I’m not a financial aid expert. But comments like this one contradict my experience:
“MANY top students who could get into HYPSM, but they can’t afford it.”
The best schools have the most money. At Stanford, a common conversation topic was how to spread the word to counter statements like the comment above. Top schools actively look to find students who could attend, but can’t afford it. That is their ideal applicant.
I’m surprised “College Confidential conventional wisdom” is to advise students not to apply to schools due to cost. In my experience working with kids from all different income brackets, it’s not difficult to secure a fee waiver. That fee waiver then helps your application: admission officers see it and pull for a student who comes from a low-SES background. Chances for admission go up at top schools. And top schools with huge endowments have the most money to offer in aid.
The vast, vast majority of our low income students don’t have the stats to get into a Top school where they can get that much financial aid. If they do, it’s well known that they can try if they want to go that far to school. Many don’t. And if any student has stats good enough for a Top school, other schools often give them excellent packages too.
But 99% of students aren’t in the Top 1%. At our school usually the Top 1% don’t have Top school stats.
Sure, those schools have generous aid, but that doesn’t mean that all students get ALL the money they need to make it affordable. In general, the poorest students will get the most aid. Plenty of students will get in but not be able to afford it.
I disagree that conventional wisdom on CC says don’t apply due to cost. Lots of people will ask students if they can afford the colleges they plan to apply to, and if they have run NPC’s. They don’t say “don’t apply.”
However, about half of kids will see parental divorce. Stanford and many other highly selective private universities require both parents’ financials for financial aid, and divorced parents are often uncooperative enough to refuse to give the required information. Even if cooperative, they are often poorer combined than they would have been if they had not divorced.
UCLA’s net price calculator says that a California resident dependent student with one divorced parent earning $100k per year will have a net price of about $25k living on campus. Stanford has better financial aid if you can get it (and get admitted), but its financial aid is inaccessible for a large percentage of students even if they can get admitted.
A school can be the most generous on average, but not to every student, because each student isn’t an average. Every applicant should run the NPC for each and every school s/he may apply to, before s/he applies. Don’t automatically assume a school will be unaffordable. Such an assumption is just as bad as not considering the affordability issue at all.
@MichaelCShort There are many, many families who don’t qualify for need based aid at a school like Stanford, but are not in a position to spend $80,000 plus per year on tuition, room and board, and other college related expenses. While the family you reference making $185k per year may only pay $33,000, the family making $250k will likely have to pay full price. There are many reasons that amount may not be affordable to a “donut hole” family.
@bestmom888 In a nutshell, it means this: Not poor enough for all financial need to be met, but not rich enough to pay the full estimated financial cost. The difference between what the college expects them to pay and what they can actually afford to pay is often too large to surmount without taking out very high interest loans, etc…
Many such “donut hole” families apply ED (or ED2), and then complain that their financial needs are unmet. If the school’s NPC tells you that you can’t afford it, don’t apply ED or ED2. Schools that offer these programs don’t have to put their best foot forward to compete for you financially and you can’t comparison-shop.
A common self-description for a family too rich to get college financial aid, but feels that they are too poor to afford the college’s list price.
For a college like Stanford, probably means a family with an income of $300k+ who feel they cannot afford the $78k list price of Stanford. Or a divorced parent family of any income with an uncooperative other divorced parent who feel they cannot afford the $78k list price of Stanford.
For a college like Penn State (for Pennsylvania residents), probably means a single parent family with an income of $70k+ who feel that they cannot afford the $32k list price of in-state Penn State.
@Teachme21 Agree. There’s no debate many (most?) families don’t qualify for financial aid. And it’s a truism to say not “all students get ALL the money they need to make (college) affordable.” I just challenged this assertion: “MANY top students who could get into HYPSM . . . can’t afford it." And I only hopped back on the thread to challenge another assertion: that my advice in the OP “is based on an assumption that all students reading this are applying to HYPSM.”
I’m not sure how my OP about counseling students to think and write about why they’re applying to college turned into a discussion about financial aid or the value of attending HYPMS. (Please see my response at #159 if my OP was cryptic.) But I think this thread is spent.
thing for us with costs is that . . . . we have 4 kids spread out over 12 years of schooling. So, while we could pay our EFC of $33 K for one kid, we can NOT maintain that for 4 kids x 4 years. That’s close to a $500K. On a income that gives a $33K EFC, we just can’t save that much times 4. SO . . . merit is the only for us without significant debt racked up for us or our children.
For Stanford’s own financial aid (as opposed to federal or state aid that students may get), that could be true, due to the divorce rate and the likelihood of divorced parents being uncooperative. However, among those without the divorced parent issue, the $300k+ income that does not get financial aid at Stanford would only be a few percent of families.
I was just thinking this same thing when I read that post. People keep talking about schools that meet 100% of unmet need if you make less than 100k. Ok fine. What about someone that makes 101k? To many people 101k is a substantial amount of money, however, those who don’t qualify for 100% of unmet need, it is not and those are the people who then find themselves stuck not being able to afford sending their kids to the college of their dreams. And again what about all those costs that the college doesn’t cover? What happens when these kids need to live in an apartment and buy food junior and senior year and pay for a 12 month lease? Again, airfare to some of these remote cities can cost 4-600 or more for each flight. Transportation to the airport, etc. My ex husband had a friend in graduate school that lived the whole semester on a sack of potatoes because he had no money. Who wants their kid to have to live like that? What about clothes, fitting them for winter clothes, shoes, boots, clothes for job interviews, room and board for an internship if that’s not included?
It’s not as black and white as people think it is.
Maybe you’re familiar with this because I can’t quite remember what it is off the bat, but my son lives in SF and I remember when we were visiting him that we read the poverty level there for a family of 4 was some crazy number like 250k. That’s crazy! So basically those kids where parents make 250k can apply to an east coast ivy and have no chance of qualifying for financial aid based on their income levels, however, in their own home town are considered to be at the poverty level.
If that’s true, it’s nuts. We lived in the Bay Area on a fraction of that, and while we qualify for near full financial aid at my daughter’s school, we never felt we were in poverty in any way. Not rolling high by any stretch, but we weren’t homeless, hungry, or cold.
No worries. That makes more sense, even though we were significantly under that. The financial aid cap at my daughter’s school is 60k income (for no loans like she has), so I know it’s easy to hit those kinds of limits.