<p>Excellent post, Blossom.</p>
<p>And even if there is little bitterness on this thread, there is on some of the college threads.</p>
<p>I think the point of the thread was to be cynical about financial aid. I’m not bitter :-)</p>
<p>To me, it seems that $100,000 AGI is not the “point of no return” if one’s assets are modest. Friend 1 had 10k savings, 100k equity in home, rest in retirement married couple, 2 kids with oldest entering college. Friend 1’s son got 24K mixed bag of merit and grant money for a 50k school. Won’t share more than that because I don’t want to reveal the individual. However, the assets seem to be the big issue. Also have another friend with $115,000 AGI and 120k in savings and more equity in home. This kid got $0 from the 50k school. Third scenario-$110k, 2 kids in family, no savings or debt; older entering college -child got 17k grant to 50k school. All 3 kids were top performers who had tons of enrichment and grew up with similar circumstances. The schools were top 20 small LACs.</p>
<p>It’s not so much “bitterness” as trying to figure out the rules. I’m not bitter; I wouldn’t change anything I’ve done so far (except the “saving in the kid’s name” part). But that’s because I knew going in what to expect. I expected to get nothing. So there’s no bitterness here. Do I want it to be cheaper? Absolutely. Do I think the FA calculations (FAFSA and Profile) are ludicrous? Sure. Do I think the way the self-employed are treated is obscene? Of course. But I knew that going in.</p>
<p>I think it’s the parents who didn’t understand, who deluded themselves about the realities of FA, who are “bitter” and feel they’ve been fed a line of horse puckey. The purpose of the thread, IMO, is to educate people ahead of time, so that there is not the feeling of bitterness in the end.</p>
<p>What bothers me is the schools that proclaim that they will fully meet need–then offer you something that requires that you pay triple your EFC. I didn’t actually expect them to meet EFC. I expected to be gapped. I didn’t expect to be gapped to that extent. </p>
<p>That is not meeting need. Why pretend?</p>
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<p>“Feeling bad” was exactly my problem, Muffy–until I realized that my S, who was totally on board with this plan (same as yours), was not feeling bad at all. He had a lineup of OOS publics that offered exactly what he wanted, including good honors programs. It wasn’t a letdown; he didn’t feel like we were “shafting” him. And it helps that he’s always been a kid who doesn’t equate value with high cost. He loves his future university. I’ve stopped feeling bad. We need to get over our parental guilt (good post, Blossom).</p>
<p>There’s a thread over on the Financial Aid board asking the very question that Curmudgeon warned against here. The delusions will continue. The swallows will return this time next year. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>From my vantage point, I do not mind a slight overtone of bitterness because it examplifies the TRUE feelings of parents. The reality is that it is UNDERSTANDABLE that bitterness appears as a reaction to years of poor guidance–if not outright misrepresentation. </p>
<p>In my opinion, this is very different from feeling entitled … or envious of the “better” fortune of others. Fwiw, it is not hard to identify the basis of much of the current entitlement in our current financing mechanism for K-12. Since a LOT of the current expenditures are paid by citizens who do not or no longer benefit from public education, younger families are very rarely presented with THEIR own bill. Add the fact that about 90% of US families attend a “free” public school, it’s easy to see how they could be lulled in believing similar magical elves might save the day and keep the school close to free. </p>
<p>This is not very different from developing the habit of only eating at fancy restaurants when someone else picks up the tab. Only the payer understands the full price, the cost and value of luxury, and the limitations of other people’s money. </p>
<p>In the world of financial aid, the concept that the PRIMARY responsibility of financing one’s education rests squarely on the parents’ and the students’ shoulders is NOT repeated enough nor is the fact that cheaper alternatives such as community colleges are available and plentiful. </p>
<p>It’s the difference between the ability to pay and the willingness to pay that creates the problems, especially since part of the message has been that the most sought-after schools really … want your children at any cost.</p>
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<p>Agree with you, xiggi, on this! For those who send their kids to public schools, spending 13 years getting education for “free” gets us conditioned to the idea that education doesn’t require a giant drawdown twice a year. Paying for college is a rude shock to those who aren’t braced for it.</p>
<p>I want to share a view from near the end of the process. Six years ago our daughter got accepted to an elit college with no financial aid. This, despite the fact that we are a decidedly middle class family where one spouse had been forced into very early retirement due to industry downsizing. Three years later the story was the same with our son. He was accepted to an elite college with minimal financial aid only for the one year that his sister was still in college. We gritted our teeth and sent both kids to their dream schools. This mean that our house has fallen into disrepair; we drive our cars until they won’t go anymore; we have forgone luxuries such as cable TV, going out to eat, and new clothes; we travel very little and look for ways to cut costs when we do; and our retirement savings are definitely not what they should be at this point in time. Has this hurt? Yes, but not as much as you’d think. We are all smiles when we think about what our kids have done with their wonderful educations. Our daughter is finishing up her second year in a PhD program. Our son, who was totally unmotivated in high school, has been so inspired by his classes, research, and extracurricular activities that he’s recently decided to add a third major to his already ambitious workload. Would we do it all again? In a heartbeat!</p>
<p>I’ve posted about a friend’s son before, but I wanted to give you the outcome. He applied to MIT and about 5 other schools, with Caltech being his second choice. Good student, good scores, in the mid-range of those schools, but zero extracurriculars and no oomph. Everyone told them to have safeties and especially financial safeties. Well, he didn’t get into MIT and only got into one school, a very expensive one with no financial aid. They were so sure that their kid was “the one” that these wonderful people didn’t plan realistically. Now he has one admission to an incredibly expensive school that he will have to pay the whole way for and there is no way that’s possible. He may end up in our community college which doesn’t have anything near his chosen major. All for lack of a plan and a realistic assessment. They are all devastated. My daughter has seen this situation this weekend and it was a wake-up call for her, too. I certainly learned a lesson.</p>
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Ah, that’s something else they don’t tell you - your FAFSA EFC is not necessarily (or even usually) your college EFC. The game is stacked - the colleges get to set your EFC depending on how they want to calculate it. That’s their right - it is, after all, their money - but it makes it hard for parents to plan. And IM calculators only go so far, on the basis of assumptions that a particular college may or may not use.</p>
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<p>Not only is it not something to feel bad about, it has a positive value. The student who appreciates the financial aspect of his (or her) educational decisions and goes for merit awards can feel a sense of accomplishment for “paying” part (if not all) of the cost of the education though his own abilities and financially sound decisions.</p>
<p>blossom, on my part, it is as Chedva said, " 'It’s not so much “bitterness” ’ as trying to figure out the rules".</p>
<p>My comments should be read as more ‘rueful’ than ‘bitter’.</p>
<p>The last time I had any experience applying to a college/university was for graduate school 30 (egad!) years ago. At that time, I could tell pretty easily which schools I could attend from both a financial basis and from an admission basis. There were no surprises.</p>
<p>All I’m saying is that, naively, we thought for the last eighteen years that our kiddoes would have the opportunities to attend whatever tier-level college that interested them–as long as they worked diligently, were well-rounded, respectful, disciplined, focused, clean-living upstanding citizens–and we could pay for it. We, as their parents, thought that those stellar grades and not-your-usual-run-of-the-mill performances in their chosen passions might even entice colleges to offer merit scholarships. </p>
<p>Knowing then what I know now about college admissions and financial stuff, would I change anything about what we instilled and encouraged in them? No.</p>
<p>But do note my ‘rueful’ observation that very high academically achieving, (but not resume building), highly talented and focused in their chosen physical endeavors for more than 15-years, untraumatized Anglo-Saxon females from a two-parent household, whose parents highly value education (and hold three professional degree/licenses between them) sought out the best foundational school programs for the children (paying private school tuition until high school) have little to set them apart from the masses applying to the upper tiered schools. And that they are most probably destined to be overlooked because of the lack of some crazy ‘Hook’. Being normal kids with healthy outlooks on life and an ability to balance competing interests in their lives is so passe’, apparently. Not the type of kid the ‘biggies’ are interested in educating.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, they have been inundated with brochure after brochure and e-mail after e-mail soliciting and cajoling them into submitting applications to these colleges due to ‘their stellar academic achievements and scores on the PSAT, SAT, and ACT, etc’.</p>
<p>Back in my day, those types of contacts from the individual colleges meant the college felt the student was someone to be seriously considered. Nowdays, I’ve come to realize, it is simply a mass-mailing to try to boost the college’s own prestige by increasing its precious ‘number of applications received’ so as to decrease their ‘acceptance percentage’ in order to boost their perceived ‘elite’ status. Bitter? Nope. Just ruefully beginning to get the gist of the playing field. Rather sobering to see how ‘Pollyanna’-ish we graduate degreed parents have been all these years!</p>
<p>Hopefully, we will have learned something from daughter No.1’s experiences sufficiently to maximize daughter No.2’s chances at her preferred schools. Luckily for us, daughter No.1’s first choice (based upon the program of her choice) wasn’t in the upper tiers–those waggish schools who e-mailed and snail mailed her repeatedly, one encouraging her to apply to their prestigious scholars program, only to all send her blithe ‘regrets’ on April 1st. She is, however, ecstatic with her preferred school, so alls well that ends well.</p>
<p>Nope, not bitter, just rueful at the realization of how naive we were in this ‘game’. Daughter No.1 had already pegged the repetitive taking of the SATs, the prepatory courses for SAT, and the SATIIs as a ‘game’ that was not really reflective of anything other than paying out money. I just thought the actual admission process was still student-oriented.</p>
<pre><code>All I’m saying—to the extent you all are wondering HOW to reach parents and prevent the ‘cluelessness’—is that we aren’t all naive because we stuck our heads in the sand, but only that initially, we didn’t know any better. And once, we began to ‘know better’, we still have difficulty teasing out just what the darn Rules really are. LOL
Once I got over the naivete of ‘no merit or athletic scholarships’ at the dream schools, then we had to deal with the reality of probably no financial aid. I say ‘probably’ because the ‘carrot’ of FA was always held out–even to us, who had already been given information that we wouldn’t qualify. But, based upon the EFC analysis we’d received and the hints in threads here, I’d begun to be abit wary of the chances of receiving or qualifying for FA.
As someone said above, $100,000 may not (and I guess, probably isn’t) the FA ‘point of no way’, but some number surely is. Is that number $150K, $200K, $400K? At some point, I can’t imagine that a family’s income–regardless of how many kids are in school–just isn’t going to garner the sympathies of the FA officers. All I want to know is a ballpark figure for what that income is–and I’ll even take it without any of the contingent scenarios. Just give it to me straight up: If we have one kid in college, one in high school for the next two years, a mortgage, and no unusual economic circumstances, what is the income level at which no FA is a given?
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<p>I asked several financial aid officers if I had to submit a FAFSA for a freshman for no reason other than in case circumstances changed down the road and perhaps a change would occur in FA qualifications. Each time I was told, “No”. If circumstances change, they would consider the FA status at that time. It wouldn’t matter that she didn’t qualify as a freshman. Several of the school’s websites also reflected this position.</p>
<p>here you go curmie…</p>
<p>**Federal Methodology ** is used to determine eligibility for all federal funds, such as Federal Pell Grants, Federal Academic Competitiveness Grants (ACG), Federal National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grants, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (FSEOG), Federal Stafford loans, Federal Perkins loans, and Federal Work-Study.</p>
<p>**Schools that distribute their own institutional funds use an Institutional Methodology and their professional judgment to determine eligibility for their school’s scholarship funds. **</p>
<p>Two distinct formulas assess information reported in the aid application process. The traditional institutional methodology (IM), developed by the College Board and refined annually by economists and aid administrators, determines the expected family share of costs. IM is the dominant standard among selective national colleges. Most schools that use an institutional methodology to disburse their own funds use either the CSS profile or their own FA form.</p>
<p>The federal methodology (FM) through the filing of the FAFSA determines eligibility for federal aid. All schools require students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents to at minimum file the FAFSA if they are requesting FA. The only thing the FAFSA does is determine one’s ability for federal aid, (pell grants, seog, stafford and perkins loans).</p>
<p>Differences between the IM and FM models include:</p>
<p>IM collects information on estimated academic year family income, medical expenses, elementary and secondary school tuition and unusual circumstances. FM omits these questions.</p>
<p>IM considers a fuller range of family asset information, while FM ignores assets of siblings, all assets of certain families with less than $50,000 of income, and both home and family farm equity.</p>
<p>FM defines income as the “adjusted gross income” on federal tax returns, plus various categories of untaxed income. IM includes in total income any paper depreciation, business, rental or capital losses which artificially reduce adjusted gross income.</p>
<p>FM does not assume a minimum student contribution to education; IM expects the student, as primary beneficiary of the education, to devote some time each year to earning money to pay for education.</p>
<p>FM ignores the noncustodial parent in cases of divorce or separation; IM expects parents to help pay for education, regardless of current marital status.</p>
<p>FM and IM apply different percentages to adjust the parental contribution when multiple siblings are simultaneously enrolled in college, and IM considers only siblings enrolled in undergraduate programs.</p>
<p>The IM expected family share represents a best estimate of a family’s capacity (relative to other families) to absorb, over time, the costs of education. It is not an assessment of cash on hand, a value judgment about how much a family should be able to use current income, or a measure of liquidity. The final determinations of demonstrated need and awards rest with the University and are based upon a uniform and consistent treatment of family circumstances.</p>
<p>Except in the most extraordinary circumstances, Colleges classifies incoming students as dependent upon parents for institutional aid purposes, even though some students may meet the federal definition of “independence.”</p>
<p>Students enrolling as dependent students are considered dependent throughout their undergraduate years when need for institutional scholarships is determined.</p>
<p>For institutional aid purposes a student may not “declare” independence due to attainment of legal age, internal family arrangements, marriage or family disagreements.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that many of the “elite/deep pocket/no loan initiative” schools calculate your financial aid using a combination of both the federal and institutional methodologies.</p>
<p>At some schools (Dartmouth for example) if the contribution calculated using the federal need analysis is higher than the school’s calculation, the higher figure must be used.</p>
<p>treemavan:</p>
<p>There are lots of variables, the efc calculator at Finaid does a good job of projecting EFC for both the FAFSA federal methodology and the Profile institutional methodology.</p>
<p>Very broadly, however-- a parental income of 110K alone will result in a parental contribution to the EFC that exceeds the Cost of Attendance for most in-state publics (about 26K). This assumes 4 in family, one in college, older parent 52, parental assets below the asset protection allowance; also no reportable student assets, and student income under about $3500 for the year.</p>
<p>Using the same assumptions, the institutional methodology (Profile) will result in an EFC approaching the Cost of Attendance of most Privates with parental income of about 180K. BUT many families will have some contribution to the parental portion of the EFC from home equity, which would result in the EFC exceeding the Cost of Attendance at a much lower parental income.</p>
<p>Also for families with kids holding college savings in their names, the EFC rises quickly, causing the EFC to exceed the COA at a much lower parental income.</p>
<p>audiophile: My guidance counselor thought that my playing piano would get me a full ride to MIT! Luckily I knew this was not true, but even guidance counselors do not know much when it comes to financial aid…</p>
<p>sybbie: Thanks for the lesson. I had heard the terms IM and FM bandied about but didn’t really know what they meant.</p>
<p>Thanks sybbie. I knew I could count on you. You did your usual great job.</p>
<p>I’m hoping some lurkers are taking good notes. ;)</p>
<p>Very clear info sybbie. It explains the differences in EFCs with the kids I whose data I shared in an earlier post. The LACs the kids are planning to attend all had their own forms (that I now know are IMs) and were all US news top 20 schools.</p>
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<p>I think that the FAFSA does a little more than that. Although that theory seems to be challenged by the latest financial aid initiatives, the EFC generated by the filing of the FAFSA does (or perhaps did) establish the minimum family contribution and, as a corollary, also established the MAXIMUM financial need through the formula of “Financial Need = COA - EFC.” This maximum financial need figure is (or was) important because the total of EFC + financial need could never exceed the COA at schools using federal funds. Or at least that what everyone was led to believe. </p>
<p>As an example of what happened in the past, a student with a 3,000 EFC and a COA of 53,000 might receive a scholarship worth 50,000 from the school and also get a Coca Cola merit scholarhip for 5,000.00. If the school scholarship is merit based, the student would see his 3,000 EFC cancelled and would be able to keep the extra 2,000. However, is the scholarship is need based and represents a combination of school grants and a Pell (as an example) the entire Coca Cola merit aid would reduce the school scholarship. The student and his or her family would still have to pay the EFC in full. In this example, the school would be the only beneficiary of the Coca Cola. Of course, this example does not use the more probable situation where the 50,000 also includes work-study and summer expectations. As we know, some schools do allow outside grants to replace those “soft” items. However, at no time can the total exceed the COA, except for a 100% merit package. </p>
<p>Could it be that the old rules were nothing but the product of a creative mind that developed a way to limit the financial aid of thousands of students?</p>