<p>Ahem…it is the kids’ decision about those generous schools IF the student gets accepted. There are very small number of schools with need based financial aid that meets full need. And an even smaller list for those with high family incomes where need based aid is awarded…AND 90% of the students who apply do not get accepted to these schools. Their generous need based aid does you no good unless you get accepted.</p>
<p>1sokkermom…It is three kids at a top 20 and daughter at a private who will now be attending a state. The first three, one at MIT and two at Cornell received better packages than daughter received at either her private or the state school. My daughter has three siblings in college. Our house is currently valued at less than 700,000 and our retirement money is very minimal. It does not make sense to me but that is how it was calculated. We are self employed with our own business and we have not seen a year over 120,000 yet. I think this was the first year we saw this figure. We had savings for all of our kids to go to state schools but then husband lost his job. We had to use savings to survive until our business could support us. We still had enough to cover about 8 years of full tuition at a state and I thank God Cornell and MIT was so generous.</p>
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<p>Me too! (10 char)</p>
<p>Since Cornell is a land grant college, is it still cheaper for kids from NY to go there?</p>
<p>^ Why don’t you look it up? I’m sure it wouldn’t take more than 15 seconds of your time.</p>
<p>Thank you for the tip bigtrees. I love the courtesy shown on cc some time.</p>
<p>I looked it up,(probably took over 30 seconds :o) and it really isn’t that clear. However, it is possible that Cornell can offer better FA or lower tuition than other private colleges because of the land grant status.</p>
<p>(10 char)— I have seen this before but I don’t know what it means…do tell please.</p>
<p>I too have trouble understanding how people hide assets or go to extremes to qualify for aid. I know it has been very difficult to send my kids to school and we have made more sacrifices than any of our friends who could afford much more. Yet we see friends kids receive financial aid that have one or two kids in college and are living far better than we are. The one story that still makes me crazy is one of my daughters friends parents pulled a real winner of a story and somehow they got away with it. They committed downright fraud. I just always believe that people have to put their heads on the pillow at night and sleep. If they could do it great…I would never be able to sleep knowing I might have cheated someone out of the money they trully needed. </p>
<p>Sending kids to college is a sacrifice that all loving parents should provide. When people can’t afford it it is one thing but when they don’t want to pay it and they can afford to do so, that is another. They are the parents that will need to face their children and explain why their second houses , expensive cars, and dinner out a couple times a week was more important than their kids. I have trouble understanding any parent that isn’t willing to send their kids to college with as much help as possible. When I read the threads from kids that say parents won’t pay but we have a high EFC I just think of the damage those parents have cost in the parent-child relationship.</p>
<p>1sokkermom: For some major Cornell charges NY applicants instate tuition similarly to SUNNY.</p>
<p>Cornell is not a land grant college. It has a couple land grant colleges as part of the university.</p>
<p>1sokkermom, I think Cornell is indeed a lot cheaper if you’re a New York resident AND if you choose to attend one of the Cornell colleges that receive grants/aid from the state (CALS, Hotel, and some other ones). The tuition for these colleges is different for in-state students verses out of state students, and like ParentOfIvyHope said, it is close to the SUNY tuition.</p>
<p>Edit: I just looked it up: endowed colleges (Architecture, Art, and Planning; CAS; Engineering; Hotel Administration) will cost about $37,954 a year for tuition, and the contract colleges (CALS, Human Ecology, ILR) costs $21,814/year tuition for NY residents and $37,954 for non residents.</p>
<p>Our kids are out of state and they are not attending a contract college.</p>
<p>Thank you to all who answered in a civil manner.</p>
<p>momma-three, the way the discussion board here on CC is set up, a post must be at least ten characters long in length in order for you to be able to post it. So if a person has a short answer to someone’s question, they may type their response and then add (ten char) to make it long enough.</p>
<p>No .</p>
<p>Or you can put a lot of spaces between the period and the last word, which will also work.</p>
<p>@momma-three – if someone hides their assets in order to qualify for need-based assistance they are playing a very dangerous game. I have heard from more than one source that the information for financial aid students is audited on the order of one out of three.</p>
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<p>It all depends on how they are hiding their assets. If a school’s published guidelines say that retirement and home equity are excluded from assets, and “hide” their assets by paying off the mortgage and putting money into retirement, that’s not a dangerous game at all.</p>
<p>If they “omit” or “forget” about an account on the financial aid disclosure forms, that is very dangerous indeed.</p>
<p>ParentofIvyHope, </p>
<p>I really wasn’t addressing your specific example. I was giving an example of OUR situation with Yale (and Brown) and a friend’s situation (they had a $120,000 income). Their child wanted to apply to Yale. In my opinion, they were misled by well meaning people who told them to avoid top schools that only give FA (no merit) because they wouldn’t qualify for anything but loans. I think they MAY have gotten a decent FA pkg from Yale. I think they may have missed an opportunity.</p>
<p>Our situation was a little different because our income was lower than our friends. I researched FA and wasn’t surprised at the FA pkgs we got (even though they differed by $10,000 with the best being Yale). My son received full (merit) tuition offers (and NO FA) at some schools. That made sense to us, since Profile schools considered our EFC high enough to pay room and board. Like most people posting here, we make sacrifices (never upgraded our starter house, drive 10-12 yr old cars, go camping for vacation. Heck, we didn’t even have cable television until our oldest was in college).</p>
<p>As for your specific example of a family with $150,000, I think my info about Yale still applies. The link I posted before </p>
<p>[Yale</a> Cuts Costs for Families and Students | Financial Aid | Freshmen | Office of Undergraduate Admissions](<a href=“Home | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions”>Home | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)</p>
<p>shows a chart outlining several scenarios.</p>
<p>Example C shows a family with an income of $180,000, with $200,000 in assets.
- with ONE child in college, parents would be expected to pay $23,050.
- with TWO children in college, parents would be expected to pay $11,650.</p>
<p>I believe this is better FA than what was provided 3 years ago when my son applied. The chart shows how things worked before 2009 so you can clearly see that Yale is providing more $ to those families with income of up to $180,000. Keep in mind that students also need to contribute $2500. I’m not sure, but they might have to contribute from summer earnings also. I know my son, at Brown, has both contributions and work-study.</p>
<p>jerzgrlmom: Thanks for posting the link for YALE and it does seem under its new policy the EFC for families with $180K will reduce from $41K to $26K which is really neat. According to the posting the web based FA calculator will be up in summer and it will be easy to figure out how much FA one can receive. </p>
<p>Since DD never applied to Yale and got rejected from Harvard I’m not familiar with these two institutes FA. But Princeton, MIT, and Stanford were not generous enough.</p>
<p>I hope they will follow HY footstep and may become more generous in the coming years. I didn’t feel like applying this year for FA at all as 2008 income was the lowest we had in 5 years.</p>
<p>thanks 2blue</p>