from the thread.</p>