<p>Unless outside scholarships are renewable for the 4 years of undergrad it is going to be even more difficult to afford Rice next year. Not only do you have to factor NOT having the scholarships, costs generally increase each year. (This is true of any school.) Parents and students need to recognize this fact when considering if the cost is worth the return. How far into debt are you willing to be when you graduate. Will your post graduation income allow you to repay loans in a manner which allows you to also have a life?</p>
<p>Leonard: I can sympathize with you. We are getting zero need based aid. Frugal ways of living and relatively decent income threw us off the chart. We are not rich and much closer to retirement (year or 2 away), but we decided to give the gift to our child. He is taking loans - from us without interest (hopefully he will pay us back). </p>
<p>There are no easy answers. But based on what you wrote about your D's stats, she if seems extremely bright. Only you can decide, if she would bloom - intelectually at Rice or not? would she be happy?</p>
<p>Our son is very happy where he is (not Rice). If you ask me logically if it is financially worth it, the answer is no. The cost just does not make sense.</p>
<p>But, it is priceless.</p>
<p>Only you and your D can decided what is best for you and her (and fire that financial advisor).</p>
<p>Good Luck.</p>
<p>Simba, thanks for your very thoughtful note. Good food for thought, indeed. And it's as though you've read my mind -- my own growing suspicion is that Rice may not be the best place for her, in terms of academic interest. She has a full tuition waiver plus $3000/yr toward living expenses at another school which, though overall not quite as illustrious as Rice, is regularly ranked no. 2 in the country in what she'll probably study. Also, I think she's finally realizing that there's much to be said for going where you're wanted, and this school has made it very clear that she is very much wanted.</p>
<p>man dude, its gonna be like thtat in every school. rice is not intentionally being mendatious or misleading. they do meet a 100 percent of the estimated need by the government. would they believe the gov or you? would anybody really want to pay anything? they met 100 percent of my need.</p>
<p>Good for you. I can only report that they came nowhere near meeting our need.</p>
<p>As for the rest... I am not a dude. I am a 58-year-old man. And I don't lie.</p>
<p>BTW, Simba... "(and fire that financial advisor)"</p>
<p>No way. :-) He's right. As he almost always is.</p>
<p>You guys are sort of freaking me out now. Maybe I shouldn't have turned down that full ride to the state university...</p>
<p>leonard: you can be dude if you want...youth is what u make it to be...its all inside you :D what people consider what they can pay is alot of tiems different than what they can really afford. think about the many things you have in your life and really analyse which ones are needed and which ones are luxury. im just speaking in general. are you willing to give any of them up for ur daughter or son so that you can afford it. it is all about sacrifices. my parents gave up their carreers to bring us to the united states. they went from white collar workers with a high social status to a blue collar status. they lost a big part of their life. but to them it was worth it because now i am going to rice and through their sacrifice i will have a better future. i know ur situation is different and im not trying to compare them.</p>
<p>Take a loan out there with no interest for the first four years (time it takes to graduate and get a job). Have parents co-sign and pay it as you go over time. You dont have to pay a lump sum of $40k to go to a good school. Furthermor FASFA's are resent each year to adjust with your socioeconomic standing.</p>
<p>ALSO, though you might not recieve a grant, you may recieve loan offers. </p>
<p>PS The kid (if theyre going to college esp one costing 40k) will be able to afford the loan over time. You don't need to do everything for them; they can bare part of the burden. If you need to set them down and talk about the future, 10+ years from now, and ask them if they want to make the sacrifice.</p>
<p>Leonard:</p>
<p>If your D wants to go to that other place - go. Just don't go there to spite Rice. Also, did you include your retirement assets in FAFSA? Retriement assets should not be counted.</p>
<p>Now let us suppose you entered everything correctly, and you say your EFC was way off the chart. Let us say, the EFC calculated was $50 K, and let us further assume that it was in error by 50%. Then your true EFC would be 25K. Rice determined that you should be able to pay 37 K. There is a gap of 12 K/year. It is not hard to bridge that gap. Is it? Your D can work during the summer. My son only worked part time at Walmart and still was able to make 2.3 K. If he had worked full time, he might have made 3.5 K. So now the gap is 8.5 K. Also, don't forget that when your D is in College, your household expenses may go down a little ~ 3k/year. So the gap is 5.5 K. A loan of 5.5 K/year is not that bad.</p>
<p>Food for thought.</p>
<p>based on the popular threads on CC, a lot of the top schools are making it virtually free to go to school if you make below a certain amount. </p>
<p>Penn was 50k, Stanford was 45k and very cheap below 60k, Harvard is 40 or 45k and very cheap below 60k, while Rice recently announced that your family has to make under...30k. so Rice is certainly behind.</p>
<p>Another few things you as a family can do.....My wife started susbstituting. We figured, after taxes she would net about 4K/year and it is very easy to cut 10% from your household budget without any pain - I don't even have to think more than 10 mins. For example, get rid of the cable and cell phones and bingo you save 1 k/year. Don't buy a new car. One of my car is 14 year young.</p>
<p>and don't forget, you do get discount on your D's auto insurance when she is away from home.</p>
<p>Sreis - when Rice announced that it would eliminate loans for students with family income <30,000, it was before Stanford or Penn had any similar program, and when Harvard and Yale had similar thresholds for their programs. It was an industry leading move, at the time. (And actually still is considering just how many schools out of the 3,000+ in the US have such programs). Now that more schools are jumping on the bandwagon, I expect Rice to increase it's threshold. But I don't think it's fair to say that Rice is behind...</p>
<p>did you include your retirement assets in FAFSA? Retriement assets should not be counted.</p>
<p>--- In the forms we filled out, retirement assets not officially sheltered as retirement are included. </p>
<p>Now let us suppose you entered everything correctly, and you say your EFC was way off the chart. Let us say, the EFC calculated was $50 K, and let us further assume that it was in error by 50%. Then your true EFC would be 25K. Rice determined that you should be able to pay 37 K. There is a gap of 12 K/year. It is not hard to bridge that gap. Is it?</p>
<p>--- That's beside the point. There should be no gap.</p>
<p>"--- That's beside the point. There should be no gap."</p>
<p>Well in that case, a school has to rely on the numbers generated by FAFSA/PROFILE........and according to those calculations there is no gap. They just can not arbitrarily say that in case of Leonard, let us reduce his EFC by 12 K. Sounds like, you are willing to pay X, but not Y.</p>
<p>I was just trying to take the emotions out of the discussion and decision.</p>
<p>"--- That's beside the point. There should be no gap."</p>
<p>Well in that case, a school has to rely on the numbers generated by FAFSA/PROFILE...</p>
<hr>
<p>The point is that the numbers generated by the FAFSA are precisely the source of the gap. Relying on the unreliable is the problem, not the solution.</p>
<p>I don't think this is leading anywhere, unfortunately. It seems to be degenerating into circularity or worse. See my original post: The FAFSA can produce distorted results bearing no relation to reality. I'm not talking about parental irresponsibility or tightfistedness; I'm talking about real-world ability to pay. I'm not the first person to have ever noticed that. It's not just an opinion.</p>
<p>I thought there might be parents who had addressed this problem, and perhaps found a solution. But there won't be any solutions forthcoming unless and until the reality of the problem is recognized, and it doesn't seem to get much recognition here. Which seems very strange to me.</p>
<p>So Rice pays for everything if your parents make under 30K a year? Just wondering if it was really that simple and clear cut...</p>
<p>Not quite that simple, I don't think -- surely it depends on assets, too. But if assets are minimal, it does seem to be that simple, or very nearly so. Run the FAFSA with your family's figures, and the result should be fairly accurate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The point is that the numbers generated by the FAFSA are precisely the source of the gap. Relying on the unreliable is the problem, not the solution.</p>
<p>I don't think this is leading anywhere, unfortunately. It seems to be degenerating into circularity or worse. See my original post: The FAFSA can produce distorted results bearing no relation to reality.
[/quote]
Leonard, I'm not sure what you are expecting from replies to your postings ... but from my perspective I can tell you why I can not provide any meaningful comments. You have asserted many times that the FAFSA EFC is distorted or unreliable but have given not information about why you believe it is distorted in your case. In the past when people have raised issues about their EFC they usually raise one of some common disagreements with the FAFSA calculations ... for examples ... how FAFSA treats the equity and income from family businesses, or the treatment of money saved for retirement but not in retirement accounts such as a 401k, IRA, or 403B, or expectation that equity in real estate assets be tapped. If we had an idea of the basis of your disagreement with the FAFSA EFC estimate I believe the discussion would be much more focused and hopefully more helpful. </p>
<p>To be honest in the past there have been few cases where the FAFSA EFC seemed distorted to me (usually involving family businesses) but usually they are cases where the applicant and there family believe a much higher percentage of their income and assets should be protected from college expenses ... and I think this argument has a lot of validity but I wouldn't describe that as distorted or unreliable ... on the contrary the FAFSA EFC calcualtors seem to be very predicable and consistant ... it's ususlly seems to be a question of not agreeing with their assumptions about how much schools expect a family to contribute to their kids college expenses.</p>
<p>You have asserted many times that the FAFSA EFC is distorted or unreliable but have given not information about why you believe it is distorted in your case.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Sorry, I thought I had made that clear in my first post. That contains not an assertion or a belief, but statement of fact. I'm disinclined to go into private details on this public board, but the basic fact is very straightfoward: the FAFSA predicts that we can pay $37,000/year; we can't, not without risking impoverishment of our not-so-distant retirement. That includes two categories you mentioned: retirement funds not sheltered, and a small amount of real estate, also a part of retirement savings.</p>