Swallows to Capistrano ( Financial Aid Myths and Realities )

Parent Cafe
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<p>I like Calreader’s idea because it helps the family put things in perspective. I would also sugest that the family write out the affordability story so that they can see the numbers in black an white making things more “real” to them.</p>

<p>(I am going to add this to the FA section of stuff that I give to my students, thanks).</p>

<p>If you are not sure what to put in as far as $$, you can check the information in the financial aid section of the school’s website. If your school has a common data set or you can look your school up on the college board website, using the information given in a best/worse case scenario.</p>

<p>For example her is Calreader’s chapman story:</p>

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<p>You can elaborate by stating:</p>

<p>Since they determine financial need based on the FAFSA & state aid (we are out of state), when I run my $$s I see that our EFC is 19,000. My parents are comfortable with this # (because it is aligned with what we would have to pay at home state U).</p>

<p>According to the college board Chapman packages their aid as 79% grants & 21% loans/job</p>

<p>the cost of attendance is 49,015 (according to the college board)</p>

<p>we have 30,015 in demonstrated need . If we can swing the 79% in grants, that would be $23,111. </p>

<p>The 29% in work/ loan would be 6304.</p>

<p>I know I will be eligible for a $3500 stafford loan
I should be able to get $1500 in work study (employment if not federal work study)
I should be able to earn about $1300 over the summer for our family to make this work.</p>

<p>I hope this helps.</p>

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<p>The truly only way to “hide” money (other than a swiss account) is US Savings Bonds. Since no interest appears until they are cashed, they are truly hidden.</p>

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<p>Sybbie, that’s a very good enhancement. I’m going to add your expanded version to a talk I’m signed up to do in a couple of weeks. Last time, I told people what kind of data to look for at the College Board and elsewhere, but I think they didn’t get how to put the pieces together in a way that made sense for decision-making. It needs to be very concrete, and adding the numbers will help with that.</p>

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<p>From Morningstar.</p>

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<p>[College</a> Planning Q&A: Financial Aid Fuzziness from the Feds](<a href=“http://advisor.morningstar.com/articles/doc.asp?docId=12480]College”>http://advisor.morningstar.com/articles/doc.asp?docId=12480)</p>

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<p>The PROFILE asks for the current value of savings bonds. Had to go to the website and enter each one to get the value. Most of the ones S has were baby gifts and have been in a file cabinet for 17 years.</p>

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<p>That’s what I remembered , too.</p>

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<p>My S’s SSN is on most of them, too…so I assume that someone somewhere in the great gov’t labyrinth could put two and two together if need be.</p>

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<p>BiggestFoot,</p>

<p>Savings bonds hidden? Not so. As an asset, they count at the present value, not the price when purchased. As income, yes, the interest counts when sold, or, I believe, if you choose to claim it annually as it earned.</p>

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<p>Making my way through this thread (backwards). Thanks for all the great, detailed advice!</p>

<p>Jude expressed my ‘monopoly money’ feel about the process..but the best thing to do to avoid that is jump in, I guess.</p>

<p>Here’s the remedial of all remedial questions—son is a junior–when should we fill out the FASFA? (hope I have acronym correct!).</p>

<p>Btw, our state U has rolling admission (think it starts in late Aug??) so thinking that should be done sooner rather than later? Now?</p>

<p>Thanks so much…</p>

<p>PS–On the hiding assets thing – from what I understand w/a new law this year, if grandma & grandpa keep the $$ for you, it’s def not an asset of parent or child. This assumes excellent rel’p w/gran & gramp! :-)</p>

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<p>The problem with affordability stories is that there are so many surprises. It’s a great exercise to force parents/students to understand the process and what’s at stake, but in the real world our projections might exclude schools that in the end, might turn out to be the most affordable.</p>

<p>I think the biggest decision a family has to make is, Can we afford full ride? If the answer is yes, problem solved. If the answer is yes, but we’d prefer not, it seems like a ridiculous waste of funds go to step two.</p>

<p>Step two: Do we qualify for need based aid according to calculators. Can we reasonably expect it? If yes, and stats warrant it, focus on need-blind schools with large endowments for reach/match schools. (Need aware schools may wait list or reject out of hand anyway. That was our experience. Kids accepted at need blind schools of greater selectivity than the need the need aware schools that rejected them.)</p>

<p>Step three: Gee, it’s unfair. My assets are just the kind that get us into financial aid hot water. We need merit aid. Here Curm blazes the way. Scour internet for merit opportunities at schools student can reasonably be expected to like. (It’s not HYPS is not a good parameter.) Apply liberally.</p>

<p>Step four: Our kid doesn’t have stats for merit except at Podunk cow college which s/he would rather not go to. Research publics. Find the most reasonable. For example, SUNY’s are less expensive OOS than many instate publics are for their citizens. Personally, I think the NYS Legislature is crazy, but who am I to say?</p>

<p>Step five: Gee, we still can’t afford it even though everyone tells us we can. Explore transfer options from community colleges and demonstrate the bright future available to students if they go the community college route. I have helped students from my CC go to every elite imaginable, and that includes HYP. And usually they get substantial funding. Well, scratch P. They don’t take transfers.</p>

<p>And a plug for CC. It’s not the end of the world. I have students who dropped out of many fancy name colleges and ended up at cc and say their education is better (I’m sure that’s not true, but good that they’re happy.) They drop out for financial reasons and because they have partied too much. And we cap classes at 25. That’s it. NO LECTURE CLASSES AT ALL.</p>

<p>Students who attend cc and do well often end up at colleges higher up on the food chain than those they could have attended with their HS stats.</p>

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<p>Thanks for laying out those steps, mythmom! Any reasonable organizational plan applied to this process is helpful!</p>

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<p>mythmom, i’ve noticed that probably more of our local athletes graduating h.s. go to cc’s than they do to 4 year schools. they then sometimes go on to 4 year schools after 1 or 2 years at the cc. many of them are good students, they just didn’t get offers from the 4 year schools. it seems like this is becoming more prevalent as some 4 year schools are bringing in more jc transfers than incoming freshman. you’ll also see transfers from d1’s down to d2 programs. the cc’s are an affordable option. i don’t know merit aid policies with cc’s but i do know of student athletes who receive athletic aid. i’d guess there are also academic monies, work study and loans.</p>

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<p>Jolynne - the earliest you can file FAFSA is January 1st of the appropriate school year (Jan 1 2009 for 2009-2010 school year). You can run your numbers through an EFC calculator to give you an idea what your EFC may be. Finaid,org has a good one at
[FinAid</a> | Calculators | Expected Family Contribution (EFC) and Financial Aid](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Expected Family Contribution (EFC) Calculator - Finaid)
though the current one is fo 2008-2009 and rules and allowances do change each year it will give you an idea.</p>

<p>Make sure you file FAFSA at the correct site - FAFSA is FREE - there is a .com site out there that will charge you - do not go there! The govt site is
[FAFSA</a> - Free Application for Federal Student Aid](<a href=“http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/]FAFSA”>http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/)</p>

<p>Also make sure you file the correct FAFSA. If you file 2008-2009 for 2009-2010 - you have not filed. (there was a student on CC that did that and it had a negative effect on his/her aid as by the time he/she realized some majo deadlines were missed).</p>

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<p>jolynne - css profile is filed at the college board website in late fall of senior year. check college board’s site.</p>

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<p>Yes, if you are applying to some schools EA, they will want to see a PROFILE for the <em>prior</em> year. (We had to do this for Chicago, but not MIT or Caltech – all EA schools.) For example – S is a current senior. We had to send Chicago a PROFILE in November 2007 with 2006 figures and 2007 estimates, and then a new PROFILE after the first of the year with completed 2007 figures. Chicago sent us a preliminary FA estimate after EA decisions went out. (Not that it was good news, but it confirmed what we suspected was going to be the case with FA in general.)</p>

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<p>I like calreaders affordability stories.</p>

<p>The part we left out was and if at the end of the story all the things don’t happen as we predicted, and the merit aid and financial aid and the family contribution fall short of the cost of attendance, then we’ll have to put that school aside, and focus on the opportunities that happened the way we had hoped and predicted.</p>

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<p>I see a couple of purposes for writing your own affordability stories. One is timing - to get kids and parents to work on their finances while making the college list, at the same time they’re assessing which schools are reach, match, or likely from an admission point of view. Better to find out early if some of the kid’s favorite schools are totally out of financial reach, so they can replace those with other schools that are more realistic possibilities. Though as copter points out, the stories are loaded with uncertainty anyway and only some of them will be workable by the time you get your packages.</p>

<p>The other result I’m hoping for is what mythmom said - to get people to understand the process. You have to learn such a lot of terms and concepts and how they fit together to navigate financial aid. In the past I’ve given people handouts with lots of how-to instructions - how to find out the COA, how to find out the % of need met, how to find out about merit awards. It’s been clear at our school that people mostly didn’t follow up and do this research on their own lists of schools. I hope putting it into a narrative structure will make it more approachable.</p>

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<p>Calreader: I can see where that would be helpful. It’s amazing that so many of us get through the process at all, and that many of us do have satisfactory results.</p>

<p>Of course, there are many who don’t.</p>

<p>This is such a convoluted process, both the academic match and the financial match, that when we put them together it seems almost impossible to master as a newbie. The learning curve has to be steep to get a satisfactory result. </p>

<p>I feel very lucky that both kids got such good results. They both are at challenging schools in environments they love with student bodies they enjoy. And I’m half way through paying for it!!! (though a semester in London for D almost busted the bank.)</p>

<p>However, I poured over college websites and college book for two years. Everyone made soooooooo much fun of me. Well I’ve thrown the books out now, but here I am on CC.</p>

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<p>Yes, technically what is said above is true. However, as long as the bonds are not “cashed” - they are “hidden”. This is true for almost all legal things. In fact, it is thought that OJ hid his money in EE bonds. </p>

<p>The problem comes when they are cashed. If a parent buy them and lists himself as co-owner with a child, he is responsible for the taxes on the bond when cashed. If only the child is listed as owner, it is assumed as a gift from the person who purchased them and the child is the owner. </p>

<p>As long as they are not cashed, they are hidden. (truthfully, no)</p>

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<p>Today’s Financial Aid news on the front page of the Boston Globe:</p>

<p>[College-bound</a> face dilemma - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/04/19/college_bound_face_dilemma/]College-bound”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/04/19/college_bound_face_dilemma/)</p>

<p>As loans dry up, some settle for second choice.</p>

<p>A few choice quotes:
“Just weeks after jubilant high school seniors celebrated the thick admissions envelopes that landed in their mailboxes, students are now forced to confront another reality that can be harder to swallow than an outright rejection letter. Many will not be able to afford their top college choices after all.
…The (guidance counselor)‘s email listserv is buzzing with counselors wringing their hand about how to best guide students as the rules change for the first time in his 23 year career, MacGowan said. As more students apply for loans to meet soaring college costs and to supplement schools’ financial packages that don’t fully meet their needs, “these loan companies are saying, ‘We’re not there for you anymore.’ It’s really creating quite a problem.”
… Bob Giannino-Racine, executive director of ACCESS, a non-profit that offers free financial aid advice and scholarships to 2000 Boston high school seniors each year, said his counselors are telling students to pick schools whose financial aid packages leave them in the least amount of debt. “But we just have to be careful that we’re not just blindly sending kids to a place they’d rather not be just because they can afford it,” he said. Long term data show that students who do not end up at their first-choice school are less likely to graduate, he said.”</p>

<p>Wha…? That last sentence is the last sentence of the article. I hadn’t heard that one before. Also there’s a mom in the article whose daughter would have to take out a lot of loans to attend her top-choice school. The mom says, “I’d rather get a second job. I’d rather sell my jewelry. I’m anxious because I want her to be happy.” (Daughter wants a strong theater program and loves unconventional Bard, but got twice as much aid from more traditional Trinity. D sounds reasonable, she says, “Trinity is looking really good just because of the money. My parents are trying to support me but they don’t have all the money in the world.”)</p>