<p>^Yes, but what about the remaining 2 years to a bachelor’s degree? Especially where there no lower cost schools within commuting distance?</p>
<p>Well, the CC years shouldn’t be costing your $11k per year, so set some of that money aside for use when you transfer.</p>
<p>Hopefully your state may have some aid as well.</p>
<p>Also, work over summers and save that money.</p>
<p>Some CC students actually complete two year degrees that lead to jobs. They work full time while completing their bachelors degree part time. Some four year schools do have scholarships specifically for community college transfers. </p>
<p>I’m not saying its an easy route, but it IS possible.</p>
<p>^I agree that it’s certainly possible to complete a Bachelor’s degree by working full time while going to school part time. For many low or modest income kids without super high stats, it may be the only possible way. The point I was trying to make is that upper middle class kids often have more options and usually have an easier time of it, even if they don’t get to go to expensive elite schools.</p>
<p>@BobWallace re: Post 92 - Try rerunning the numbers for Harvard. According to their NPC, you do not include primary residence in home equity. “This should represent the fair market value of your ownership share of any real estate (excluding your primary residence) not already reflected in the Business/Farm section, less your share of any debts.” I believe you will see no affect on aid.</p>
<p>Also, I agree with mom2collegekids that HYP are rare examples bc they give super aid while many other Profile schools will consider primary home equity in their aid formula.</p>
<p>Good luck to all in making the decision that is appropriate for your family!!</p>
<p>^^^ That’s interesting - I did not read the fine print. In that case, it is quite possible to “game the system” with those schools by liquidating all assets and putting everything into primary residence equity. It seems like a strange policy.</p>
<p>Many of the generous schools DO use primary home equity…but there is usually a cap on this. </p>
<p>I would NOT use Harvard, Yale and Stanford for this “test” because they have extremely generous need based aid policies that are not in place at most other schools, including most of the other Ivies.</p>
<p>Plus…back to my comment…if you have $200,000 in liquid assets to pay off your mortgage…do you REALLY have to have need based aid? Seriously.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There’s a world of difference between “cannot” and “will not.”</p>
<p>I’d like to chime in on this one.</p>
<p>My parents make 64,000 a year and at least half of that goes to my dad’s addiction to a certain drug and my moms’ horrible gambling addiction. </p>
<p>I am not first generation kid going to college, but since both of my brothers that tried colleges dropped out, I find it all the same. After wanting a better ACT score from my pathetic 22, both parents denied for me to take it once more since it was the “highest compared to the 17’s and 19’s” my three brothers got. </p>
<p>I’m in a situation where my parents cannot afford it since they have “other investments” and my mom is daring to take some of my fin aid from me just because she’s “my mom”. Some people may say this is a will not pay situation; but when looked deeper, these problems arose due to their lack of communication and even lesser budgeting skills. There had been times where my mom gambled a bill or even the rent away in hopes of “winning big”. </p>
<p>Her habit has lessened now, but what I do not understand is how black and white some of you guys make this issue of paying for college to be.</p>
<p>If your income makes it to upper-middle class and “cannot afford” college, you are colored stingy/selfish. Or, as some put it, “going to a college too expensive”. I agree to the second viewpoint to an extent. If you’re paying out the *** for a 40k-60k(SOMETIMES with room+board) college when the state is 20k~29k(with room+board), what are you spending that extra money on. Name? Facility? Hype to talk about when your relatives come over? I can understand if the student gets merit and outside scholarships, but those can drop if the student gets in a rough spot or dislikes the college. But this is directed to those that have to pay serious out of pocket.</p>
<p>As a student myself, I have learned from a very young age to live like I had nothing but the clothes on my back. Given my mom and dad had their own selfish wants, I pursued interests to my own cost.</p>
<p>I always think “what if my parents die, or what if they go into the hospital and can’t work?” I actually had to choose between an expensive private school and a well known public school these past months. In my FA for the private one, they wanted my 5,500 in loans for fasfa, a parent PLUS loan(for my parents to pay!), and also another 2,000 from a private place. I visited the place and fell in love with it. Small, had some snazzy things, pens, all that stuff. But, I snapped out of my dream the second May rolled by. </p>
<p>Why? I found out how much interest and money I’d owe after 4 years(five given to the way their rep. from the accounting branch sounded). And then, a call came from the public university. Money was trying to be handed to me. But here was the catch: I had to pick right then.</p>
<p>And that’s when I prided myself on being a public school kid. Why? I cared too much for my family to put them into debt and myself for years of paying back money and saying with an unneeded smug: “I went to Private school 1000!”</p>
<p>I guess the moral I’m trying to pass through is, it takes the parent(s) and the kid to decide on what they can afford. Sometimes, this needs to happen.</p>
<p>Kid: Hey, I REALLY loove (insert college that will drive student and/or parent in debt)! It’s so prestigious and pretty and all my friends talk about going there.</p>
<p>Parent: Oh really? So when you graduated, you’d like 15k, 20k, or 30k in loans growing? Paying back loans from now and then–what if you don’t find a job!</p>
<p>Kid(if a humanities major): But (insert humanity here) will bounce back!</p>
<p>Parent: That bounce may take you till your sixties, please go to (cheaper school) if you want to waste your life on a dream that will drain your income.</p>
<p>Kid(if other, somewhat ok major): But (insert ok major here) makes plenty money.</p>
<p>Parent:But, that job may not shape up as well as it is supposed to be.</p>
<p>(intense debate here). *Note: Of course a job isn’t promised after graduation of college, but you have to admit a major that involves “a critical look at literature in the 1800’s”, you’re asking to be unemployed. </p>
<p>Blah, this post ended being longer than it needed be. But, I hope someone sees my point. Crushing a dream is sometimes better than watching it turn into a nightmare.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input and I used Yale just b/c I happened to be at its website. I will try other schools. The $200k of liquid assets was a pretty extreme example but I could certinaly see people shifting lesser amounts.</p>
<p>Yes, it might be gaming the system but I look at it as arranging your affairs to obtain the best possible result for your family. I often have to give tax advice to maximize tax savings and this could also be seen as gaming the sytem. For example, some times I recommend people sell securities and take a loss to offset other gains and if they really want to hold that security to buy it back after the short wash sale time period. S-corp owners also game the system by paying some salary and some K-dividend.</p>
<p>Now if most the other schools do in fact look at home equity in the same manner as other assets then this is really a moot point.</p>
<p>It was interesting that Yale asked when you originally purchased your home and what you originally paid for it.</p>
<p>“Cannot” and “will not” means the same from the student’s perspective if in both cases they get the same amount or none at all from their parents. The difference is that “cannot” may receive more in grants and lower interest deferred loans and “will not” may be stuck with a much higher debt.</p>
<p>LasMa–I am not lacking sympathy for those whose families cannot pay. I am just stating that the way the system works and how it is so tied to parents income, there are a lot of kids who are left out who have worked very hard to get into good schools–whether that be state honors programs or privates.</p>
<p>I think that people assume that those whose parents are above a certain income level have it made and they cannot garner any sympathy. Life is not that black and white.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are there qualified in-state kids really being turned away from flagship honors programs? I hadn’t heard this before.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This shows a lot of wisdom, Sandi3.</p>
<p>I’m in a situation where my parents cannot afford it since they have “other investments” and my mom is daring to take some of my fin aid from me just because she’s “my mom”.</p>
<p>your mom can threaten to take some of your FA away from you to spend herself, but she really can’t do that. The aid goes to the school first. Then, if there’s a positive balance, a check is issued in YOUR name, not hers. She can’t get her hands on your FA money unless you let her. If you cash that check, keep the money. If you deposit into an account, only deposit into an acct that ONLY has your name on it.</p>
<p>Yes, it has happened I have seen it a lot. There is also a big trickle down approach going on in many households. Parents who once would have borrowed to go private are seeing that SUNY is the much more affordable option (for some families it means being debt free). So at SUNY (especially Albany, Stony Brook, Bing, U Buffalo, Geneseo, Purchase, the hybrid land grant schools at Cornell, the HoNors programs and a few others) admissions has become much more competitive. </p>
<p>Families that would have borrowed to attend SUNY are now looking at the more attractive options at CUNY, including the McCauley Honors College, and the Honors programs at Baruch, Hunter, Queens, Brooklyn and STEM at City College.</p>
<p>A few years ago, you could walk up to CUNY in august with your diploma, a sealed Official transcript, SAT scores (if required) and ID to do on the spot admissions. You paid your $65, took the placement test and got a seat at CUNY. My next door neighbor is a CUNY admissions rep and at her school, it is very hard to get even a January admit, because the the fall class has become so full, that January is now used for deferred students.</p>
<p>I have students whose middle income (above 50, below 80K) can’t afford CUNY. The above $50k takes them out of the running for PELL and 80K is the income cap for TAP. Those that do get a nominal amount of PELL/TAP are seeing that it is not enough to pay for 4 year CUNY without loans. </p>
<p>I have recommended to my students that they should start at community college, especially if they can get into ASAP (which will cover tuition, books and a metro card as long as you are receiving at least $5 in PELL). A number of students have gone this route. While it may not have been the route that they had envisioned, but at least it is giving the family 2 years to get their money together for transfer options and the student will end up with 2 years of loans vs. 4 years of loans. I had a student do this(we talked about this as “the plan” given his family’s situation), did well at CC, transferred to City College, did the Skadden Arps Honors program (which gave him free LSAT prep and mentoring) and is now attending a T-14 law school and interning at big law (through the connections and networking at Skadden). Again, there is always more than one route that will take you from point A to point B.</p>
<p>^
Yes, all my kids have done CC –> Private / SUNY. Two years of loans is a lot easier to handle than four years.</p>
<p>If you consider Binghamton a state flagship, they have been turning down kids who have gotten into schools like BC, BU, Tulane, Vanderbilt, NYU and other excellent schools. Kids like full-IB diploma holders with 2000+ SAT scores and excellent grades. When you take a tour nowadays, the admissions reps are completely honest, open and respectful in saying that they now have a slightly different track and timeline and give preference to out-of-state students who will pay full tuition. Since the cost is lower than many other state flagships and most privates, they get more of those kids than one might thing. But I can’t fault Binghamton because they are open about it.</p>
<p>^
I think it’s a marketing trick. If it tells the world that if had denied one kids with excellent credentials, I am sure that 2 or 3 kids with better credentials would apply for admission. I think that’s how the Geneseo becomes the ‘elite’ of SUNY</p>
<p>Our finances fall into the zone where our state college system is completely unaffordable to us but privates have been worked out well. The child I most recently went through this with had net costs of 7-10K at privates vs. 20K at our instate public school. We are what I think is middle class, perhaps upper-middle class. The public school didn’t care about siblings enrolled in college at the same time for example, as they don’t pretend to meet need. Every family’s situation is different but people should run the calculators and see what works for them.</p>
<p>Our state flagship (Univ of FL) has turned well qualified in state kids away from the Honors Program! I personally know of kids who got in to Vanderbilt and other such schools who were admitted to UF but not the honors college, and yet they chose UF because of it’s value, in state reputation and growing national reputation -No. 17 in U.S. News & World Report “Top Public Universities” (August 2012); No. 3 in Kiplinger’s “Best Values in Public Colleges” (2013) and No. 7 in the Princeton Review “Best Value Public Colleges” (2012).</p>