<p>Great post, momwaiting. For Calmom living near UCal Berkeley and UCLA, the Ivy / public university difference may seem almost non-existent or at least less glaring. Here in NJ there was enough concern about the best and brightest students choosing not to attend state schools that financial incentives such as the Bloustein Scholarship program were instituted. So in my sons' world, attending a state school is not particularly palatable. Take heart, Shaganov, I for one do not believe that a student who desperately wants an Ivy education is a greedy, shallow, status-seeking elitist. While there are obviously many opinions about the financial aid system, the very existence of the majority of CC threads testifies to the fact that a great number of people believe an Ivy or top LAC education is superior to a state school education in most cases and are willing to go to great lengths to gain admission. I agree that it's not the end of the world it that doesn't happen, but let's stop with the nonsense about Ivy educations being over-rated.</p>
<p>Momwaitingfornew mentioned how some students turn their noses up at public universities, which is true. But just recall parental posts. Clearly, many kids feel this way because their parents feel this way. Of course the quality of the public institutions varies by state, as GFG points out.</p>
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In my area, you cannot get a 4 bedroom house for anywhere near $200,000.
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<p>Forget house, I don't even think you can get an apartment over here for that much o_O</p>
<p>thanks for the tears about my family getting some financial aid even though we make a lot of money. also cutting, considering the irony of that and the fact i still can't go. i don't see why you would disparige my situation just because my parents make a lot of money. it still isn't enough for them to be able to write a check for the amount gerogetown needs every month, and i think and hope you wouldn't say sarcastically that you were crying for someone whose parents make fifty thousand dollars a year and didn't get enough aid. not enough is not enough aid and it is painful no matter how much money my family makes.</p>
<p>i'm a transfer, so that's why i have these late deadlines. harvard won't do early review and barnard/wellesley won't extend their deposit deadlines, so if gtown doesn't give me enough aid and i put a deposit down at barnard/wellesley, i'll just lose that deposit if i get into harvard or georgetown ends up coming through. and in terms of public/v private, i think what someone said earlier really does apply. i went to the very top of the top, literally a top 30 private day school in the country, which my father taught at, which meant i could attend for a tiny fraction of the cost. literally 25 percent of my graduating class of a hundred went on to one of the 8 ivies, and the vast majority of the others went on to middlebury, stanford, williams, bowdoin, georgetown, etc. when you sign the contract to attend my school when you are 12 after you get in (something like 20 percent of applicants to my middle/high school get in, it's not unlike college admissions in the world i grew up in) you are signing a statement that says you unequivocally will apply to, be accepted at and attend a four year college. they changed the "will attend" part when a kid from my class was drafted into the MLBA right after senior year. My education in high school was not being a math person, finishing algebra 2 at the end of 11th grade, which is the lowest math track POSSIBLE at my school, taking the placement test here at my public university and placing out of calculus. i took spanish for four years, never went to spain or anything, and am fluent. people here at my university have taken languages for six years or more and can barely stutter out hello. my english class last year was 15 students sitting in a dark room with the windows open while a lightning storm raged outside passionatly arguing about and debating over whether the book we were reading (Nabakov's Lolita, which most liekly wouldn't have been allowed to be taught at most public schools) was a love story or not. One of my teachers is an actor, and he invited me to his plays. I have coffee, lunch and dinner with my high school teachers and stil; email them. Perhaps part of this is due to having lived in a city, but we didn't do keg stands on the weekends unless we were at a farm party, for the most part we were at gallery openings downtown, and if we were drinking it was wine or cocktails in bars. this isn't about me being uber smart or sophisticated or anything, this is about me having lived in a climate of intense intellectualism, hard work and driven people and having benefited enormously from that. I love, love, love that atmosphere and know that a large number of my good qualities come from that atmosphere. The rest came from my parents, one of whom is a history teacher and the other of whom is a scientist, researcher and professor with WUSTL. We debated politics and history over the dinner table from the time I was ten. It doesn't make sense at all for me to go to a public school, it's so thoroughly not who I am it's actually depressing, and when I say depressing I do mean that quite literally, having been here a year.<br>
It's not the end of the world if I have to go to Barnard or Wellesley, certainly there are people who would kill to be in my place both admissions wise and financially. But dreams are dreams regardless of whether you're dreaming of Boston University and your family makes only 50K a year or Harvard when your family makes 120K a year. I think it's wrong to say one deserves symphathy for not being able to attend more than the other.</p>
<p>"thanks for the tears about my family getting some financial aid even though we make a lot of money. also cutting, considering the irony of that and the fact i still can't go.""</p>
<p>Did you consider how "cutting" your remark seems to those of us who did NOT get aid?</p>
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But dreams are dreams regardless of whether you're dreaming of Boston University and your family makes only 50K a year or Harvard when your family makes 120K a year. I think it's wrong to say one deserves symphathy for not being able to attend more than the other.
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Ditto. I don't understand why some people feel that middle class dreams don't have the same value as others. I hope your dream works out for you!</p>
<p>mom, did you consider how equal our positions are? Neither one of us can GO!</p>
<p>Shag,
Similar situation here. We make a decent income, but got too little aid (including loans), so my son couldn't have his dream. Same result...he couldn't go either.</p>
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Keep in mind that I was replying to Shaganov's post that "i briefy considered **berkley* because of the cost, but it is just flat out not for me, although more so than the other top public schools like UNC, UVA, UM-AA and UCLA.*"</p>
<p>That is, we are specifically talking about Berkeley vs. Georgetown or Wellesley.</p>
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With all due respect, taking "a few classes" is not the same as attending a university full time. I didn't say that the experiences were comparable - they're not -- students need to be more proactive and independent at public universities. I said that smart students can find challenge there; part of that process is getting in the know as to what profs and courses to seek out and which to avoid. It is also very easy to slide by and do almost nothing at many public universities -- but a student who wants challenge isn't going to enroll in what we used to call the mickey mouse courses. </p>
<p>I know for a fact that my introductory chem class at a UC was far more challenging and taught at a higher level than my son's introductory chem class at an elite LAC. At the UC's Chem 1A really is intended to weed out students, and I think they intentionally make the course as tough as possible. I'm sure that my son's class was excellent and he certainly got a lot more face time with his professor, but for him it was an easy A -- and simply in terms of raw workload, Chem 1A was more intense.</p>
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You still haven't answered my question, Do you have a summer job lined up?. For that matter, are you working part time now? I can't quite understand why you can't earn or borrow an additional $4000 a year if it is that important to you - that amount is well within the earning capacity of a student. You should be able to get an unsubsidized Stafford loan in your own name for $3500 -- See <a href="http://www.salliemae.com/apply/borrowing/stafford.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.salliemae.com/apply/borrowing/stafford.html</a></p>
<p>Also, if you want to convince people about how superbly educated you were at your private prep school, I'd suggest running a spell check on your posts. I'm normally quite tolerant of spelling errors and typos, but I find it irksome to see words like disparige, passionatly, and symphathy in a post from someone trying to make the case about how smart she is. For what it's worth, my daughter was assigned Lolita in 11th grade at her public high school; the 12th grade reading list was more difficult. </p>
<p>I dug through past posts and I have figured out that you are at Univ. of Vermont and are unhappy there -- I don't blame you -- that certainly is not a high-end public university and probably very different than the type of environment you would find at a flagship state public. I assume that if you have a parent teaching at WashingtonU you should be able to get some sort of tuition break there --so it isn't as if you don't have good private school options. Apparently your parents can afford Barnard & Wellesley in any case, but are balking at the cost differential for Georgetown. </p>
<p>The point isn't that your dreams are less valid because your parents have more money; the point is that "dreams" are not entitlements. Whether it is the type of car we drive, the size of our house, the vacations we plan, or the schools that we and our kids attend -- we are limited in this world to getting what we can afford, not what our hearts desire. </p>
<p>One advantage you have if your family does not qualify for any financial aid is that you can get the full benefit of any outside scholarship that you earn -- and you don't have to worry about earnings or money held in your own name undercutting a financial aid award. My daughter, like other financial aid recipients, will only see her college grants cut back if she wins any of the scholarships she has applied for - but that hasn't stopped her from seeking them out in any case. My son is not eligible for financial aid at his state university because he has worked full time for several years and managed to put money in savings -- and he is expected to contribute half his salary plus 35% of his savings to put himself through college. Basically, the financial aid system is not designed to make it easy -- it simply is geared to closing the gap for families who are willing to make sacrifices to put their kids through college.</p>
<p>Shag, while I hear you, understand that there are kids like you in public colleges. One friend of my s has traveled the world, attended gallery openings in NY, was speaking with adults and like an adult at a young age and on and on and on and chose, yes chose the res college at our highly regarded state U. There are colleges all over this country that would have fallen over backward for her. There are kids crying all over these boards that they didn't get into U of M. There are all kinds of middle class kids going to all kinds of public schools doing all kinds of amazing things that would probably challenge even you.</p>
<p>i'm not going to comment on the spell check comment in regards to intelligence level, and we certainly aren't going to agree on public vs. private, i can only know what i know having been to both, and although i despise UVM, it is in the top 25 public schools in the country. I'm don't feel entitled, I'll just be really sad if I can't go to Georgetown and I'm trying in every way I can to make that happen.</p>
<p>WashU gives me 15K a year because my mom works there. My parents can pay 20K out of pocket/from savings. This is unequivocally their limit. My summer job is making me 3K. I'm taking out the Stafford loan for 3.5K. That leaves me with 3.5K to get from the schools. Wellesley gave me that in a grant. Barnard gave me that in a grant/work study. My parents cannot co-sign on a loan for me because we have too much debt already and are about to mortgage our house (my dad was in an accident a few years ago not covered by insurance) If you, or anyone, has any ideas of how to get that from Georgetown, I'm game, but a Georgetown professor I've met with over the year actually went down to the financial aid office and told them that they didn't want to lose me to Barnard or Wellesley, and they essentially told him, we'll do what we can do, but we may not be able to give her what she needs.</p>
<p>and momofthreeboys, i'm sure that there are great people that i would like and would challenge me at state schools, but the enviornment here does not fit them. As I said, for a different type of person who wanted a more typical college experience, Berk, UCLA, UVA Michigan and UNC-CH are in the public ivies and they're different, lots of kids from my high school went there. those kinds of kids like your sons friend are the exception and not the rule, at least here at UVM.</p>
<p>If your parents have poor credit, they should apply for a PLUS loan. If they are denied due to poor credit, then you will be allowed an additional unsubsidized Stafford loan on top of the loan you already have. That's $3500 right there.</p>
<p>they don't have poor credit, i'm not sure the exact logistics of it, but they have told me that they can't co-sign because they are afraid of GETTING poor credit. but thanks for the help, sincerely, and if you have any more ideas i would be more than open to exploring them.</p>
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My parents cannot co-sign on a loan for me because we have too much debt already and are about to mortgage our house (my dad was in an accident a few years ago not covered by insurance)
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<p>DId you indicate this on your CSS profile when you applied for financial aid?</p>
<p>Did you explain this situation to your schools when requesting a Financial review of your package as this is probably one of the main reasons a school will reconsider your package.</p>
<p>i hope so, my mother filled out FAFSA and CSS and has read books on how to get the most money out of them, so i would imagine either she did or she is telling them that in her letter asking them to reconsider.</p>
<p>Have you tried applying for credit without a cosigner? It's hard for students who are looking for large loans, but $4K isn't much. My 18 year old has a $4100 limit on her visa card. (Then again, that's because she applied for the card at age 7.... sometimes you have to be proactive about establishing credit). But the point is, its not a huge amount to be borrowing. </p>
<p>Also - since you are a transfer student, most colleges don't require a meal plan after the first year. I know you still have to eat, but you can reduce the initial outlay of money by opting out of a meal plan - then get a part time job to earn enough to feed yourself. Food-service jobs can be good because you generally get to eat for free while at work. My son didn't have a meal plan his sophomore year; his favorite appliance is his rice cooker.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>opting out of a meal plan >></p> </blockquote>
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<p>Interesting idea, but at DS's and DD's colleges this is NOT an option for any student residing in the dorms.</p>
<p>For Shaganov, is there really no way you can get a summer job? My friend's sister went to Oberlin during a period where her dad had no job and her mom was making about $20k; she worked at two jobs (assuming it was full time) during the summers in addition to the finaid. Even with one job paying around $6/hour, you can definitely make at least $2000 a summer, if not $3000... </p>
<p>Sorry about GTown, I live about 30 minutes away from it and it's in a really nice area. Barnard and Wellesley are definitely comparable, though; I would seriously love to attend either one of those colleges.</p>
<p>Also, you could most likely find places to eat in Gtown/DC if you opt out of the meal plan, but there aren't really any grocery stores in gtown from what I've seen...</p>