<p>eastcoascrazy–I don’t see paying $5000/year in loans being that big of a deal when everything is is paid for. $20,000 for 4 years of college is pretty dang good. But, like I said, most kids we know aren’t even paying that much. Some take out the loans, invest the money and pay it back after graduation too. One example, friend’s DD won several local scholarships, one covered all of her tuition for 4 years, the others, added up, covered room and board. She buys books and spending money—at a school costing $50K+/year. Her dad said that they did take out the fed loan her freshman year and put it into a savings account just in case but didn’t “need” to take out the loan. Her plan is to use that for a study abroad. Most people would say that she is getting a ‘full ride’.</p>
<p>6 years ago as a mom of a 8th grade graduate, I started pulling out the scholarship lists printed in our newspaper after high school graduation (we have 7 hs’s in our county.) I was always impressed that the private high school, with less than 100 students, earned “5.7 million dollars in scholarships etc.” I was naive and believed that that school had a fantastic guidance counselor. Skip forward a couple of years after I became more educated, I realized that this school in particular had their students apply to many schools and listed these scholarships even though they would not attend. I also realized it is easier to get a $44,000 merit scholarship to a private school, than a $10,000 scholarship to a public university. Since then I look over these lists with a more cynical eye. The public high schools lists all the scholarships too, but they do no use this as a recruitment tool. It bugs me when I see an ad in the paper that the “the average scholarship for the 2011 class at this private high school is $89,000” as I think this misrepresents the facts. Looking at their 2011 scholarship list published for that private school, really only 33 of their 80 students brought in that amount and much of it was to schools they were not going to attend. </p>
<p>I am glad they publish these lists though as it has helped me find state and local scholarships from business/women’s groups etc. that I may have not been aware. These scholarships are smaller but way more impressive for me.</p>
<p>reminds me of decision time… S2 was…but i got 26K per year from that school…I was…but it still leaves 20K to pay!</p>
<p>“How many $15,000 schools are there? What are the class sizes/graduation rate? What do their resources look like?”</p>
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<p>I didn’t think there were many schools out there with a COA of $15K/year, but then I found out my brother is sending his D to BYU-Idaho, which I think clocks in at under that figure. And I don’t even think they need to tithe to make it happen…:)</p>
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<p>Not many. And better than you might suspect. It takes digging to find them, and they may not be close to home - U of Minnesota, Morris (for example) - highly rated in most publications, 12k for IS or OOS. Sadly, not a contender for D.</p>
<p>My friend was so excited to tell me about her kid’s acceptances with merit money to several schools. One for $8000/yr and another for $5000. Others were less. When I asked her how much the net cost would be for each school, she said she didn’t know. She didn’t know about the COA and only looked up the tuition cost for each school. (she even asked me what room and board was) I was dumbfounded. This was 4 months after college apps went in! So, I helped her set up a worksheet to be able to plug in the info from each school and taught her how to use the net cost calculator for each school. </p>
<p>A week later, when we met again she was more realistic. The privates w/merit $ were still more expensive than the publics without. They tossed out the most expensive school and now are looking at a list of 3. It was such a humbling process for her and I wish she and her H had talked money first. It’s already so hard to tell your kid “no” after he’s done his part getting into the schools. </p>
<p>BTW, she asked me how I knew how to do all of this. Well, I have to give DH credit. He is good with the finances. But my source of info has been CC for the last 4 years. I told her about it when our kid’s were just starting HS.</p>
<p>Busdriver, the value of an Academy education has been valued at $250K total, not $250K per year (it’s probably higher now than in my day). I don’t know where your #s came from.</p>