<p>With soaring college costs, down economy, how are parents paying for an expensive four years of college? My daughter wants to attend school back East where there are no scholarships available and there is no way we are getting any FA. We have the first two years of funds saved but not the last two. I am not about to cash in my 401K or refinance our house for it. It's pretty sad when $125K is not enough to pay for college.</p>
<p>Any suggestions? My daughter is not wanting to go to a state school but only interested in a private school back East. </p>
<p>I'm really looking for some advice on a stategy on what we can do to pay off the last two years.</p>
<p>You are fortunate to have SOME savings for college. That being said…your daughter needs to be realistic about what you are able to pay. As Oldfort said, there are merit awards that could potentially help her, but most of those won’t exceed $10k to $15k per year. Are you able to contribute any additional money out of current earnings? Your daughter will be able to take the Direct loans in her name. Freshman year that will be $5500. </p>
<p>Where exactly does she want to go to college? What is she interested in studying? What are her SAT and GPA? You might also want to post this on the financial aid forum, and do a search of this site for guaranteed merit awards.</p>
<p>Also…while this is what your daughter wants…if it is not affordable for the family, she needs to have other options. College is for FOUR years at least and there needs to be a way to pay for ALL four years. </p>
<p>Help your daughter identify the characteristics of these dream schools, and then look for some with similar characteristics that you feel are within financial reach.</p>
<p>Have the money talk early. Don’t let this get out of hand. Tell dd she has x amount of money a year. She can only get loan for so much per year. She better have a finacial safety or she could be the one that doesn’t get to go off to college.</p>
<p>For my older D, we did the following: each year we paid 1/3 from savings, 1/3 from money I earned that year, and she went to an “eastern private school” that offered her about 1/3 in merit aid. She also picked up a few other small scholarships along the way (a few thousand a year). We could have taken out some loans if needed in addition to this, but did not need to.</p>
<p>So… maybe she doesn’t get to go to her “first choice” private school (heck, she may not get in anyway!), but maybe she still can go to a top 50 LAC out east that offers some merit aid.</p>
<p>I had zero problem telling D1 that, no matter what she thought her dream school was, if it didn’t come through with aid that made it affordable, it wasn’t a “dream school.” </p>
<p>That sounds harsher than it was. We were frank with her at every stage. I did a lot of research into what varous colleges’ finaid perspectives seemed to be- 100% need, merit, iffy. I kept her posted. </p>
<p>Whatever your D thinks her dream school is, someone has to check to see if it actually offers courses relevant to her major or has requirements she’ll find difficult to manage. </p>
<p>You may need to bone up on finaid- some of this depends on whether your savings are liquid or in college savings plans and etc. Income matters, but there’s only a percentage of your savings that, in theory, are tapped for college costs each year, etc, etc. You’ll need to look at the “whole picture.” Run the colleges’ NPCs.</p>
<p>Our original plan had been to increase my work hours so that we paid for college from my earnings - we’d always pretty much lived just on dh’s salary. What’s actually happened was that we got an unexpected inheritance which meant that colleges expect us to pay everything which we do.</p>
<p>Concur with all the above. Be very clear about what you will and will not (or can and can not) do- both in terms of tuition/room/board and other expenses (like travelmwhich is huge for us). Merit scholarships can be tremendous but may well mean casting a wider net. Our son has been very respectful of the boundaries we set and was part of the financial decisions from the beginning.</p>
<p>Great advice above. There are many good colleges, some far less expensive than others. As the person footing the bill, you get to set the financial parameters. Tell your daughter that you can pay $X per year. Anything over that amount is something that she will have to make up through scholarships.</p>
<p>I’m one of those people whose parents told me that they would send me to any college I chose. That was many years ago, when the yearly cost of a private college was a fraction (1/8 for a nearby university) of what it is today. There are fewer people today who can take the “We’ll send you anywhere” approach.</p>
<p>As others mentioned, families pay for college out of many money streams and not just savings–continued saving from current income, second jobs, non-working spouse goes to work, kid summer and school year jobs, parent loans, kid loans, inheritances, investments, etc. I’ve seen all come into play between the experience of our family and those of our friends.</p>
<p>With increased income, belt tightening, and loans, you might be able to squeak by. But you have to factor in a 5% increase in costs per year…</p>
<p>If you have the chance to drop down a tier and through merit scholarships and your savings get through college without loans, both you and your kid will appreciate it in the long run.</p>
<p>To bump your college spending (per kid) from $125,000 to $220,000 or more is an enormous financial planning decision for the vast majority of families. It may change your retirement date, where and how you can afford to live as a retiree, what you can do for your kid(s) grad school, weddings, whether you can help them with a down payment, whether you can help with special things that might come up for grandchildren. It is you, not they, who will be caught short if you find yourself involuntarily retired before you’ve had time to overcome the financial setback of the increased college spend. Teenagers often have stars in their eyes about college, and they don’t really understand any of this. These are not decisions that teenagers should make for their middle-aged parents.</p>
<p>There absolutely are families that will not get need-based aid, merit scholarships, or athletic scholarships – sticker price is the real price for many people. There is nothing wrong with telling a kid “here’s the budget I can contribute – you figure out how you can make this work to get your degree. I am not upset with you that you can’t win an athletic scholarship or a merit scholarship, and you should not be upset with me that I’ve ‘only’ got $125,000 to contribute toward your bachelor’s degree.”</p>
<p>Any kid being given $125,000 toward the bachelor’s degree is a lucky kid. You are not saying that your kid can’t go to college; only that it has to fit within a rather generous budget.</p>
<p>There are many ways to approach it, working within the budget. Maybe the kid can start at an affordable state college, perhaps even as a commuter, and transfer to a pricier school to finish the degree.</p>
<p>Our kids know how much we are willing to help them with each year, after that, they have to figure out how to come up with the money for school. They are only looking at schools where they come in at the top 25 % and that offer significant merit aid. DS has one lottery school on his list but if he gets in and they don’t give a good aid package, he simply won’t go there. He knows that and accepts that. We don’t plan on getting any “financial” aid really though.</p>
<p>Sit down with your DD and show her the hard facts, put it in a spreadsheet if you have to, total cost of the college, run the net price calculators to see what your expected cost will be and how much money you have to pay for the remainder. If that number ends up at zero or better, great, if not, how is SHE going to pay for the rest?</p>
<p>I think you can do half and half. Half from the savings and half from income. We never touch our savings either, good thing, because not the college savings are in 529 account.</p>
<p>It would be helpful if OP mentioned which East Coast LAC his D is looking at so we can brainstorm on available scholarships or an equivalant school with a cheaper sticker price. Her intented major would help as well.</p>
<p>There has been some good advice tossed in like community college for the 1st 2 years and then a transfer to the school for the last 2 years and the following from Fieldsports:</p>
<p>"There is nothing wrong with telling a kid “here’s the budget I can contribute – you figure out how you can make this work to get your degree. I am not upset with you that you can’t win an athletic scholarship or a merit scholarship, and you should not be upset with me that I’ve ‘only’ got $125,000 to contribute toward your bachelor’s degree.”</p>
<p>Also, there are dozens of small, east coast schools that fit the LAC description that fall within the 38-45 k sticker price. If you find one she will agree on, you and she can work/save toward that final year+ as she goes along her undergraduate career . . .</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. She is interested in UPenn and really no where else. Someone asked about her stats.</p>
<p>My daughter’s stats as follows:</p>
<p>Top 3% of her class in a private Catholic high school
She has taken every possible honors and pre AP classes
4.58 GPA (end of junior year) she has only gotten 1 B and the rest As
Over 2000 SAT (I forget the exact score)
Hispanic
Studied Spanish in Spain last summer for 6 weeks
Lots of “top student” class awards
Piano player since 5 years old
Lots of volunteer hours
School officer all 4 years in HS
Arranged a fundraiser that generated $7,800 (about killed me!)</p>
<p>For the most part we don’t see her all school year since she is studying or at school for some activity.</p>
<p>It appears that your daughter will be able to win many academic merit scholarships. The Ivies expect everybody to be as strong as she is, just to get in, and they consider everybody they admit to be meritorious, so they give money on the basis of need, not merit (although they are reputed to be more generous than most when they determine “need”). I know plenty of people who are full sticker price payors at Ivies.</p>
<p>There will be lots of non-Ivy schools that will make it very affordable for her to attend, even if they do not think you have need. She will be able to shine, and to get a great education, at many of those schools.</p>
<p>For a kid to set her heart on one school, particularly one that does not give merit aid, is ill-advised. Especially when the sticker price exceeds the fund that has been established for her education (by about 200%).</p>
<p>She is clearly bright and hardworking, but she is nevertheless a teenager, who should not be making binding retirement decisions for her parents. Any discussion of extending beyond the original budget should start with the parents updating their financial plan, and looking at where they stand.</p>
<p>On a personal note – I was counseled to apply to Ivies, my father balked at the money, I went elsewhere, and guess what – when I ultimately settled into my dream job, everybody I worked with had been to Ivies. So I found my way into my destined role in life, regardless.</p>
<p>For a variety of reasons, it is important that you daughter be discouraged from having only one school that will do. Both for cost reasons and because there is always a possibility that she will not be admitted.</p>
<p>That said, there are more options than just UPenn and a state school. As mentioned previously on this thread, there are quite a few liberal arts schools in the 25-50 ranking range that may give her good merit aid. </p>
<p>To be blunt… you need to have a conversation with her NOW about what your family can afford, and that she needs to consider other schools. Don’t know if she has done any visiting of other colleges, but tell her she MUST start working on a match/safety list of colleges that are more affordable. This is a difficult conversation, but as you said yourself (very intelligently, I think), you will not raid your 401K or house equity. Ellemenope (post #11) has given pretty much the full list of options for you. There is no magic answer to this question, only the hard work of making choices. The parents out here are very good resources for identifying schools that might be a match besides UPenn if you want them to.</p>
<p>In another thread, didn’t you imply you had a private counselor? You really shouldn’t be in this bind. Sorry.</p>
<p>As you described her, a fuller picture is missing. The Ivies review holistically and much more than stats and a “list” matters. It will be about the substance of what she did, impact, and how well she presents herself. They look for a range of personal qualities that they value- not just classroom success and some good ECs, but a sense of the sort of young woman she is, her judgment, perspective, how she takes on a challenge, etc. Many great kids find it daunting. </p>
<p>You don’t want your dear daughter to be crushed. The competition, as you know, is fierce. In addition the financial considerations, you need to help her find that set of other schools she can love, be happy with, where she can thrive and not have regrets. I’m guessing someone, at least a GC, has tried this and she’s not satisfied. Somehow, you have to help her. There’s a big difference between dream school and last choice. </p>