<p>Yes, think how much easier their lives would be if they had “parked” that money in a 529 account… where at least they still have access to it to actually pay for tuition.</p>
<p>Stay at home moms are “selfish” now? Only on CC.</p>
<p>Full rides are not that easy to come by – so we end up with awards that are manageable but still require us to pay $X – where $X is a stretch.</p>
<p>But why should college be any different than paying for any other living expenses?
Its not a necessity & it isnt a right.</p>
<p>“Stay at home moms are “selfish” now? Only on CC.”</p>
<p>I think the point was that if someone wants to pick apart your choices and begrudge your kid’s award they will find a way to do that.</p>
<p>My husband and I have a 200k income based on my having worked since my kids were 10 weeks old, including lots of overtime and husband having worked two jobs for 20 years. Our kids got merit assistance and we consider ourselves the luckiest people in the entire world to be able to pay the rest out of cash. On paper, we could be attacked for our income and sometimes are, but often those people would have no interest in stocking supermarket shelves overnight for 20 years or working 60 hours a week with small children. The vast majority of families do the very best they can and deserve to be respected for that because most things work out in the end. I always desperately envied stay at home moms, but now I realize that for us,this was better since some of the moms who contributed so much to my kids’ classrooms over the years are now pushing 50 with nothing saved for retirement. People who are genuinely scamming should be prosecuted, but otherwise everyone should climb off their high horses and stop making assumptions about others, even those evil high earners. The class warfare in this country sickens me.</p>
<p>"Where the disconnect occurs is “middle class” families thinking they should be able to afford absurdly priced private colleges, OOS publics, or other extravagances. "</p>
<p>Will someone remind me how to put a quote in one of those boxes? </p>
<p>There certainly is confusion and a lot of mixed signals. When you have a child who is a good student (as most of the parents on CC do), you start hearing from a fairly early age how your child will be sure to get scholarships, and how this or that college will love to see them coming. Then as you start actually researching and learn how difficult it can be to get into these schools, one turns to places like CC to try to learn the truth, and it seems everyone’s truth is different. We hear…“Yes, you might be able to get scholarships with those stats, or maybe not…but then that scholarship will just be subtracted from financial aid, unless…” We see posts about people disappointed in financial aid/merit offers, but also posts about those who received great offers, that may have even been better than their own stat public. We hear that only the very wealthy actually pay sticker price at those absurdly priced colleges, and those colleges send brochures and make speeches telling prospective students not to worry about the finances, because they will work to give everyone an opportunity with grants and aid etc, etc…So, we do get hopeful that maybe things will work in our favor, and of course we all hope that our kids will be able to have access to the best (however we define that).</p>
<p>Is it fair that if my husband and I were divorced my kid’s EFC would be 1/10th of what it is today?
By staying married and having two incomes we have put our kids in a terrible mess.
This system drives me crazy! The EFC calculations are out of control.</p>
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<p>Ive heard this before on CC. 
</p>
<p>Friends/relatives/acquaintances say many things to parents - even if they are total strangers.
You get advice on what stocks to invest in, whether to quit your job or not, what car to buy & if your baby boy should be circumsized.
I have always taken what I hear with a grain of salt, doesn’t everyone?</p>
<p>A family bears their own expenses, whether that be how they decide how many children to have, where to live and if they can take a vacation.
Why should paying for post high school education be different and why are we so quick to assume that it is, & * in our favor*? ;)</p>
<p>“There certainly is confusion and a lot of mixed signals. When you have a child who is a good student (as most of the parents on CC do), you start hearing from a fairly early age how your child will be sure to get scholarships, and how this or that college will love to see them coming. Then as you start actually researching and learn how difficult it can be to get into these schools, one turns to places like CC to try to learn the truth, and it seems everyone’s truth is different.”</p>
<p>In the many years since the people who first said that about child Z were actually going through the college application experience themselves, the whole game has changed - almost beyond recognition. Much of our struggle as families is simply because the game we thought we would be playing at this point in our lives barely resembles the game as it must be played now. 35 years ago when I graduated from my full-recognizable-at-CC-highly-selective-LAC I had every expectation that any child of mine would be able to attend that institution or one of its peers. However, my kid isn’t a match at all for that type of institution, is pursuing a major that is very poorly supported at that type of institution, and our family financial situation would have made it all but impossible for us to scrape together the money (even with the excellent need-based aid the place offers). Our reality barely resembles my former expectation. Older, and I hope wiser, I can now see that it was not truly an expectation, but rather a fantasy of the life I could have if everything worked out the way I imagined that it could.</p>
<p>And truly, the life I got is better than what I dreamed, so I do win after all.</p>
<p>I have always interpreted CC’s “gaming the system” to mean parents who make immoral decisions to gain financial aid for which they would not otherwise be eligible.</p>
<p>One situation that gets posted every so often is a mother who has never married but has lived a millionaire’s lifestyle for years with a doctor/lawyer/entrepreneur “boyfriend”. Mom has little or no income on her own, so junior qualifies for an essential free ride at full-need-met-college even while the family flies to Grand Cayman Island for Spring Break every year. I am consistently appalled with posters who encourage others to make marriage decisions based on financial aid prospects.</p>
<p>Another situation that is not uncommon is the dad who transfers assets (vacation home, college funds, etc.) to the student’s grandparents during the sophmore year of high school. Dad then minimizes his income from the family business for a few years during the college FA season and the family looks dirt poor on paper.</p>
<p>A third scenario involves international students who come from countries where income reporting is far more arcane and abusive than ours (yes, there are systems far worse than our IRS). In some cases, these students’ families can write down whatever number they want for income and their government will provide supporting documentation.</p>
<p>There are other situations that similarly border on being fraud, or even cross the line. These are the huge loopholes in the High Cost/High Aid model.</p>
<p>
Nothing wrong with that.
See <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/629955-should-i-get-married-independent-student-status.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/629955-should-i-get-married-independent-student-status.html</a>. Some people do marry in order to get more financial aid</p>
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<p>The reason the FAFSA only counts one parent’s income in divorce situations is that all the costs of supporting the child now have to be doubled–a bedroom at each house, another mortgage or rent payment, two of everything the child needs. By staying married, you and your husband can put all of your resources toward one family support system. If you are divorced, the amount per year that it cost to raise your kids when you shared the cost with your husband is now double (or some multiplier, depending on your circumstances).</p>
<p>The CSS, which most colleges seem to require nowadays, does count both households’ income.</p>
<p>As for what is more of a “terrible mess” for your kids, studies show that children of divorced parents tend to do less well than those whose parents are still together.</p>
<p>
Like this:</p>
<p>[noparse]
[/noparse]</p>
<p>I think people lose site of the fact that EFC is a number that primarily determines eligibility for subsidized loans. An EFC of, say, $6000 does not mean that college will cost $6000. Pell grants are modest (<$5000), and EFC has to be quite low to qualify for a Pell grant, and generally the only way to get that level is to have a low end income as well. </p>
<p>My daughter did qualify for partial Pell grants (not full grants) in some (not all) of the years she was in college. Our “family contribution” for that year was roughly $10-$12K more than the FAFSA EFC. </p>
<p>I think that the idea of “gaming the system” is something of a myth perpetuated by people who aren’t all that familiar with how the system actually works. Certainly there are little tricks that can result in small amounts of reductions in EFC. But the reality is that very few students are attending colleges that actually meet full need. So a reduced EFC can simply end up meaning a bigger gap (at least on paper) between the EFC and the COA.</p>
<p>emeraldkity,
I see what you mean, and of course we each have to research and decide for ourselves, but when the kids are young, few people are going to delve into the intricacies of college financing to the degree that they will once the kids are in high school. The other topics that you mention that people give advice on are all things that we would tend to get a variety of opinions on, where the ‘smart kids will have no trouble paying for college’ notion seems to have been pretty pervasive in years past (and as happymom points out - may have been more true in the past than now), and I think it is natural to want to believe/hope for the best.
We did save for college, as much as we could, and honestly, even if we knew more about the system and thought we needed to save more, I don’t know that we would have been able to.</p>
<p>notrichenough, Thank you!</p>
<p>I think one problem is that the notion of how to pay for college is different in the abstract than when you have a teenager with mind of his own.</p>
<p>I’m a UC grad, my kid’s father is a UC grad, and we didn’t prioritize saving for college because we assumed that our kids would grow up and attend a public college in California. We didn’t quite anticipate the rise in in-state tuition, but my kids both had reasonable offers of financial aid from UC campuses which would have been very affordable for me. But the kids grew up and wanted to attend OOS privates- so the picture changed.</p>
<p>Similarly, there ARE a lot of scholarship opportunities out there for high achieving students – it’s just that most of the time, they aren’t at the schools that the kid wants to attend. Merit aid is structured so that the generous offers are most likely to come from schools that the kid views as a safety.</p>
<p>We did save for college, as much as we could, and honestly, even if we knew more about the system and thought we needed to save more, I don’t know that we would have been able to.</p>
<p>Same here.
Our kids are first gen college, oldest graduated from high school,13 years ago.
Both pretty bright kids- but we never expected college tuition to be paid by anyone other than ourselves, in the typical fashion/ from savings ( we had lots of savings bonds;)) loans & current income.
We were able to pay EFC- which was about the cost of instate public.
Oldest attended full need met LAC for that & her sister attends in state U.
If we couldn’t have afforded the EFC, then they probably would have started out at a CC or used AP tests to reduce course load & save money,</p>
<p>But what families on CC seem to be saying is that
“They can’t afford their EFC - and it is the same as tuition at a private - full need no merit school. But their kid deserves to go to their “dream” school and not at the instate public where other families who live within their means, send their kids.”
If you have an EFC of $60,000, I understand if you don’t want to spend upwards of $200,000 for your child’s degree- even if that income allows both saving and spending from current income to pay expenses.
However- if they are admitted to a school that doesn’t give merit, how unlikely is it that they were not offered merit elsewhere?
So it isn’t really that they don’t * have any choices*, you just really aren’t thrilled with the choices.</p>
<p>Families who have zero EFC or families like mine who can afford the EFC, are somewhat satisfied with the way things are.
Families with higher EFCs aren’t satisfied and want the college to reduce COA, so they can afford it.
Of course then the college would no longer be able to admit so many students with 0-$15,000 EFC.
But those with money will be happy, because they will be able to keep more of it.</p>
<p>And isn’t that The American Dream?
:)</p>
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<p>emeraldkity4 for the win!</p>
<p>@4kidsdad - your post (#50) is bizarre:</p>
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<p>I followed the link you provided where roughly eleven people responded directly to the posted question. Nine of these responses sided with me and were strongly against the idea. Of the other two, one suggested flippantly that it might be a fun adventure and the other described a single specific anecdote from 80 years ago.</p>
<p>I stand by my assertion that there are numerous ways to legally, but immorally, game the FA system. Others have suggested that the number of these abusive cases is relatively small and limited to mostly private colleges that can afford the losses. While I concede this point, the cavalier attitude of the perpetrators is usually outrageous.</p>
<p>Is it any more or less immoral than marrying just to get a Green Card?</p>