<p>momofswimmer, are the out of state schools public schools or private schools or a mix?</p>
<p>I guess the 20,000 schools are not too bad, because if your daughter borrows the 5500 in Saffords and is offered 1500 (give or take a bit) in work study, the gap is about $3,000 (20,000-10,000 efc-5500 loans- 1500 w/s=3,000).</p>
<p>CONGRATULATIONS on the admissions, and the packages!</p>
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<p>Still, I think this is a fairly unusual practice. Most SBOs actually need a salary on which to live. Those who can take a pittance of a salary and wait a year for the a distribution are very few and far between. </p>
<p>What SBO in their right mind would want to put a portion of their profits into the dinosaur that is social security? My point is that SBOs should not be forced to pay social security on profits - it’s not the same as a salary and shouldn’t be treated as such. They do already pay taxes on the earned income.</p>
<p>momofswimmer:</p>
<p>Totally understand your frustration - guess there really is no such thing as a free ride. It’s so disappointing to see your child, who has worked her but off in HS, have to take on a huge debt to further her education.</p>
<p>Here’s my Financial Aid whine.</p>
<p>Because my husband and I started saving for college before our kids were even born, bought a smaller home than we could afford, didn’t take expensive vacations or live beyond our means, learned to love TJ Maxx, didn’t have more than 2 children and worked our A$$e$ off for 25 years, WE WON’T GET A DIME.</p>
<p>Whine over.</p>
<p>Apologies for the tangent about Soc sec, and don’t mean to derail this thread. My original response was to those that were talking about retirement and not being able to count on soc security (it was a few pgs back, dont recall exactly-- around post 350-355 or so). I am a small bus owner and I know a lot of small bus owners and professionals who are s corps, sub s corps, c corps, LLCs, etc., and this little Soc sec dodge is far more common that perhaps some might want to think. Whether one calls it “income” vs “profits” is, IMO purely semantics. “Income”= soc/Fica requirements, “Profits”= more in the pocket of the self employed person/less to Soc Sec/Fica. Most self employed people can get a reasonable ballpark idea of what their receivables and expenses will look like from year to year, and can pay themselves an appropriate salary based on this. Don’t get me wrong, I am not singing the praises of the Soc sec system, and I resent having to pay unemployment on myself when I can never ever collect it, but I dont get to choose not to. It is the law, and I will follow it. Sure, there are “loopholes” and many people find every possible one, but , as an example, a dermatologist paying themselves $24K/yr “salary” and then taking $150K/yr in “distributions” is BS. and is a pure dodge of the soc sec system. No wonder it is going broke. </p>
<p>I am just like ctmom2boys-- scrimped and saved and qualified for not a dime of need based aid. I also paid my soc security and Fica. My employees have seen raises, but I have not.</p>
<p>My whine: Unless a college has its own calculator on its website, it is darn near impossible to guesstimate what type of scholarships and/or financial aid your child might receive from a school.</p>
<p>For example, one school lists various types of scholarships that are available – but does not mention that a student can use the bigger of the scholarships he/she is eligible for, but not more than one scholarship together. Some schools use scholarships to reduce the tuition cost, which eliminates/lessens a student’s eligibility for any additional need-based aid. “Meets full need” means nothing if the school will arbitrarily decide what your need is (and you are not privy to the methodology for determining need in advance) and the only aid provided to meet the need is loans. “Average financial aid gift-aid” also means nothing if no information is provided illuminating what constitutes “average” for that school and how far above or below average your family is.</p>
<p>While “prowling” another website targeted at prospective college students, that site’s FA calculator estimated that based on our student’s stats and our family’s income, we would only have roughly $10,000 annually in out-of-pocket expenses at a particular tier 2 school. In actuality, out-of-pocket expenses for our child to attend this school will be $30,000 a year.</p>
<p>@northeastmom</p>
<p>Our schools are Mercyhurst (Erie PA, private Catholic school)
Kent State, Kent OH
Syracuse
VA Tech
James Madison</p>
<p>The big wait is on for Cornell, I hope we didn’t blow all our luck earlier.</p>
<p>Thanks for making it all not look so sad. I know we are in a lot better position than many and am truly grateful for that.</p>
<p>@mamagx3 - Thanks for understanding my frustration. You teach your kids to work hard and get ahead and wham, reality smacks!</p>
<p>All we can do is keep our fingers crossed and do the best we can, that goes for everyone!</p>
<p>momofswimmer, congratulations on those wonderful acceptances. I do understand your frustration. I am looking at packages with gaps too.</p>
<p>We have decided that our son will not borrow more than the 3500 in subsidized loans (don’t care about other loans in the package). We are not doing the additional 2,000 unsubsidized. If we cannot swing the school, it is off the table. We still need to meet that EFC and the gap. Peanut butter and jelly here we come!</p>
<p>We even have one school that we know practices “preferential packaging”, and our son is supposed to be high on the list as a student they’d like to have. We have still been gapped.</p>
<p>northeast mom</p>
<p>Best of luck to your son, and thanks for your kind words. I was thinking soup, but PB &J sound great too (lol).</p>
<p>^^Thank you, and all the best to your daughter!</p>
<p>I am totally puzzled on why the nmf award was only 2000 per year, they offer five full tuition to nmfs and the year I cold find data they had 15. Dd has great stats (way over top rank for school, it was actually a safety for her) and has a full tuition offer from a higher ranked university,</p>
<p>I know that your D has an ACT 35, which is higher than her SAT. Is she certain that she sent her ACT score? (I know someone who had a higher ACT score, but forgot to send it.) What school was this? Is it likely that the 5 other students could have better stats?</p>
<p>My whine: Unless a college has its own calculator on its website, it is darn near impossible to guesstimate what type of scholarships and/or financial aid your child might receive from a school.</p>
<p>I agree…I think more schools need to put online FA & Scholarship calculators on their websites…especially the publics. That way, instate kids will kind of know where they’ll stand and most OOS kids will know not to expect help covering OOS costs. </p>
<p>However, many schools probably know that they would get less apps if they did that…and it’s all about getting more apps, isn’t???</p>
<p>That’s it exactly, momtocollegekids! Schools benefit (application-#s-wise) from being deliberately vague regarding scholarship/financial aid prospects. I believe they also hope they can lure some kids into falling in love with their school to the point that when a poor financial aid package is offered, the kid and family are tempted to over-extend themselves anyway to send the student there.</p>
<p>I was impressed that the University of Wisconsin is so upfront with its financial aid calculator; a student interested in attending that college would have a very good idea upfront of what he/she could expect for out-of-pocket costs. I hope more schools – public and private – make the college selection process more user-friendly by utilizing similar FA/scholarship calculators.</p>
<p>Somewhere, recently, I read that all colleges will be required to post the above mentioned type of f/a info/calculators on their websites. I thought it went into effect fairly soon–perhaps Feb. 2011 or thereabouts? Not sure, but this info would be very helpful for many people.</p>
<p>“… Unless a college has its own calculator on its website, it is darn near impossible to guesstimate what type of scholarships and/or financial aid your child might receive from a school.” </p>
<p>I agree too. The only one I found was MIT. Carnegie Mellon has an form you submit to them (before January), and they reply with estimate by email. But the MIT one is better because anybody can use it anytime </p>
<p>srystress - that calculator requirement would indeed be a great thing</p>
<p>It’s August 2011. See: [AIR</a> FYI 2009-01](<a href=“Association for Institutional Research | AIR”>Association for Institutional Research | AIR)</p>
<p>I read the same information as srystress about the fa calculators, but I do not the recall the date when they will be required.</p>
<p>Thanks calreader, crossposted with you.</p>
<p>It is interesting that student stats are not one of the suggested questions. My son and I used an online calculator for one school this year. Interestingly, it did NOT ask how many were going to be in college at the same time. It did ask and ACT or SAT score (in a range format) and GPA, as well as household income (range format). It seemed to me that this school was using preferential packaging, but was going to offer the same grants regardless of how many students in the family were in college at the same time.</p>
<p>I dont understand. </p>
<p>Why are you guys complaining about your financial aid. Have your kid take a loan so he can go to that good college. Study after study have proven that the educated elites make a financial killing compared to those who went to lesser schools. </p>
<p>So what if you have to borrow 20k a year? Isn’t the cost outweighed by the benefit, a potential 6 figure salary that accompanies an elite college degree?</p>
<p>^…The short answer is no. I’m too tired of repeating myself ad nauseum to give the long answer.</p>
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<p>Very not true. Study after study shows that students from well-off families do better financially than students from lessor endowed families. No surprise there. You conveniently have the cart pulling the horse.</p>
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<p>La-la-land nonsense.</p>