<p>My son got a good aid package. Sure it's going to cost us a lot to send him to college...about 25% of our take home pay and he will have to do work study and work in the summers. Worth it for the world class education he will be getting. We are very grateful for the big grant he is getting.</p>
<p>For all the people who are ranting about financial aid, I am unclear why you think schools SHOULD give you aid, or are being unreasonable or unfair? Any aid (scholarships and grants) are a gift. Schools don't owe you anything. </p>
<p>State schools are a much more reasonable alternative to expensive privates and since they -are subsidized by tax dollars they should be cheaper for in-state and are a good buy. But privates are private. Many give pretty generous aid to top students and lower income people. But a good education is valuable and as such, it is costly. </p>
<p>We talk a lot about entitlement and I see it all over the FA forum and it bugs me. Sure its BS when schools say the "meet need" and it's mostly loans. But grants and scholarships are a gift and should be treated as such--> with a thank you.</p>
<p>Yes, there is this thinking that attending pricey schools is a right, and therefore those schools should pay for most/all of the costs. </p>
<p>Most people, if necessary, can start at their local CC or state school - even if it means going part-time and working nearly full time to pay for it. If you want something bad enough (a college education) then be willing to find an affordable way to get it.</p>
<p>Agreed. My son applied to some stretch schools financially ‘just in case’ someone wanted to give him a ton of money. But none did. They gave him money, but not enough for us to swing it. We knew this going in and he also applied to our state school - which was within reach no matter what. That is where he is going - and he is fine with it. Would one of the others have been nice? - sure - but we never expected it or felt entitled.</p>
<p>We should have saved, we could have saved, and we didn’t. We are now willing to cut back on our lifestyle to send our son to a private school. We might be able to do it without loans, but if we have to borrow a bit, we will. We did appeal his award because we felt his loans were too high, and got part of them replaced by a grant. We did suffer from sticker shock, but I don’t believe anyone owes us anything, and are grateful for what we received.</p>
<p>Agreed and I am seriously flabbergasted at the amount of “Waaaah! My family makes $150k/year, where’s my aid money? Waaaah!” that goes on around these boards. What What people forget is that a college education is not a right, it’s a privilege you will have to pay for one way or the other.</p>
<p>What annoys me is the misconception that poor people get money thrown at them to attend college. Hell I’m a non traditional student who will be attending a state flagship. I definitely fall into the lower end of the income brackets, qualified for the maximum in grants and all that jazz. Still though, those grants that some here think covers everything and then some, well damn I’d like to know what kind of grants they’ve been looking at since the ones I will get from the Fed are not enough to cover my instate tuition much less living expenses. The only reason I won’t be going back to school thousands of dollars in debt from loans is because of the GI Bill.</p>
<p>So yeah I feel no sympathy for those complaining, there are always ways to fund your education, you may not able to attend the highly ranked and extremely expensive private school you’ve dreamed of since you were 3, but you don’t need to in order to receive a good quality education.</p>
<p>To the OP:
Not true. With a few exceptions finaid is not aid. It is price discrimination/discounting.
Only very few universities are able to operate and give finaid to the students without shifting money from tuition/COA resources.</p>
<p>Most colleges do not give much in outright aid. What they do is package up what a student would get nearly anywhere, the PELL, Staffords, State awards, and throw in a few dollars, if that, and act like the Parent Loan (PLUS) is an award too. Very sad. They do not have the money. </p>
<p>People really get an entitlement attitude when it comes to college. Why all of a sudden so many think that they are entitled to a private school and get their living expenses paid, to boot is beyond me. There have been some truly mind boggling posts where kids/parents really have it in their heads that they don’t have to pay anything. I have no idea where that is coming from.</p>
Yes, and you show such remarkable restraint again and again when replying to the young kiddies who whine that their parents can’t/won’t pay for them to attend X private college, and so someone ELSE should pony up the money. </p>
<p>Did you read the thread I linked to upthread? That OP’s attitude really galls me – too bad the elite schools that accepted that whiner didn’t delve into his/her character a little more closely!</p>
<p>Points well made by the OP. Be grateful for what you get! But also, do not begrudge others for receiving help, especially a student who cannot control the earnings potential of the parents.</p>
<p>The objection is two parts:
a. regardless if you think the yearly income is a lot, there are probably equivalent expenses to match. Especially if the family has multiple children. Families dont have a spare $50,000 year just lying around to spend.</p>
<p>b. the list price of the tuitions are inflated so that college administrators can do their social engineering and crow about their commitments. If they just published the real prices instead of giving phony scholarships people would have fewer objections.</p>
<p>At the info session at one the school in Oregon, many parents were shocked when the school “only” offers up to 41K grants (as in no need to repay money) out of the 62K total cost. Many did expect a no cost education for their kids. I too have no idea where people get this attitude. It is beyond comprehension.</p>
<p>I think a few years ago many colleges and unis were buying students and aid packages were stronger but after the monetary contraction it is much less likely that families are going to see tuition reductions in excess of $20,000. $41,000 is very generous aid. Anecdotally that seems to be what’s happening if you look at the last couple years threads. I also think families are shocked when they find out they expected to pay more than $30,000 a year. Plus I think most kids don’t “get” that $50,000 a yer is middle class not $150,000. They also don’t understand that their parents made choices get all along the path of life that concern money and impact lifestyle.</p>
<p>A big chunk of the problem comes from the schools themselves. Their websites, promotional materials and admissions reps all repeatedly say that they will help you make attending their school affordable for your family. “Don’t be scared off by our list price!”, they tell you. “We’ll work with you to make it possible for you to attend!” :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Then there’s the pervasive and totally untrue myth that huge amounts of scholarship dollars go unclaimed each year. And parents who’ve not looked at college costs since they were in school won’t be aware of how the COA has exploded far beyond the rate of inflation. Even if they ARE aware, they figure that the colleges and scholarship dollars will make it affordable. </p>
<p>I can remember the first time that I ran a FAFSA estimator, when D1 was in 8th grade. Surely, I thought, this was what we would be expected to pay for all four years. If you were never that unsuspecting or uninformed, then kudos to you for being savvy about college costs. Just remember that many, if not most families are behind you on the learning curve.</p>
<p>I also agree that so many posters feel entitled to fantastic amounts of financial aid. Years ago, my husband and I invested a a small inheritance towards education funds for our children. For a long time, there’s been no shortage of publicity about how expensive college has become. That money we invested helped send both of our kids to fantastic (and fantastically expensive) colleges. Although I’ve never regretted our decision to invest in our kid’s educations, I can’t help but wonder why so many posters failed to hear that colleges are expensive. Planning ahead is the only way middle class families have a chance of keeping up with the cost of tuition. That’s true for public and private colleges -since we’ve seen large tuition increases as state colleges recently. </p>
<p>What I find unbelievable is that many posters that are upset because they ONLY got $20,000 a year in grants (!) seem to have no idea where that money comes from. I tried to tell one such student in a private message that normal, middle class alumni are the primary funders for lots of colleges - it fell on deaf ears. Same student said to me - do you expect my family to pay $40,000 a year for college? Like someone had changed the price tag on him or something.</p>
<p>Similar to the H thread linked to above, here’s one on the Y forum which demonstrates a not untypical lack of understanding about how Institutional need based FA works, particularly regarding FAFSA EFC and merit awards:</p>
<p>I, too, am saddened by the belief that poor students get buckets of money thrown at them. Regulars on this forum see, again and again, a Pell eligible student gapped. For those families, even smallish gaps can be insurmountable. I work in TRIO with low income students. Believe me, they borrow. They work too many hours while they’re in college. Their grades suffer. They write essays about that Christmas when their hotel maid mother had only shampoo samples taken from work to give them (and yes, I really had that paper turned in). Don’t you for one minute gripe about how easy they have it when it comes to fin aid.</p>
<p>We see a very small slice of low income students, those literally on top of the food chain as they have the stats to get into those schools that meet full need or get the best deals from other colleges. Not at all the case for the vast majority of them. But when you look at the stats and see that neatly 20% of Stanford students are PELL receipients which makes them coming from the lowest paid of all families in the country, you can see that it is not something uncommon when one goes to those schools. For a student from a family on the edge of affording the school, getting barely enough aid to make it a go, or not much aid at all, and so the kid is working and scrimping, and then hearing the fin aid Pell kid brag about the money he gets back from fin aid, it does leave a sour taste in the mouth. They don’t see other sides of the situation, nor do they understand that this is an outlier. Few kids from families that are PELL eligible get into the most selective schools. The numbers are definitely stacked towards those kids from the families making $300K and more. Those familes make up less than 3%, maybe less than that, and yet more of them get their kids into the most selective schools. And of course they do. Those kids have likely had every advantage money could buy and parents knowledgeable about the process to know what to buy. So there is that unfairness inherent in life.</p>
<p>Bolded the “recently” since that is a key point. I was able to manage paying for Berkeley on my own 30-some years ago through a combination of grants, work-study, and relatively minor subsidized loans. That’s simply not possible anymore, unless a student can live at home while in school. The change in COA is enormous, and has caught plenty of people by surprise.</p>
<p>People get surprised by all kinds of financial gotchas, be it unaffordable mortgages or retirement savings. The real estate bubble is largely over. We’re starting to see the effects of the college loan crisis now. Guess what’s up next? :)</p>
If you were never that unsuspecting or uninformed, then kudos to you for being savvy about college costs. Just remember that many, if not most families are behind you on the learning curve.</p>