Venting

Paying for College
1

<p>I just need to let off some steam. </p>

<p>We just found out that our D's college of choice, to which she applied and was accepted Early Action, has denied our second appeal for increased financial aid. The total cost of attendance for this school - tuition & fees, room & board, books & supplies, travel, and miscellaneous - is $58,760. Our total aid: $13,500, including $5500 in loans. So this university is providing $8000 in actual aid, meaning we somehow would need to come up with $50,760 for our D to attend. </p>

<p>Per year.</p>

<p>And we have another child in college.</p>

<p>Our total income from self-employment last year was just under $100,000. This is our third child to attend college, so I know about financial aid and EFCs and the rest. So I am prepared to pay our fair share.</p>

<p>But $50,000+?</p>

<p>This from a school that claims to "do our best to support students and families who don’t have the resources to pay full tuition."</p>

<p>Ha!</p>

<p>Meanwhile, we are STILL getting large, glossy brochures about the school in the mail, as well as emails beseeching us to come to New Student Days. </p>

<p>Why don't they use some of that marketing money for financial aid?</p>

<p>This is beyond frustrating. It's exasperating. If this school had offered just a little more we might have been able to stretch to make it. </p>

<p>But it refused.</p>

<p>After having put one child through an Ivy League school and with another one at a very good liberal arts college, it really hurts that we can't give our third child this same opportunity. We know about sacrificing to pay for college. But $50,000 a year is simply impossible. Impossible.</p>

<p>Thanks for listening.</p>

<p>d</p>

2

<p>You have two kids in college and this school is expecting you to pay $50k for one child and it “meets need”?</p>

<p>That means that they’re saying that you can afford to pay $100k per year for 2 kids in college. </p>

<p>That would suggest that either you have a lot in unprotected savings/investments and/or your business takes a lot of deductions that the school is not counting.</p>

<p>Or, maybe this school doesn’t promise to meet need. does it?</p>

<p>I hope your D has some affordable other choices. Best wishes for her.</p>

<p>BTW…the amount that the school is spending sending you brochures is a drop in the bucket as aid is concerned. At most, the school has spent $500 or so sending you stuff. $500 isn’t going to make this school affordable.</p>

3

<p>Is this Fordham? If so, the school doesn’t meet need.</p>

<p>Or is it NYU? If so, it doesn’t meet need either. Or American U.</p>

<p>Were your D’s stats high for these schools? Those schools do give merit for high stats.</p>

<p>From your past posts, it looks like your D applied to schools that don’t meet need. What are her affordable choices?</p>

4

<p>Fordham. AU was even worse. Waitlisted at state U. Applying internationally to schools with later deadlines. Yikes! I didn’t know how good we had it at the Ivy League school.</p>

5

<p>Neither Fordham nor American guarantee to meet 100% of need. Fordham, I know, is need blind for admissions, and has some nice merit money for those they want the most, but the school definitely does not tend to meet full need, so it’s not that they think you should pay $50K, they have spent their money on others they would prefer to have. I have one who is accepted this year with a big fat zero in any money and would be able to go only as a commuter. His brother was accepted a few years ago with $30K in merit money. My cousin’s son was waitlisted this year–it was his first choice and is full pay. They had a big year in terms of applicacations.</p>

<p>Yes, Ivies are good with aid and meeting need. A lot of schools that do meet 100% of need really go for the fillings in your teeth in terms of counting assets, and have a lot of work study and loans in the financial aid package.</p>

6

<p>Yes, it sounds like the student’s stats aren’t high for Fordham, hence the no merit offer. Schools that don’t meet need tend to give “preferential packaging” to high stats kids…kids that they really want. Schools like Fordham and AU really expect families to pay for most/all of the costs unless the student qualifies for state/fed aid or has high stats.</p>

<p>Don’t know what this student’s stats are, but it doesn’t sound like she applied to the right schools if merit money was needed…which it sounds like it is.</p>

<p>Ivies are in a different category and require much higher stats. Not meaning to be harsh, but if this student was waitlisted at her state school, that suggests that her stats were well below her ivy-bound sibling. Stats make a huge difference.</p>

7

<p>CBParent - I feel your pain. The same thing happened to my D with Notre Dame. She just got $5,500 in loans so they want us to pay the whole thing! That amounts to over $55,000/year. She chose her #2 which is University of Miami where she got a substantial academic merit scholarship. I still feel bad she could not go to her# 1 but with this economy it is too much risk to pay such a large amount per year. Best of luck to you.</p>

8

<p>Fordham, with ~15K students, has an endowment of about $700M.
Notre Dame, with ~12K students, has an endowment of about $5.5B.
Harvard, with ~21K students, has an endowment of about $27B.</p>

<p>Universities, like families, are unequal in the support they can afford to provide.
Even so, given two peer schools with similar assets per student, it may be the case that one is significantly more generous than the other. For example, it appears that Villanova’s average need-based aid is about 50% higher than Fordham’s (~$22K v. ~$16K) according to Kiplinger’s.</p>

9

<p>You have my sympathy and self-employed parents always seem to get the short end of the stick as many schools (both public and private) will add back in your vehicle expense, depreciation expense on large assets etc. Those type of expenses aren’t real expenses in the financial aid formulas. Your contributions to a SEP (retirement fund for self-employed) are also added back in as income. </p>

<p>I hope your D will end up very happy at another choice school!</p>

10

<p>You get to vent … hope it makes you feel better.</p>

<p>The hardest part for you is that your D doesn’t have any options that are viable at this point. It sounds like you did try to cast your net wide, but things just didn’t pan out. If she had received one good aid package at a school she wanted to attend, it wouldn’t sting quite as much. As it is, it’s rough.</p>

<p>I remember when I told my son last year that he couldn’t attend Butler U because it was too expensive (even with a good scholarship … just not good enough). He said, “But my sister gets to go to a school that costs more.” To which I replied, “It doesn’t cost US more, and that is the bottom line.” I refused to let him borrow to attend a school that cost more than other viable options he had. He is over it. Your D will also be fine.</p>

<p>Hang in there. Things will work out for your family one way or another. A year from now, you will see that this was a temporary bump in the road & your D will be moving forward just fine.</p>

11

<p>@mom2collegekids - our state university is all over the news for waitlisting - or denying - QUALIFIED in-state students because it needs the higher tuition paid by out-of-state or international students. Her stats are plenty good - 3.7+ GPA, editor of newspaper, etc.</p>

12

<p>@kelsmom You’re right - there is some sibling comparison going on. And your reply to the “but my sister…” is a good one. Fact is, Yale provides more aid, plus our S was a freshman counselor his senior year, so room & board were paid for. </p>

<p>As far as future plans, D is applying to schools in Canada and Ireland, which have later application deadlines and are more affordable. It will all work out.</p>