another interesting aspect of this thread is that is a direct counter argument to the financial perspective of my student, who tends to say things like “all the parents are paying x”…well clearly they are not. thanks everybody!
What our family will pay per year for college seems to be a higher percentage of our combined income (34%) than many others who are posting here. But we have saved money, since before our child was born, because we always considered our child’s college education (undergrad and grad) to be the single most important expense of our lives.
I like this article from the New York Times, because it demonstrates that yes, not only the wealthy can afford to send their child to a top college. Most people pay a lot less than the sticker price for college at the nation’s academically elite colleges. And what they pay is based on their income and assets.
There are great charts showing representations of the amount paid by poor, low-middle class, middle class, upper-middle class, affluent, and very affluent families, based on the national distribution. Note that the designation of “affluent” requires an income of $186,000… and the affluent and very affluent are the only groups that pay anywhere near the sticker price for private colleges!
And again I say…the very generous aid those elite schools offer goes only to the 10% or less of applicants. The other 90% are rejected from these schools.
Yes, they can be very generous even to higher income families IF the student gets accepted.
Mine got accepted to three, no generosity extended to him.
This is quite an interesting discussion to know how everyone is handling it. We are at 35-40% of AGI, some 529 savings but mostly cash flow. I am not sure I am prepared to do that for 7 years until both kids graduate.
I am encouraging DD20 to go instate. Btw my spouse thinks that would be unfair to her but they are different type of students.
One of my kids goes to a public school (OOS but still 1/2 the COA of her sister) and the other to a very expensive private. I pay much more for the public than the private because of scholarships and aid at the private. It’s not unfair. Each is at the school she wanted, and each had a budget she had to stay under.
I agree, different kids, different needs.
@CupCakeMuffins if that is the case, your income and assets together exceeded the threshold for the awarding of need based aid.
I was responding to your comment about generosity to higher income families IF the students get accepted. Being a worthy applicant has zero relation to affordability.
"And again I say…the very generous aid those elite schools offer goes only to the 10% or less of applicants. The other 90% are rejected from these schools.
Yes, they can be very generous even to higher income families IF the student gets accepted."
They CAN be very generous to families if their incomes and assets don’t exceed the amount for awarding need based aid. Yours exceeded that amount @CupCakeMuffins
Some of these schools award need based aid to accepted students with incomes approaching $200,000 a year with “typical assets”. Perhaps your income is higher, or your assets exceeded “typical”.
These very generous schools DO make it possible for students to attend…based on the school’s calculation of what you can afford…not yours.
Based on the FA formula, you can afford to pay full freight. You just didn’t want to. You stated in many other threads that you did not want to touch certain assets and that you did not want to stop paying for your two nephews’ college tuitions.
Its sad how you’ve stiched a whole plot about some miserly person trying to hold on to wealth with few small bits of information and feeling hostile without knowing whole story. Its kind of presumptuous to feel you know everything about other person from few posts, you can never know what struggles others are facing or how their life’s trajectory has changed. Us humans can make all future plans we want but life has a way of throwing curve balls at worst times.
This is all too true, and I apologize for hostility. I understand that you are still trying to wrap your head around the fact that your son did not get to go to an elite private school, and that FA would have enabled it. You may get to a place where you are at peace with this by owning the fact that you were not a victim of colleges’ unfairness, your numbers simply did not justify FA, and nobody is entitled to go to any particular college. It’s not how you want it to be. But that’s what it is.
As you said, life has a way of throwing curve balls. This is one of them.