My own experience starting college in 1993 was that my lower middle class family with two students in college didn’t qualify for anything except loans. I was lucky to get a full tuition merit scholarship to my state flagship, but my older brother who didn’t get any merit aid had a lot more in loans. When I graduated and immediately earned almost as much as my parents’ combined income (with H earning even more), H and I knew our kids would never qualify for need based aid. In fact it was a (minor) factor in our decision about how many kids to have. Now that we’re almost to the college stage, we know we can afford to be full pay at expensive schools but expect S to look at the value of each school relative to its cost. He’s on track to get good-to-great merit aid at plenty of good schools that he loves, and even if he could get into Stanford or MIT he doesn’t think $60+k per year is worth it. OP, it’s time to decide (or ask your parents if you are the student) how much can be comfortably spent on education, and look for universities that fit in that limit. Run the NPC for the expensive schools currently on your list; if you won’t qualify for need-based aid and a school doesn’t give merit aid or you don’t have a chance to qualify for merit aid there, then it needs to come off the list. Same as any other big purchase…it does no good to test drive a Mercedes when you know you can only afford a Hyundai.
@socalmom007 You are very close to the infamous 1%. How do you think a family lives on $60,000/year? Most families do so and feel grateful that they have jobs. First world problems.
Close to the 1%??? That’s crazy talk, lol. The one percent can afford lawyers to hide their money, we actually have to pay out over 40% of our income in taxes. I’m a daughter of Latin American immigrants, first person in my family to go to college, my husband’s family was lower middle class. We are successful because we’ve worked our tails off. Not sure what it’s like to live on 60k a year, I grew up with a single mother on far less. We spent the first 15 years of our marriage paying off our student loans instead of saving for our kids to go to college. We’ll likely spend the rest of our lives paying off their student loans, and I’m ok with that.
Some parents do not realize there is a paradigm shift from when they went to school (if they are college educated and US born/raised) - and experiences can differ vastly from state to state with flagships or public schools - this is rapidly changing with private colleges too. It can differ on ‘the right fit’ for student based on variables including the field of study for UG degree. Short term and long term student goals.
Some students/parents don’t start digging into the college search until student is at application process time, because they have made some false assumptions - and they realize they are going to need to cram the decision making into a very short time - and no room for student to improve standardized testing ACT/SAT for potential school merit opportunities.
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We'll likely spend the rest of our lives paying off their student loans, and I'm ok with that. <<<
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I don’t know if you’ve already started taking on big loans, but if you haven’t , you might want to rethink that strategy. Many people are not able to work as long as they’d like either due to health or simply their jobs get down-sized.
There are other options…choosing schools where the students get merit, commuting to a local CSU or UC.
Our plan at this point is a home equity line. My son is getting a small athletic scholarship at a WUE school which will help a bit, my daughter may get some merit aide if she goes private. Unfortunately our local UC is at the ivy level for admissions, everyone wants to come here. Our local CSU’s within commuting distance I would not consider viable options. We’ll see where our girl gets in an make an informed decision from there, private schools with some merit may not be any more than UC or CSU.
My parents had no money - just debt. They paid all they could for my college education which was ZERO
Somehow we didn’t qualify for free money. I had other friends in the same situation. Did our parents sit around and worry? I don’t know. We sure didn’t ask them what are you going to do for us? We asked each other What are WE going to to
So I got a job, drove my crappy car to the closest state college, and started my education. When I had enough of that I joined THE ARMY to get money to finish school.
Other friends went part time or started at county colleges, then transferred. Point is the kids have to take ownership of their education. You tell them how much you can help them - no matter how big or how small - and THEY work out a plan.
The kids who didn’t - they never went to college - got crappy jobs - and have no money as adults. Do their kids now get a free education? No they don’t There isn’t enough free money to send them away to college either 
Kids have to take ownership of their education. Work hard in school and earn merit money or work hard at a job to pay for your education!
In no way do we earn over 200K. Not even close. Over 100K yes. but closer to that end than the other end. I am watching others get financial aid who are in no way poor. Watching them go on vacations etc. and I’m thinking what are we missing? We work and work and will get nothing for financial aid. Kind of like too rich to be poor and too poor to get rich. I find it interesting that people assumed I was talking about over 200K. If that were the case, affording college would be no problem. Where we live many work for the government so they have retirement provided as well as amazing health plans. We are responsible for all that.
You said your income is $350k. You are right; you are not in the top 1%. You are in the top 2%.
http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/
And these others showed you their tax returns, financial aid applications and need-based financial aid award letters? If they didn’t (and I’m betting they didn’t), then you have no idea.
And it may be merit aid they are receiving.
…“We’ll likely spend the rest of our lives paying off their student loans, and I’m ok with that” …
I wouldn’t be I’d let my kid live rent free after college so they can pay their own loans more quickly. Heck, I’d be willing to pay down their loans for them and some point if I had the money. But I’d never tell them that up front.
All a matter of personal choices,
The OP mentioned over $150,000 in income, and significant savings, I think that’s what people based their replies on.
And yet we have no expendable income… It’s fine I’m not complaining, I just find it funny when people talk about upper income earners like they’re wiping their bums in dollar bills. 350k salary, paycheck take home after state, federal on AMT, ssi, medicare, small percentage 401k is 187k. Property tax is over 10k, so now take home is 177k, right about 50%, I would have to back out 401k and medical reimbursement to get the exact percentage, but you get the idea. Mortgage on cute but not extravagant tract house, over 36k a year, private school 48k a year (littlest has autism so his school is expensive). Two kids in college next year with an EFC of 44k each… so 177k minus 36k and 48k… is 93k, 44k each kid EFC would leave us 5k a year to feed them, pay for utilities, insurance and everything else it takes for a family of 6 to live. This is why I have an income of 350k a year and drive a car with over 100k miles on it wearing clothes from Target. Am I fortunate to make the income I do? Yes. I’ve also worked my butt off for that success after growing up dirt poor. I also understand private school is a luxury we choose to spend our money on but our public school district is not good after all of the California budget cuts.
When a kid graduates from private high school and starts college, you won’t be making two tuition payments for that kid. You can take the money spent on private high school and use it for college.
I’m sorry, I do understand what you are saying about your high cost of living, but when I compare your situation to most other families, you come across as a bit tone deaf. Your hard work and saving is rewarded; perhaps just not as much or in as many ways as you would like it to be.
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Our local CSU’s within commuting distance I would not consider viable options.
We’ll see where our girl gets in an make an informed decision from there, private schools with some merit may not be any more than UC or CSU.
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Sounds like you’re close to UCLA.
Yes, there may be some public and private schools that will give enough merit that costs can be brought down to a UC or CSU. Depending on your DD’s stats, and a carefully selected list, she can find good merit schools.
Op- I get the math.
What you seem reluctant to conclude is that you’ve made a host of choices (and i’m not being critical since I likely would have made some of those same choices) which have created your “perfect storm”.
You have four kids. That is above the average for the typical American family right now. A wonderful choice for you- but surely this is not the first time you’ve looked around at your friends with only one kid and realized that they have different options.
You have bitten the bullet for private school which reduced your ability to save. Again- a choice. You live in a place with terrible public schools-there was a moment I’m sure where you asked “maybe we should move somewhere else” and the answer was no. Again- a choice.
I know people (I was not in this group) that figured out the only way to make college work was to be mortgage free by the time senior year rolled around. Some of them are living in condo’s/apartments/starter homes (never made the jump to an actual house when their peers were trading up). Some of them waited to purchase until they could do a substantial down payment, and were disciplined enough to pay down the mortgage early. Again- I didn’t do this, but these are choices.
Your posts are coming off as tone deaf because you seem to be implying that a kid who grew up in a homeless shelter and is lucky enough to get into Stanford somehow has more and better choices than your kids do. Because when you think about it- that’s crazy talk.
I was not counting my senior’s private school tuition, that’s the cost for our two younger kids for next year. I don’t believe I am tone deaf at all. I grew up dirt poor in a low income neighborhood. My husband and I put ourselves through college and paid off 70k in student loan debt. I’m a teacher, he’s an accountant. Do we make a nice living on paper, sure. We 100% chose to have a big family, we also chose to live in Los Angeles. We choose to have our kids in private school. But this perception that if you make over a certain income level you are rolling in dough is so silly. It really depends where you live. I’m sure if we made our income level in Oklahoma or Arkansas it would feel like a lot more money.
@blossom - I assume you are addressing socalmom007 not the OP who is Joe2015
Claremont- thank you for catching that. Yes, my comments are addressed at Socal.
And yes- if you made your income level in Oklahoma it would feel like a lot of money. But teaching salaries in Oklahoma are about half of what they are in LA…