<p>2Girls4Me, those are fine stats for an Ivy, the problem lies in the rest of the application. (Which by the way, might have been just dandy and on another day with another person on the committee reading that particular application, might have gone the other way.)</p>
<p>We have an income that would probably give us some money at the schools DadII mentions, but way too much saved, and not in any tax shelters!</p>
<p>My apologies, DadII, for taking you out of context.</p>
<p>I see you were referring to the large pool of middle class families, perhaps .000001% (or is that too high?), that would benefit from your scenario.</p>
<p>You have to be careful with the term middle income. We don’t know income or personal savings. Without knowing family EFC, the numbers aren’t very useful.</p>
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<p>Exactly. Personal savings increases EFC significantly. Families who save diligently over the years (or purchased investment property years ago that nicely appreciated) are seriously punished by the EFC calculator.</p>
<p>bigtrees: Also I think the only college that claims to breaks the barrier of $150K is Harvard. But I don’t have any proof as DD never got into H and MSP don’t seem to make any such claim anyway so there was no point in contesting the FA decisions.</p>
<p>POIH…you are a full pay family at MIT by other posts you have made. This would NOT indicate that you are “middle income”.</p>
<p>thumper1: DD is full pay at MIT because she didn’t get any FA at MSP and that is why I asked what DadII definition of “middle income” exactly is.</p>
<p>Yes…let’s get DadII’s definition of “Middle Income” . My understanding is that at HYPS there could be grant money (scholarships/grants – not loans) available for families with GROSS incomes of up to $180,000. I don’t know about MIT.</p>
<p>These discussions usually dissolve into an argument about what is middle class.</p>
<p>DadII’s daughter is getting what appears to be significant money from Stanford, and also, per another thread, he is taking a trip to Hawaii in the fall. For many other families, sending a kid to HYPMS involves revising vacation, home improvement and other plans. I’m not crying for these upper middle class/high cost of living area families. They apparently haven’t had enough other dependents to support, or too much in other assests to get the kind of package that DadII"s kids have received.</p>
<p>I haven’t stalked all of DadII’s posts. Has he revealed where his son will attend school?</p>
<p>Middle income is well defined by economists while middle class is subject to debate. However, unless DadII saw a copy of the FAFSA application, it’s doubtful that DadII has a complete understanding of the financial picture.</p>
<p>As I said a few posts earlier, it’s more than income. It also includes savings and assets of both the parent and child. Lower income good savers can still have a high EFC.</p>
<p>Thanks Dad II. If I had to do the process all over again, I would have asked my daughter who only wanted to go to a small LAC, to apply to at least one Ivy (she is 1/500, 2380 SAT, 4.0/5.0+ and lots of leadership and sports). Fortunately she applied to 7 as only 2 of the “100% meets financial need” LAC’s gave her Ivy type grants. An Ivy financial aid package may have eased some panic that an affordable option would come through. </p>
<p>So, to those with high stats, apply to at least one Ivy (even if not your first choice) for better financial assurance.</p>
<p>this is an educational discussion for me so thanks for the info.</p>
<p>So, EFC is based on income and assets. But a middle income family could end up with less ( or no) financial aid due to savings or home equity. I am still not clear on the definition of middle class but do understand how that could be different than middle income. I worry that the home equity that we have does not even really exist in this housing market.</p>
<p>I also agree w an earlier comment about the FAFSA EFC. It seems most of the time, schools expect more than the FAFSA EFC from families. I think that is an important point that is not stressed enough early on.</p>
<p>And, to clarify, my D was accepted at 2 ivies both of which offered unsubsidized loans and one also offered work study. Neither provided grants. So some ivies do not meet 100% need with grants only. And, based on the FA reports, our EFC is less than the COA so they are giving the financial aid in terms of loans.</p>
<p>I think an important point for families to understand for future years, is that if your income may be in the area that schools say they will provide aid, your savings and assets can void that. I would love to know more about my own situation and how they arrived at the decision. We will honor it–I have no interest in trying to hide assets.</p>
<p>We are very financially conservative and have no debt other than the house. But, we drive ancient cars–1988 pathfinder, 1999 Ford truck and otherwise manage a budget so that we can save for retirement and some for our kids’ education. We do not take fancy vacations and live what I consider to be a very middle class life. I know for certain once my D is in college our standard of living will decline signifcantly. There is not 45K of fluff in my household budget! I just hope we don’t need a new car or a new roof or anything soon.</p>
<p>We will plan more carefully with my son, becuase when I have 2 in college, I will need to know ahead of time what kind of FA we will be looking at–can’t be off by 20K!</p>
<p>Adding my thanks to DadII and his friend for sharing. While sure very few kids get admitted I think it is helpful for families to know a school can be a financial safety <em>if admitted</em> and not to base the decision to apply on the sticker price. I agree it would be helpful to have some sort of ballpark idea as to where this family falls financially, but do think when you see enough posts you can start to gather the trends. The Pton aid surprised me, but the others fall into the general order I’ve come to expect from reading CC posts.</p>
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<p>[Yale</a> Cuts Costs for Families and Students | Financial Aid | Freshmen | Office of Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“http://www.yale.edu/admit/freshmen/financial_aid/yale_cuts_costs.html]Yale”>http://www.yale.edu/admit/freshmen/financial_aid/yale_cuts_costs.html)</p>
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<p>Again the caveat is that assets are also figured in to FA packages, the figures above use assets ranging from 100-200k, which includes home equity.</p>
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<p>Whoa, the FA policies of HYP are very different from most (if not all) of the rest of the Ivies. In going through the FA process twice (fr and transfer) with several schools to compare, we were offered generous FA packages from HYP but zero from D & B.</p>
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<p>FAFSA is for Federal funds only. Most privates use the Profile to distribute Institutional funds. What you have to understand is that even though schools receive the same financial information via the Profile, they way they use the information in their FA formulas can be very different. You have many EFCs: the FAFSA one for Federal money, and one for every Profile school that you apply to.</p>
<p>A table for Princeton financial aid showing average grants based on ranges of Family Income.</p>
<p>Notice the 95% of Tuition paid by grants for Family Income in the $120-140,000 range</p>
<p>[Princeton</a> University | Who Qualifies for Aid?](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/)</p>
<p>^^ Yes, but if you have significant savings, you don’t get much aid since they figure you can spend your savings on it.</p>
<p>That might be true if your parents are big savers and are willing to spend your savings on Princeton. But if Princeton isn’t what they had in mind, you are out of luck.</p>
<p>For clarification Princeton’s institutional aid in the original post reflected the outside scholarship being applied. If I’m not mistaken Dad II stated he did not know if the other schools had adjusted their own “monies” to reflect the outside scholarship.</p>
<p>Meaning there would be revised financial aid awards as outside scholarships were applied to said student’s account. In freshman year alone son received EIGHT revised awards based on outside scholarships and other circumstances. Son’s packages from HY, Penn and Colby were all within $100 of each other. The other ivies and other national universities (MIT, Duke, Cal Tech) and LACs(Amherst, Swat) all varied greatly up to a differential of $20,000 per year.</p>
<p>The difference between P’ton, Penn and Colby was they did NOT have us fill out the CSS Profile. Rather they have their own financial aid forms…and use that to decide their own institutional methodology for distribution of aid.</p>
<p>So when comparing offers don’t compare how much is being awarded compare the bottom line. Compare what is actually in their COA, how much for specific travel, how much for books, how much for misc… Is the cost of housing variable or is it fixed no matter your room assignment? Are their different meals plans (daughter had 13 to pick from, son had 2 plans) and how much will that cost? Tuition is also different.</p>
<p>So just listing the dollar amount for grants doesn’t give a good grasp of what the family will be out at the end of the term.</p>
<p>Having 5 kiddos go through this process has taught us much in the past several years. Son applied to more than 15+ schools to have the best financial choices possible. So we were able to compare many different packages.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>"Whoa, the FA policies of HYP are very different from most (if not all) of the rest of the Ivies. In going through the FA process twice (fr and transfer) with several schools to compare, we were offered generous FA packages from HYP but zero from D & B.</p>
<p>Sorry, I’ll change that to I would have had her apply to H,Y,P,S. Probably the only one I could convince her to apply to is P with their focus on undergraduate education.</p>
<p>JohnAdams12,
Interesting table from Princeton, but that pesky little * caught my eye. It says that the grant will be “adjusted” if the family’s assets (other than home or retirement) are over $100K. So if you have stock market investments, if investments are not in a 401K or SEP or IRA or something, you get the shaft?? Seems unfair, but so does bailing out the big banks seem unfair. Feels like the story of the 3 little pigs, and the one who carefully built his house out of bricks is gonna shelter the ones who built out of straw or sticks. </p>
<p>And martina99-
LOL at post 22.</p>
<p>^
Yes, that’s exactly my point. And many parents who have worked hard to save up assets over $100,000 in theiir lives may not have envisioned doing so as a college fund for their kid. For example, some people may have purchased land that they were going to build a house on someday or just as a good investment, and then it gets counted as an asset, even though the parent may never have intended the land to be sold to fund college education.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that person above should expect financial aid. But I am saying it so people realize that certain choices made by families do rule out certain colleges. Parents who saved a tidy sum may no longer qualify for financial aid and therefore a particular college is too expensive, while another set of parents who work in similiar jobs may still qualify for financial aid.</p>
<p>For that reason, people shouldn’t get too hung up on which student is going where as it has a lot to do with the parents financial situation.</p>
<p>LOVE the Three Little Pigs analogy!!! ^^^^</p>
<p>Thanks buckeye :)</p>
<p>Bigtrees, speaking only for myself, since you queried- we never expected anyone other than ourselves to pay for our kids’ education. We are one of those families who has scrimped and saved forever, funded a 529, etc etc and never expected a penny of need-based aid. We believe that our bils are out bills, not someone elses. Older s applied for a bunch of oustside scholarships both before his freshman year and even during his college years, and got some that helped defray the cost a bit. The rest that he got (which wasnt a lot, but every little bit helps) was all merit based. Younger s’s was merit based, and he got some nice scholarship money. Why peple don’t spend more time/energy into looking into outside scholarships never ceases to amaze me. Why so many seem to think that the college will pony up and pay for their childs educations is baffling to me. </p>
<p>Now dont get me wrong- I am not talking about families who are <em>truly</em> low income. They deserve assistance.</p>