I think it is the same. Costly, elite schools are often the most generous in terms of how they award need based aid and often award some aid to families making much more than you’d think. That being said, there is always a threshold and families who are just above that line (which varies from school to school) are often shut out because while they make too much to get any aid, they don’t make enough (or haven’t saved enough) to afford the sticker price.
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Me too! I imagine there are also some families with very high assets who are also ineligible for aid even if they make under 232K.
I know that some net price calculators and the CSS ask where the family lives, but I think that is just for calculating transportation costs into the financial aid packages --like two flights home per year or whatever. I know D22’s packages did add transportation to the cost of attendance at far away schools and while there was no money added to the COA for colleges that were within driving distance. Still I’m guessing that even if aid offices look at home address to adjust for transportation expenses, they are not adjusted for cost of living for those DC or San Francisco folks mentioned up thread.
Small business owners fall into that category as well. Not sure how they calculate assets but I wonder if they expect you to sell a business and have no income.
I will say popularity of CA public universities is directly linked to cost of living here and perceived higher incomes.
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Makes sense. With such excellent public universities, I would think few would be interested in Wesleyan’s $87k COA unless they were quite wealthy
It kind of depends on the type of business. If you own rental houses, then yes, they do expect that or at least count the value of the rental homes and the income they generate. Farmers get hit hard. I don’t think the ‘good will’ in professional businesses like CPA or dental practices might get hit as hard.
I think this is the case on the west coast in general. In WA state, few have even heard of Wesleyan. LACs in general are not popular, especially those on the east coast, except in the case of a small percentage of private school kids. According SCOIR for our private school, one kid has gone to Wes in the past 7 years of reporting.
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I agree with that…some Profile schools can and do expect families to sell off some buildings, or farmers to sell off some land to fund college (especially if there have been relatively recent purchases of those assets).
This year (as of right now), there is no longer an exemption for small businesses and farmers on Simplified FAFSA, so fewer of them will qualify for Pell Grants, and other types of fed aid too.
CA is huge. As it is, CA seems to have solid representation at these small schools.
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True. But I wonder what percentage of the CA kids at these small NE LACs are from LA and Bay Area private schools. It’s a pretty rarified group.
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Yes. Probably lots of them.
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Retail stores, restaurants…
Of course it does. There are plenty of people in CA who can easily write a $90k check per year. Those kids certainly won’t be pushed into public universities. I specifically want to point the popularity of public universities in CA among dual income families making $250k to $350k especially when they have multiple kids. That’s the segment that gets no help but isn’t rich enough to fund several kids at that price.
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Yes, someone is always going to feel squeezed out. Right now, there are tons of low-income kids who cannot afford to attend their state flagship because their state legislatures think $28K a year is a bargain price for a first-rate education and according to a report by the Institute of Higher Education Policy, only six out of 50 state flagships meet an “affordability benchmark” for low-income students:
EDIT: A previous version of this reply cited an article published by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. That was the wrong citation. This is a better citation:
Most public flagship universities are unaffordable for low-income students, report finds (insidehighered.com)
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I was told that half of kids attending UCs in CA pay nothing. So yes, plenty of kids who come from low income homes.
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UC net price calculators do show a non-zero net price even for the lowest income students. Note that this is based on all costs of attendance minus grants and scholarships, not just tuition. UC does promise that financial aid grants and scholarships will be at least the amount of systemwide tuition and fees for students from families with financial need and under $80,000 income ( Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan | UC Admissions ), but that does not necessarily mean that living expenses will be fully covered.
California does well in this graphic, appearing in the upper right corner of the pink rectangle, one of the state systems with the lowest affordability gaps and a modest percentage of Pell Enrollees (but you’re right - not exactly $0):
Inside Higher Ed, Sept. 11, 2019
I assume community colleges and non-residential colleges help fill the gap; most of the COA at the UC schools is living expenses, not tuition.
Leaving aside for the moment whether four years of living in a poor neighborhood is an adequate stop-gap solution to not being able to afford your state’s flagship university, there is the other extreme of Alabama which makes no bones that they value out-of-state full pay families more than their own Pell Grant eligible high school students.
The prior 12 years of living in a poor neighborhood with mediocre schools concerns me more. The residential college experience is an American luxury unrelated to education.
Actually I asumed Alabama had its generous merit programs to expand both the quantity and quality of its out of state applicants in a state with a small college age population. I think the UCs and MI are better known for trying to attract full pay OOS students.
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At 17% Pell, Alabama is similar to Williams, Barnard, U of Richmond, as well as Harvard, Yale, and MIT.
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