<p>You’ll find that Harvard’s graph of percentage of income versus household income is that same peaked shape that you don’t like, though the peak will be shifted over towards slightly higher incomes. Is that graph now “fair” if it peaks at, say, $190k a year, rather than $130k? There’s still price “discrimination” going on, after all.</p>
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<p>Agreed. And that option exists (albeit not as well-funded these days) via state-funded public schools.</p>
<p>Harvard’s policy really seems to be fair and make sense, although I don’t know how it works in practice. They are also lucky enough to have a huge endowment, and, I would expect, many students at the full-pay end of the spectrum.</p>
<p>We took a very strategic approach to applications from a financial standpoint - we knew what we could pay, and my d applied to schools with a wide variety of aid options. </p>
<p>Luckily for her, one of her top choices came through with fantastic need-based aid (other schools in the same bracket were not as generous), and she gets to attend. If they hadn’t, she had free or nearly free options that were pretty darn good. </p>
<p>It is all what the consumer will bear.</p>
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<p>This is actually part of the problem. </p>
<p>People see their FAFSA EFC and expect that’s the most they’ll have to pay. FAFSA is only used for Federal FA; at most privates, Institutional FA is calculated using the Profile and more often than not family contribution is higher as things like non-custodial parent, home equity, etc. are taken into consideration. They also don’t understand that while many schools use data provided in the Profile, they all use their own calculations of that data to determine need.</p>
<p>I always find it interesting when people cite FAFSA EFCs and their disappointment in the FA given by privates. Did they think schools were requesting this much more detailed financial information just to ignore it?</p>
<p>On the flip side I’ve read the argument that public universities are subsidized for the affluent on the backs of all the working class taxpayers who pay in, but who can’t afford for their own kids to go. Everyone pays in and it keeps the prices down for the professional family who can send Jr. off to Flagship State U. for a great education at a bargain price (well, a bargain for them, anyway, compared to those expensive privates.)</p>
<p>"rentof2, our own mini on these boards can give you that argument, and I have know doubt that it’s true. It’s interesting how schools like HPY are keeping their costs at the levels they are which they will fully admit, as do other colleges, do not meet the actual cost per student. The reason I say, HPY, is because I am sure that even if they doubled their price, and certainly if they raised it just another 25% or so , they would still have takers for full cost. I know many who would sell their kidney, clean Port a Potties as a second job for the privilege of sending their kids there. But somehow, they have picked the price points that they have, and it results in a trickle down to other schools who boldly use that as their sticker prices. We are seeing publics like UVA, UMi and the UCs edging towards those prices as well for OOSers. Outrageous as the differential being charged is so much to be seated with kids less qualified as a whole since the instate kids as a group are not at all as impressive as the OOS group, for the most part. </p>
<p>We are seeing a lot more discounting on the part of the lesser known schools, some that I know are hurting for bodies. Many of the smaller Catholic schools fall into that category. </p>
<p>You put it well and succinctly, 'rentof2.</p>
<p>thatsall: exactly right.</p>
<p>I do think some schools bear the burden of being untruthful when the advertise how helpful they will be with financial aid or when they "meet need"with loans. That stinks and that’s when buyer beware comes into play. But not everyone has CC or other resources to completely understand the process.</p>
<p>There is a lot of complaining on this board that sounds pretty entitled to me (“How does school ____________ expect me to pay that much? and then a rant about how the school gypped them”) from parents and I get a bit tired of it. </p>
<p>We ONLY applied to schools who claimed to meet full need or gave good merit aid. That cut schools like CMU and NYU right off the list. And I didn’t bother getting mad at schools who calculated our contribution higher than others–> it was their call to make. </p>
<p>I think it is okay to be disappointed, okay to have sticker shock, okay to feel cranky in general about the cost of college. But okay to rant that a certain school “owes” you more money? not so much.</p>
<p>And you know what else? Poor people deserve a break and help going to college. They face tons of barriers just getting to the application process (I know, I work in an inner city high school). Subsidizing their education today means I won’t be subsidizing their entire family tomorrow and everyone wins.</p>
<p>What’s really appalling and painful is that some of these kids will say their parents have lost their jobs, are in danger of losing the family home, there are young kids at home, and, yet, their primary worry is that they can’t afford a $60K+ a year private school!?! Where are the priorities, the heart, in this kids? The parents are sick with worry, the financial sky is falling down on them, and the kid wants a quarter million dollar education because they earned it. From a private school, no less, and oh, yes, full living expenses to be paid too. Are they out of their minds??? We have come to this. Of course, they are disappointed, devasted and sad. But their focus was on the wrong place all along, mainly because a lot of parents maintain a bravado not facing the facts until it comes down to showing the money they don’t have and can’t have because they have no credit, and it has to come out that the emperor has no clothes. Something a smart kids should have kind of picked up. The reactions from these young adults has been very disappointing.</p>
<p>The high schools are partly to blame.</p>
<p>The high schools in my area love to brag about all of the scholarship $$$ their students get each year. They never mention that Johnny was awarded merit at 5 schools, but can only accept one (of course!). It is never mentioned that many of the scholarships are at least partially need based. The schools simply throw out a big dollar number to make the HS look good. I know plenty of people who have idea that their child will get lots and lots of scholarship money and are then very disappointed. Can tell some sad stories.</p>
<p>This is a topic, naturally, that lots of people are going to have strong feelings about. And I cant speak for anyone but myself. So, Ill post what I think is partly happening here.</p>
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<p>Again, speaking for myself, I think what is really happening is a not a feeling of entitlement. What I think many parents (such as myself) feel is a sense that we dont want to get stuck with paying the sticker price for college.</p>
<p>If we were on an automobile forum and we changed college to car and we changed aid to rebate or discount, I dont think anyone would have any trouble accepting the nature of the discussion.</p>
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<p>Everything is always relative. The homeless person thinks someone living in a dilapidated apartment should be grateful that theyre not homeless. The person in the apartment believes ones living in nicer places have no right complaining. </p>
<p>There is always going to be people worse off than yourself and there will always be people better off.</p>
<p>If everyone was always reminded hey why are you complaining? then Bill Gates would be the only person who could legitimately say that. And Ill bet that even Bill sometimes feels things arent going quite his way.</p>
<p>So, yes, even families that earn $150k/year sometimes need to plan and strategize how theyre going to pay for college.</p>
<p>I wish high schools made it very clear how difficult it is to get money for college. As Fallgirl says there is too much hype about the money that some kids get and not enough about those who don’t get enough and what a lot of families are paying and borrowing. I think the stories need a reality check and that a sobering info session be given on parent’s back to school night or something that gets the parents together and it should start freshman year and reiterated heavily each year. </p>
<p>But the media hype also does the same in making it seem like the money is there and there are a lot of folks out there convinced that it’ll work out some how, until the day to write the checks arrive and the manna does not drip out of the sky.</p>
<p>Not just high schools, but across the board - everyone - should be making it clear how difficult it is to get money for college. I’m a decently smart cookie, and it had been easy for me to not worry as much as I should have about the costs because “that won’t be the real cost”, “no one pays the full price”, “they’ll/we’ll make it affordable”, etc. I’ve certainly learned that there is a ridiculously wide range of what “affordable” means to different individuals and perhaps even different entities.</p>
<p>When visiting the colleges, it was not uncommon for the schools to allay everyone’s fears about the cost. “Don’t worry; we’ll work with you.”, “We want you to be able to come here.”, and such. When we submitted a FA appeal to one such college that seemed particularly heartfelt about it, they worked with us by bringing our net price down from $38,700 to $36,200. </p>
<p>I even had someone in the know, who has worked in higher ed admissions for a long, long time in both the public and private sectors tell me (more than once) that it’s very common for privates to compete financially with the publics by offering attendance for just a few thousand dollars more a year than it would cost to attend a state school. When S’s FA offers from the private schools starting coming in and the costs were significantly more than the state schools, I went back and asked him when exactly the privates would start doing their pseudo price matching. He said “Oooh, that won’t happen at the schools YOU guys are looking at. That happens at the lower tiered schools.” I love the guy, but seriously, he probably should have mentioned that caveat earlier!</p>
<p>And yes, we did our own homework and didn’t even consider schools that are known to be stingy with FA. One of the mistakes I made, though, was when working with the NPCs not realizing how completely OUT OF DATE some of them are. UGH!</p>
<p>Aid is not a right. You are correct.</p>
<p>Here’s where a whine is legitimate: schools that tout, repeatedly, that they cover 100% of financial need for all admitted students/admitted students who apply by a certain date/admitted students who - whatever, and then make their financial aid package a joke. In such a case a “for crying out loud” is appropriate.
We only encountered this ONCE, and I did post about this. All other offers were spot-on, as promised, or better.
This was two years back, and no complaints at all about how it all turned out. This country is indeed full of amazing opportunities. But CC readers deserve to be warned about these untruths in advertising if a university engages in this practice and lures applications in order to lower its acceptance rate or up its applicants’ average SAT scores. Can’t think of any other reason a university would do this sort of thing.</p>
<p>Yes I understand that I expected aid, and I got it too. My families yearly income is under $15,000 a year and I got what I deserved at a state school. Everything is covered with a $1,000 loan, I cried I was so happy. I can’t understand people with incomes over $80,000 expecting a lot of aid, it is meant for people who really need it. Scholarships are for everyone else.</p>
<p>Jaqi, you, personally, not your family, and also only for this particular situation, are in a better position that a student whose parents make $80, 90, 200K a year, who won’t pay for college. Those kids get NO financial aid for state schools, and not enough for the private schools and if the parents won’t ante up, then it’s just tough luck for them. They get to commute to college on unsubsidized Staffords.</p>
<p>There is a young man we know whose family is very well to do. But it’s step dad’s money and he won’t pay for college. Not one dime. Self made man who’s tight with the buck unless he gets the pleasure in its spending. Pays through the nose for the two little ones, that are his own that go to private school, but though he’ll provide room and board at the family home for him he won’t give out any free use money to his step son and keeps the mom on a tight rein financially too. The young man works part time for spending money and will be going to a local college. Lives in a house that has to have a market value of over a couple of million, in a beautiful bedroom suite and the kid drives a nice new car too–but it 's not his, registered to step dad but he’s allowed to use it. Every dollar his step dad doles out, he wants to know where it goes and won’t pay if he doesn’t agree with the expenditure. So Dad will pay for tickets to Madison Square Garden, a Giants game, night out, but college, forget it. Nice kid but his stats are not going to get him a full ride anywhere, and stepdad feels that borrowing money and commuting to a CUNY is just fine, oh, and working part time.</p>
<p>Well when we say aid, we still need to distinguish merit aid from need based aid.</p>
<p>As for merit aid, perhaps not a ‘right’ per se, but my son WORKED HARD to EARN the ‘aid’ he was granted. Perhaps, not ‘entitled’ to it, but yes, VERY deserving of it. For colleges, merit aid is figured into their budgets and for them is just a ‘cost of doing business’. They USE the merit aid to attract the students they want to improve their rankings or because they view these high potential students as future donors. When looking at most merit aid, it’s really just an opportunity cost to the institution. For schools that grant even full tution scholarships, what is the actual ‘cost’ to them? If they have a classroom with 50 students and all already paying for the instructor and the resources for a class, how much does it ‘cost’ them to add one more student on a merit scholarship to the room? It is just the opportunitiy cost that they could have had one more paying student, but despite being told that they are being given $X in tuition aid, its not as if the colleges are actually paying out that money. Also colleges are competing with one another. My son was awarded a full tution scholarship at an out of state school, but our in-state flaship opted not to provide him any award. On some level their admissions staff needs to consider the fact that at least some students are not going to just be thankful they got into X school, but are going to sit down and consider the value of what they will be paying. They offer merit awards to ensure they attract the student body they want.</p>
<p>Need based aid is also not an entitlement per se, but there is also a reason for it. Need based aid exists ‘for the betterment of society’. There are some very high stat, high achieving students with a lot of potential that were unfortunate enough to be born into situations where they don’t have the resources to continue their education. As a society we could not opt to help these students, but we’d be creating a perpetual lower class of society and not providing any means for these students to better themselves. As a society we recognize that some of these students have the potential to make significant future contributions if provided the opportunity. We are willing to provide funding through grants and government loans because there is more value to society in these students being given the opportunity to achieve their potential than seeing the wasted potential if these high achieving students are stuck working low-income, unskilled jobs. Of course that’s just the theory behind it, and assuming it always works out that way is overly idealistic.</p>
<p>But as for the families making $100K+ per year that whine about not being granted need-based aid, that’s just lack of information. Although I believe very well publicized, many families don’t understand that their EFC and what they will be expected to pay are almost always not the same. Even when my son saw his financial aid report and saw the EFC, he asked ‘so that’s what we have to pay?’ I answered ‘No’, but so many parents out there honestly don’t know that. They see their EFC, which for them is already a struggle (our EFC was over 20% of my after tax income) and assume that’s the cost they will have to pay for college, it is, after all, the ‘expected’ family contribution. They are left in shock when they learn that there is a gap when you take COA-EFC and are left completely unprepared to deal with that. That leaves them upset and angry and bitter because they are left feeling like they aren’t able to provide for their child who had worked so hard to get there, but yes, agreed, they are not ‘entitled’ to more, they are just suffering from lack of information. Perhaps schools need to start talking to parents as soon as their kids get into elementary school about the future potential costs, perhaps there need to be TV ads…I don’t know what it will take, I never felt like this information was not available to me, but I see so many parents that just ‘don’t get it’.</p>
<p>To see when financial aid is a <em>gift</em> and when it is not, take this example from Wesleyan University (I will use this example because data is available online).</p>
<p>In 2013 the average COA discounting is 37%. Wesleyan COA is around 60,000. 37% of 60,000 is around 22,000. That means that the average student is paying 38,000 at Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Suppose a middle class family gets a financial aid package of 5,000 from Wesleyan. Would anyone call this finaid from Weslayan a <em>gift</em>??? Can’t you see that if Wesleyan “gives” a family 5,000 finaid, the family is not receiving a gift. The family is in fact <em>giving gifts</em> to some other families who are paying below the 38,000K.</p>
<p>One may argue that finaid does not come from tuition, but comes from pools of budget, endowments, etc. But we all know that money is fungible. And the article from the President of Wesleyan proves that.</p>
<p>I agree that the level of entitlement is appalling at times. And I ALSO agree that there is a lot of confusing information that lures families into believing that certain schools may be more affordable than they are.</p>
<p>I have been completely thrilled and grateful for any amount of need-based grant aid our children have received. Stunned, actually, that they would receive this. Any merit aid has to do with our children’s accomplishments and that’s more an acknowledgement of them and that the school wants them. But need-based aid IS a privilege. </p>
<p>What has been disconcerting, though, is a subtle level of deception we have come across at two colleges in particular. One, which touted equal-opportunity merit based aid for deserving IS and OOS students, and then failed to offer the same amount for OOS (and actually admitted to us that they almost never give the full amount to OOS students, even though we were told in info sessions that it was open to anyone). The other was for a school that required the CS profile along with the application, did not even ask for the FAFSA, and was clearly need-aware. It seemed apparent that although they promise to meet 100% of need, they may only select tippy top students for admission who actually require this amount of aid.</p>
<p>Overall, though, college is a privilege, and no college needs to offer any aid to anyone. If our children did not receive any need-based aid, they would be going to community college and finding their own path.</p>
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<p>When the list price is $60K, I do sympathize with such families, although it is true that their children are not forced to go to such expensive schools.</p>
<p>Personally I feel like the OP is incredibly ignorant and is clearly from an upperclass family. </p>
<p>While I have not complained at all about my financial aid awards on this forum (prior to this post) I will undoubtedly be appealing it over the weekend (shoot me now OP).</p>
<p>I am no genius, but I am a pretty good student who has worked hard over the past few years in order to earn my admission into a top 25 university. The school offered me some grants to try to help me pay their ridiculous tuition and fees, but it was simply not enough.</p>
<p>Before you go on about my arrogant sense of entitlement, let me tell you that I have been working a job for years and plan on having over $10,000 saved up before school this fall. This money isn’t being inherited from my grandma, coming out of my trust fund, from my rich aunt for getting all A’s in high school, or because all of my family coming to my grad party are giving me $100 a pop. I work during summer, during the school year, and pick up extra jobs from the city whenever possible. I haven’t bought any clothes, and video games, any electronics, anything at all in years because all that I want is an incredible education and an incredible opportunity. Needless to say, I have no problem taking out the Stafford loan, throwing in every penny that I have earned over the years, do a work study, collect bottles and cans every weekend, do whatever it takes to attend the said university.</p>
<p>Do you think that is enough?</p>
<p>The unfortunate truth of this all is that the decision of what college I go to is 100% out of my hands because universities assume that my parents will either A.) give up their retirement funds or B.) Take out $30,000 in loans (Assuming that I can pay the other $16,000 in cash/stafford).</p>
<p>While I understand why they don’t want to take out $30,000 in loans (about half of our take home income) it is heartbreaking that I have worked so hard for so long only to find that my money will only cover tuition if I decide to stay home this year for college, given that I definitely cannot afford living expenses on top of it. My parents have, thankfully, conceded that they will take out some loans and I appreciate it greatly, but it is hard for me, as an 18 year old, to burden them with tens of thousands of dollars in debt thats going to be staying in their name for several years to come.</p>
<p>I could go on, but I think I’ll stop for now.</p>
<p>I guess what I want to say is Congratulations OP! Your parents are rich and are willing to pay for your full education! But don’t think that you represent the whole world.</p>
<p>This:
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<p>And this:</p>
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<p>I can’t tell you how many times we heard “the money is there”, and “he will be able to write his own ticket”. Not ONCE did we hear- "he is a middle class white male. Do not expect him to get any financial assistance or merit money if he wants to go to a top school. "</p>
<p>All of those are lies. Well, not completely lies, but did not apply to my son. He had the academic stats, but not the financial backing for many of the top schools. </p>
<p>And our income has not been consistent for 18 years. So the whole “you should have been saving all along” just would not have worked out for us. Not for the $60/ year schools. Even if we did know 15- 18 years ago how expensive college was going to be when our son was ready to attend. We have saved what we could, but would never have been able to save $250,000+.</p>
<p>I would have been nice to hear the truth about college costs from the people that were supposed to know (counselors/teachers/admin), so that we suffered less sticker shock. This is not sour grapes, and I am not saying that my son deserved any special treatment or money for his hard work. Just that it was a disappointment to learn that the money really is not there. His whole plan had to adjust based on finances. He will be fine, and do well in life without an IVY education.</p>