<p>We are a Narcissistic Society where everybody feels entitled at the expense of everyone else. There is a reason medical costs are so high, why insurance premiums are so high while its executives earn millions, why lawyers on Wall street are now charging in excess of $1000 per hour, why investment bankers responsible for bringing the economy to its knees felt justified in getting paid huge bonuses. Don’t blame the poor college student for feeling entitled to a decent education, blame the society at large.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who has more of a problem with people recieving too much aid-specifically for community college? I know 3 people who went to community college and got approx. $3000 in PELL grants for the year when the cost of tuition and all fees was $600 a semester. They were buying guitars with the leftover money.</p>
<p>OP HERE:</p>
<p>Soooooo laughing about my ignorance and my rich family!</p>
<p>We make about 116k before taxes and live in a very expensive state. We are a nurse and a teacher. My family is made up of professors, nurses and teachers.</p>
<p>My kids went to public school HS and picked their colleges very carefully and our EFC was about 23k which we are paying out of our paychecks. My husband and I worked and put ourselves through college. I didn’t get 1 penny for school. No trust funds, no investments, no rental properties and I drive a Kia Spectra with crank windows and manual locks.</p>
<p>Give me a break, H2Whoa…I think YOUR ignorance is showing ;)</p>
<p>Kayhufham, a student can get financial aid up to COA of a school. So, yes, if the cost is low, and the student states he is not commuting but living “off campus”, he can get a check from PELL, loans, whatever for the full COA, and maybe he has already paid the college out of pocket, so it’s all gravy for him to buy guitars, burn, anything his heart pleases. I am not into counting other people’s money and what they do with it. I have heard similar comments about Welfare Queens, abuse of foodstamps, and the list goes on. Yes, people sometimes make out on these things. They also sometimes cheat. But I am not one bit envious of those who are using up their college allotments that way, which are limited. I don’t have a problem with it. </p>
<p>My friend’s son burned through all of his money and the schools in the area seem to abet this sort of behavior. Now he’s 28 years old and ready to go back to school, and he’ll have to earn every cent of it even as he repays his Stafford money. I don’t think he has any guitars he can pawn to scrape up a bit more cash.</p>
<p>H2whoa, if you look at my post from the prior page, you can see I am well aware of those in your situation. Yes, you are in that niche that gets the raw end of the deal, not from the system but from the fact that you have parents who did not save and have their lives in the shape that is assumed by aid calculators so that they can or will pay for what is deemed they should pay. It’s always a problem when the parents cannot or will not do what they are supposed to be able to do. The problem is that there is only so much financial aid and lines have to be drawn somehow 18-22 year olds simply do not have to money to ever be able to pay for college except in rare occasions, so the onus is put on the parents because if it were not, then those parents willing and able would slip the money to their kids anyways. Those that had no chance in the world because they make or have no where close to it, are not in the game at all. So rules are made that below a certain point the government will step in with some money. Private schools come in with more to fill their rosters. That’s the way if works. It sucks for those whose parents fit in the profile as able to pay and they won’t or can’t. For such students, more affordable options have to be found.</p>
<p>If enough parents refused to pay, then I think the model would change. That has not happened. Parents stand in line to pay and pray their kids are picked so they have the privilege of doing so I predicted 15 years ago that this model would not endure, and I was wrong. It has flourished, though I am seeing some cracks in it where some of the schools are having to discount more often than not in terms of prices. On the other hand,some of the more desirable public schools are emboldened to raise their prices to close to private prices for OOSers, which have gone up higher than I ever could have imagined, and people are standing in line to pay them as well. So, you and kids like you are casualties of this model while it endures for the most part. As long as the accept rates and yields and payments work out, the prices will continue to rise. I daresay, some of the top schools can maybe even double their prices and still have more than enough takers. Which means those deemed able not willing to pay will have to fold and go set up camp elsewhere.</p>
<p>Colleges aren’t offering aid out of the kindness of their hearts. There is no charity going on here. This has nothing to do with social welfare. They do it becuase they want to win. They want to be at the top of those rankings we always talk about. And to do that they need smart kids. The smartest ones they can get. </p>
<p>They know if they cant meet the financial need of a student they dont have much chance of getting that student in their school. Thats why they provide aid (and scholarships). If they dont provide a good aid package, they either ran out of money or dont want that student bad enough (or both).</p>
<p>
USC (CA)? You are in MI with excellent state universities. Did you apply to them?</p>
<p>Captain,</p>
<p>If you agree that money can flow from the Pell to pay for guitars, because the student is funding her off-campus living expenses through other means, you also have to agree that the money from the near full payers and full payers flows to subsidize finaid for the other students.</p>
<p>The middle class is getting squeezed - and the cost of college is one of primary contributors. But we still have choices. This discussion makes me think of the two squirrels - the one who works hard and saves nuts for the winter and the one who has better things to do, but then asks for food when winter comes. H2whoa - I think a lot of people posting here aren’t the rich parents you are assuming us to be. Some of us made our children’s education a priority. We put money away instead of taking vacations or doing home remodeling or buying new cars. I don’t resent money going to the truly needy - but if a family refuses to contribute to their kid’s education at the clip the expensive college thinks they should, then the parents should tell their kid long before they get broadsided by the lack of financial aid coming their way. Kids can apply to less expensive state schools (I did) or less prestigious schools that may give them money to get a great student (my sister did).</p>
<p>
Not possible with today’s schools.</p>
<p>Of course it is possible. ^^^</p>
<p>Go to community college, go to local state school and live at home. Get merit aid.<br>
We took a small loan.</p>
<p>Of course you can. Maybe not a middle class kid who must have an upper tier private but kids do it all the time.</p>
<p>I KNOW kids who are doing it right now.</p>
<p>The problem is everyone thinks they must have the Mercedes when in fact, most people do just fine with a Kia.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>one of the things we quickly figured out is that this is really not easily done, or even the most cost effective route. Yes, a CC degree is affordable. But the cost of going on to a 4 year degree after that is pretty cost prohibitive on a limited salary of a student. And there are very few, and very very small scholarships for merit aid for transfer students. Your best bet for Merit aid is as a freshman.</p>
<p>I will add that this may be related to where you live and what your state school systems are like. Our system is not helpful in this area. It is more punitive.</p>
<p>I haven’t read all the posts, but would like to add this. When we visited MIT, I heard a lot of parents complaining about their financial aid packages. Versus the approx. $55,000 cost, they said, “We can’t AFFORD to pay $12,000 a year.” However, in more chit chat, they’d reveal that all their kids went to private school, they owned several nice cars, they lived in an upscale area, they were members of country clubs, they took shopping trips to NYC and vacations to Europe. I ended up not understanding how they only had to pay $12,000 per year. Financial aid is for when you wouldn’t be able to afford college if you didn’t get the aid. It’s not for when you don’t want to give up the luxuries you’re used to in order for your child to get an elite college education. There are kids whose parents struggle to keep the utilities on. Those are the kids who are going to get full aid packages with no work requirement. Why no work? They often are working to pay for things that parents normally would pay for, like basic clothing, medical copays, etc. and some use summer earnings to help the family. Many students are offered aid but the work component is there to give them an easy way to make money on campus, often in something related to their studies, so it benefits them in two ways. Also, kids who do not have a work component will often be kids who have fewer advantages in many ways, such as having to work all through every break versus going on vacation like other kids. This reduces their overall load. And, they may come from families where nobody went to college before and have to work harder to develop study skills than kids who had quiet rooms to themselves, parents coaching them academically, tutors and college admission coaches.</p>
<p>Just for information: a transfer student living at home and going to SUNY Geneseo (a great state university) if calculated using ONLY FAFSA since they don’t require CSS</p>
<p>Estimated Cost for 1st Year of Attendance
Estimated tuition and fees: +$6,402
Cost Paid Directly to SUNY Geneseo $6,402
Estimated room and board: +$1,950
Estimated books and supplies: +$950
Estimated personal expenses: +$950
Estimated transportation: +$1,000
Estimated total cost of attendance: $11,252
Estimated grants and scholarships: -$4,140
Estimated Net Price: $7,112
(Price of attendance minus grant aid)<br>
Estimated loans:
-$4,105
Estimated work-study award if eligible:
-$1,360
Estimated out-of-pocket cost: $1,647
(Net price minus loans and work-study)</p>
<p>
This. </p>
<p>Honestly, I really do understand how frustrating it must be for students who worked so hard to get into a top school only to find out they can’t pay for it, but they’re private schools, kids shouldn’t expect to get anything at all from them. Colleges don’t owe them money!</p>
<p>University of MD estimates commuter costs at 17,000/ year. Give or take. </p>
<p>Sent from my DROID RAZR using CC</p>
<p>Also, there is a federal formula to estimate need. Other money is added to that to make up the total need. If more money is given to families who can meet their basic necessities while still paying a big chunk or all of tuition, then fewer kids whose families cannot afford anything or at least much will get to go to college. You take a top, top student who had few advantages and tell him he can’t come to college because a kid with many advantages needs to live in an upscale home, drive a newer car, wear the best clothing and take exotic vacations, and what kind of world do we live in? Most middle class families spend a sizable chunk of their income on unnecessary things that don’t truly add to the quality of life. That should be saved for college or spent on educational expenses to increase odd of a scholarship or better admission where the school has an endowment.</p>
<p>Univ of MD tuition is $8900 a year. And another $1300 estimate for books (if you rent them it would be much less). The transportation and incidentals cost is really irrelevant - that is living expenses that you would have whether you go to school or not - like gas, going out for pizza, going to the movies with friends, etc. These are not really costs of going to college - and they are controllable by lifestyle choices. You don’t have to go out for pizza and a movie every weekend.</p>
<p>to the OP, college may be a privilege, but top universities should quit spouting that they won’t make financial aid the barrier to admitted students to come, which most of them say. A lot of poor kids get free money (myself for example. I have multiple free rides to some of the best schools in the country, even though I’m not a super fantastic student, I got it for being poor). I know other kids who barely pass the 100k cutoff at these schools and are expected to contribute 150K for four years for their kids to attend? Even after what their parents can pay, those kids still have to take out ridiculous amounts of loans to attend schools that told them that money wouldn’t be a barrier while I get to go, eat their fancy food and use their great resources for not cost to myself or my family. </p>
<p>This is what is unfair. Kids like myself getting to go for free while those kids have to work their butts of for as much spare change as they can while taking on absurd amount of debt or they have to relinquish their dream school that they have been working their entire life to attend (and no, most of them don’t get a lot of help financially to get in either, no private school, no fancy test prep classes, just hard work) and have to attend community college which dashes their career potential and aspirations (how many very successful doctors and lawyers hail from community college?), which is an option some poor kids like me don’t have to ever consider because I get aid free flowing in from every direction?</p>
<p>It’s unfair because the schools TELL them this won’t be a barrier, so they work their butts off for what? a school they could have gotten into with a 2.5 instead of the 4.0 they have worked for? </p>
<p>People complain because schools get kids hopes up and then don’t deliver. That’s what makes people mad.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s great if you live in NY. Here in Illinois, tuition and fees alone (no room, board, books, miscellaneous expenses included) are over $20,000 a year at UIUC for certain majors, including my D’s major (business). Both my husband and I put ourselves through college and graduate school 30+ years ago, but there is no way our kids (who do not qualify for need-based aid) could do it by going the community college/state flagship route. There are other states (Pennsylvania comes to mind) that also have very expensive state schools.</p>