<p>I didn’t give the kids a set amount to contribute. Just told/telling them they are responsible for books and personal expenses. The oldest is a nursing major. Books easily run more than the school’s estimate.</p>
<p>We told our kids to apply to those schools they really wanted to attend, with the understanding that if a financial aid package came in that required us to spend more than $X amount of money we couldn’t afford it. We also stipulated that they had to apply to a financial and academic safety that they would gladly attend, and that they would be responsible for paying for books and personal expenses. We told Daughter #1 we expected her to graduate in 4 years and that she would be on her own financially after graduating as we had another kid coming right behind her (Daughter #2 is also expected to graduate in 4 years).</p>
<p>We were in the fortunate position of being able to pay for whatever school our D chose to attend, and she knew that. However, we did tell her that neither name recognition nor price tag was necessarily an indication of quality, and that we didn’t see the value in many of the schools that would cost $50,000 plus. H told her to go to whatever school she liked best; I asked her to at least do a cost benefit analysis. She ended up choosing her least expensive option (an OOS flagship that gave her a full tuition plus merit scholarship), but I’m relatively certain that it was her first choice even without regard to cost.</p>
<p>FWIW, when I was in high school everyone’s expectation was that I (and all of my siblings) would go to college. However, it was not until the end of my senior year that my parents informed me that they were not planning to contribute. This was back when one could put herself through a 4 year school on federal loans and minimum wage jobs, so I was able to pull it off, but I really felt blindsided at the time. I think the important thing is communicating the expectations very early in high school.</p>
<p>We live in a state with an expensive flagship university and pretty weak land-grant university “party-school” colleges. There’s little to no financial aid for upper middle-income households aside from loans, even though many students come from a high COL urban area. We’re a “full pay” two-income household that’s saved for college as well. Though DS would qualify for flagship, it would also be a true “bad fit”. DS is a prime candidate for small LAC. With merit alone, Midwestern private LACs (and many private universities) could cost only about $5000/year more than flagship, with higher graduation rates and much smaller class sizes. DS’ shortlist focussed on private LACs w/strong merit, and skipped the public schools altogether.</p>
<p>DS did ED, received merit, and as predicted, his COA will be about $5000/year more than flagship’s COA.</p>
<p>Meddling family members attempted to encourage DS to apply to a “bad fit” but highly prestigous university where COA would have been $25,000 more than flagship w/little chance of merit. Fortunately DS realized this “encouragement” was more about other folks’ egos than “good fit”, and no one was offering to “fill the gap” financially.</p>
<p>We are also a “full pay” household. Like busdriver11, I hope the kids would pick “worth the money” schools. H on the other hand is fine with any schools as long as the kids study well and graduate in a timely manner (4-5 years) for undergraduate degrees.</p>
<p>D prefers small private LACs. S likes the big UCs. Should we give S the difference in tuition upon his graduation? H and D say yes, S and I are in the no camp.</p>
<p>worrytoomuch,</p>
<p>I would not make a hard fast rule about it. When the time comes, you can let the heart lead.</p>
<p>We have tried to tell the kids that we’re not always “equal”, but we try hard to give everyone what they NEED.</p>
<p>D2 is a music major. Her earning potential is significantly lower than D3 who is an engineering major. When it’s all said and done, I will probably help D2 much more financially than I will D3. D3, most likely, will not struggle to pay off school loans, and will likely have them paid off one year after graduation. Not so with D2. So I expect we’ll offer more assistance there.</p>
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<p>Perhaps offer the extra money for post-graduate professional school if the student who chooses the cheaper undergraduate school decides to do that?</p>
<p>As I read these responses, especially ones like these:
I am truly thankful for the plan my mom set up for me. Definitely going to thank her when she gets home from work. </p>
<p>She doesn’t want me to work for my first year, and, if I do, she says no more than 20 hours. My “contribution” is maintaining a 3.5+ GPA in chemical engineering. I think that’ll occupy most of my time. </p>
<p>Props to meh mama.</p>
<p>^^ The sense I get from most posters here is that they expect the student to work full time in the summer and part time (10-15 hours a week) during the school year to earn the student contribution. I don’t think that’s at all unreasonable, and I don’t think there are many parents out there who want their kids working even as much as 20 hours a week during school. But there’s nothing wrong with working, and in fact, kids who have a lot on their plates learn time management skills, and work experience on the resume is a plus when it comes to getting a job.</p>
<p>^ As someone who had to work and take out loans in order to pay for college I’m in the NO camp on working when DS is going to school full-time at Georgia Tech. It’s tough engineering school and only about 60% of the kids keep their HOPE scholarship after the first year. That scholarship is worth about 8,000 per year. It’s not worth it to have him put that at risk. Co-op’s yes, volunteer research yes, working during the summer yes, working for minimum wage during the school year where his GPA could suffer and he might lose his scholarship no way.</p>
<p>@beth’s mom I’ll be working in the summers when I come back home. My current job sai I can come back seasonally. She just doesn’t want me to risk losing the $20,000+ scholarships that I received (and neither do I!). I’ve always had a lot on my plate and I think my first year will be a nice break that will allow me to get involved in some clubs and a establish a routine. </p>
<p>My mom’s parenting style and expectations aren’t the norm so seeing these expectations were enlightening. </p>
<p>@Michigan
That’s spot on with what my mom says! She said volunteer and learn as much as you need to, but don’t go stressing over a job.</p>
<p>As far as working, it completely depends. There are some schools, some majors, where it would be easy to work. I worked full time in college just because I enjoyed it and had plenty of time at a low demand school, did a fairly menial job and liked the extra money. But I would never want my kids to work that much, they have far tougher majors and schools, plus tons of extracurriculars that are very useful and meaningful, much more so than most any part time job they could get. I wouldn’t want them to sacrifice their studies and interests for a job. They work full time all summer, quite hard, so they know what it means to work and that does plenty for their resumes.</p>
<p>Now if they had nothing but time on their hands, fine, work. But what they are doing during the school year is far more useful than working part time at a low wage job.</p>
<p>“D prefers small private LACs. S likes the big UCs. Should we give S the difference in tuition upon his graduation? H and D say yes, S and I are in the no camp.”</p>
<p>Absolutely not. They are both choosing the schools they prefer, without regard to the money. Though D says yes, I guarantee you she will resent it if he gets 100K upon graduation, and she gets zip. You might, as someone else suggested, tell him you’d put the extra money towards grad school, should he decide to go.</p>
<p>Sometimes you just end up spending more money on one kid, though you are fair and offer the same to both. You wouldn’t consider giving one a bunch of extra money because you spent more on the other one for health care, child care, or activities. You wouldn’t give one kid a bonus because he wanted to go to public high school, and his sister preferred a private. Those are just things that cost you, should you choose to pay for them.</p>
<p>But my advice is, if you are going to get one a car of X value upon graduation, or a monetary gift of X value, offer the same to the other. Give the same gift for weddings, down payment upon a house, or whatever item is a gift of value. The same amount in the will, exactly. I know theoretically it may seem fair to give equal amounts for college, but in the end—one gets a big bonus, and the other doesn’t. And state school kid might end up getting a high dollar job, while private school kid just scrapes by. It could get ugly. Just my advice, don’t do something that could cause resentment, even if right now everyone is okay with it! As you can see, I’ve definitely thought about this, as there has been some inequity in family situations I’ve observed, and it causes lifelong grief.</p>
<p>We asked both of our kids NOT to work their first semester. however both ended up getting jobs, weekends only, about 10 hours a week. Neither worked more than 15 hours a week while attending school. The money they earned was for all discretionary spending, including books.</p>
<p>Apparently, there are some parents who are trying to force their kids to take on unreasonable amounts of student loan debt.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1486284-help-uiuc-vs-purdue-vs-uw-seattle.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1486284-help-uiuc-vs-purdue-vs-uw-seattle.html</a></p>
<p>^^Yeah, that is tough. At least he isn’t looking at paying 250K+ for a private school, though. And I have to say, with the right major, he can earn plenty over the summer, and go to a high paying job, so it could be more reasonable than it looks.</p>
<p>I would never want my music major or my engineering major working during the school year. That’s way too many hours added too their already brutal schedules. Summers, yes, definitely.</p>
<p>I think people are forgetting how much free time kids have in college. These kids are used to being busy and one of the worst things that happens to freshmen is that all of the sudden they have 4 hours in the afternoon and nothing to fill that time. Finding 10 hours/week to work in ANY major is NOT difficult if they need the money. Our kids are expected to work more than full time in the summer. They will be taking on 2 jobs, at least. Welcome to being an adult kids :D.</p>
<p>We left the decision to work during the semester up to our kid. He didn’t work at all his freshman yr and was plenty busy with his sport, two clubs and student government, but this year he wanted a job. Landed one a month or so ago in the Career Development Office. Only had (paid) training this semester so doesn’t really start until next fall. </p>
<p>He had a part time job when he was in high school on top of everything else, but is the kind of kid who does better the more he has on his plate. I think it depends on the individual kid on what works best and one size does not fit all.</p>
<p>Student loans are very difficult to shed. Even Social Security payments can be garnished to pay outstanding loans. Bankrupcy also leaves these loans untouched. I think that parents need to assess what is a reasonable amount of loan debt commitment, and not exceed that threshhold. When I hear of law students with $150,000 student loans, I cringe; a friend has three daughters presently shouldering this kind of debt, and I truly wonder how these women will navigate that debt.</p>
<p>That said, “quality of educational experience” does vary from institution to institution, and there is a certain measurable degree of “you get what you pay for” in regards to caliber of institution, opportunities, and campus facilities — at least amongst the Midwest LACs we toured that were on DS’ shortlist. Had we simply said “you go to the cheapest COA uncovered”, then we’d be advocating a lesser educational experience, no doubt in DS’ circumstances. We did save for college; we are a two-income household; and we are shocked by how expensive college will be for our children. But the alternative, junior college, is not a feasible option here because our urban JCs are poorly-run remedial-level extensions of public high school for the lowest-achieving students who rarely actually graduate with an associate degree in anything. And the price-differential between our highly-selective flagship (no merit aid), much less other lackluster public universities, and private LACs (w/merit aid, and often financial aid available for upper-middle-income families) is probably no more than $5000/year in DS’ situation. A Tier 2 college offered DS a merit package COA that was $10,000/year less than our flagship’s COA.</p>