<p>ClassicRockerDad – A lot of people who make enough money not to qualify for need-based aid still may not think that it is financially responsible to spend vast amounts of money on college. I know plenty of families in this category. They make too much money for aid, but they don’t make enough to spend more than $20,000/year on college and have money left for other children’s education/their retirement/caring for their parents/etc.</p>
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<p>Maybe their values are different from yours, but not in the way you think. Having a deep respect for education is one value. Being financially responsible is another. They are certainly not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>Also, there are plenty of excellent public schools and there are plenty of not-so-excellent private schools.</p>
<p>Had similar process, searching for good fit schools that were affordable for our circumstances. Used a lot of search engines and data bases, NCES, College Board, USNWRP, Cappex. Want to put in a plug for CC’s Supermatch, it actually gives very interesting results, and I think is easy to understand and manipulate scenarios. It helped us pick good list of schools, sort by a variety of criteria, and we ended up with 4 acceptances to 4 schools, all with at least some merit aid. Son chose most expensive (he’s always been that way) University for preference of major, but for his stats did well with need and merit giving him about a total $30000 loan bill for BA. We limited him to that much debt, we won’t take it on. Good news for him, we have managed to save a healthy college fund by starting 18 years ago. He didn’t want to do a dozen apps, I discouraged apps to the FA out of reach dream schools. His in state safety gave him no need based aid, leaving his best offer private not that much more.</p>
<p>*I paid for private K-12 education for my kids. I would never say that those who used the public system as not valuing education.
*</p>
<p>Ack! don’t know what happened to my sentence. Should be: I would never say that those who used the public system do not value education.</p>
<p>*Perhaps I read more into what the OP said than I should have. But perhaps not. </p>
<p>80K is a lot less than the 240K that private school actually costs. That seems like a very small amount for someone that doesn’t qualify for need based aid.</p>
<p>I can understand not being able to afford 240K, but 80K for someone making close to 200K, which is what a family would need to make to not qualify for ANY need based aid at a top private.*</p>
<p>We don’t know what this family earns. The family may not know that HYPS gives super aid. There are many privates that wouldn’t give free money aid to a family that earns $150k. That doesn’t mean that they can afford full freight. </p>
<p>We also don’t know how long a family has earned a high income. Mom may have recently returned to work, so maybe a college savings acct was never affordable. Maybe Dad recently got a promotion that pushed him into six figures. Maybe the family has several kids and figure that $80k each is what they can afford. Maybe they have a special needs child that will need a lifetime of care. </p>
<p>Your post takes very little info and slaps them with presumption that they don’t value education as much as you do.</p>
<p>Financial aid for many private colleges means a hefty chunk of loans and many of us would rather not have the kids take that on. 4 years ago, we called Brown to inquire about the aid package that we received since we thought the ivies were generous. She told us that our house and retirement funds were all assets that can be tap into for educational funding. I think most of us would disagree. If the students/parents feel that the undergrad experience at school X is worth the money, great but the OP’s All-Safety Strategy is worth sharing as an alternative or possibility that some families may not have thought about.</p>
<p>For students who know that professional/grad schools are on the horizon, the money saved for undergrad can be used then. Graduate stipends for many schools (esp. in high cost of living part of the country) are often not enough and it is a rarity for professional schools to give out merit scholarships. That $240K can easily turn into over $500K if you are thinking of medical school. That is a staggering large sum!</p>
<p>Wise parents also are realistic about the stability of their employment. 20k each year for 4 years might be the figure that is do-able in a worst case scenario involving job loss. We were huge cheapskates with Happykid’s education, and it is a good thing: the breadwinner was laid off in a massive company-gutting event half-way through junior year of college. Senior year will be workable because of a slightly improved aid package, but mostly because the bulk of the cost for that year happens to be sitting safely in the bank right now. We got lucky. Some of the ex-colleagues had kids at financial stretches. Not all of them will be able to go back this fall.</p>
<p>As for what to do if the kid is the LAC type? Unfortunately, the all-safety-strategy probably won’t work. The low-ranked regional LACs that might shell out for a student with high stats probably don’t offer enough academic variety/quality to be truly attractive for that student. If the stats are good enough to make the higher-ranked national-reputation LACs possible, then they probably are good enough to get merit money at one of the public Us that offer it, and the student can do his/her best to build an LAC-like experience within that larger U. Not optimal for a kid who really wants a small cozy LAC experience, but financially necessary for many of them.</p>
<p>We do not qualify for need based aid. I am so darn happy dd1 has a merit scholarship to a public LAC that makes it possible for her to attend. I guess we do not value education either. I don’t have 720k in the bank and, even if I did, I would think twice about spending it all on my kids education.</p>
<p>It is a great strategy. Congrats to your son for the results.</p>
<p>We do a similar strategy, but we include some "Hail Mary passes’ in the mix. We just don’t count on them coming through. One friend of mine recently had one come through, so sometimes it does.</p>
<p>It’s all very complicated and no two families have the same strategy and no one strategy will work for everyone. I also thought that possibly the OP’s child might have missed out on the chance to attend some schools because of a presumption of what they might offer, even the Ivies. I think if a child likes a school they qualify for, for a very specific reason, if you can afford the application fee, perhaps it’s worth a shot.</p>
<p>I also think that families need to consider (i) if child applies only to schools where their stats are way above the average, maybe that school will not be enough of a challenge - and might not have as good a reputation in the employment world and (ii) “Tuft’s Syndrome” - we can dispute all day long if that happens, but I believe from personal experience that DS was waitlisted by perhaps 2-3 colleges solely because the college, for whatever reason, did not believe he would actually attend if accepted, and that generally happens when there is a mismatch between the child’s stats and the school’s average. Potentially fixable with sufficient interest expressed to the school.</p>