So I have been trying to find out how much financial aid I can get for different schools. My parents have told me that they are less than 10 years from retirement and they refuse to help me pay for school. They both make a lot of money, so for most colleges my expected family contribution is extremely high. How can I tell them that my family isn’t paying for my college, so that my EFC is 0 and will they even care? Thanks 
The colleges will base the awarding of need based aid on what they calculate your parents CAN pay…not,on what your parents say they WILL pay. Think of it…if all it took was parents saying “we won’t pay a penny” every student would have financial need.
Changing my response here…because I see you are a senior now.
Did you apply to ANY colleges that are affordable?
What do your parents hope to see you doing next year? Did you discuss college costs with them before applying?
Will they help you with college costs at all?
Can you commute to a community college?
No, because what’s to stop other students from suddenly declaring their parents won’t pay???
High income families needing money should target schools that award generous merit money and avoid expensive schools that give only need-based aid.
FYI
http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/
Have you received any acceptances yet? Any merit-based aid? Maybe when all of the paperwork is in front of them, they will relent.
If not, your best option is probably to take a gap year and to apply to places where you’d have good chances of merit-based aid as an incoming freshman.
Here are some options:
Lots of parents are +/- a decade away from retirement. When did your parents inform you of what they were (or weren’t) willing to pay?
Your EFC is not $0, because your parents “make a lot of money.” The “F” in EFC stands for “family.” Family in this context includes you and your parents. No college will cut you a break on need-based financial aid simply because your parents have the ability to contribute yet refuse to do so.
Unfortunately, the FAFSA is extremely rigid in who it considers a dependent. (I was still a “dependent” even when I was living alone and paying all my own expenses. Simply because I was young.)
Your best bet is applying to a major, in-state university. Whatever the main one in your area is. Almost all state schools will offer some form of MERIT based aid if you did well in high school.
This student is currently a HS senior…unless I’m reading wrong. The deadlines for significant merit aid at most schools have long since passed.
Hoping this student had at least one affordable college on the application list.
Above posted in the fall.
No. Colleges offer merit aid for students they want or financial aid for those whose families don’t have money.
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This student is currently a HS senior…unless I’m reading wrong. The deadlines for significant merit aid at most schools have long since passed.
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Yes and no. At many schools, the deadlines have passed.
however, there are schools that will still offer big merit…UAH, UAB, and (I think) Miss State.
I don’t think this student has high stats.
However, at UAH will let you retest and get more merit…even now.
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My parents have told me that they are less than 10 years from retirement and they refuse to help me pay for school. They both make a lot of money, so for most colleges my expected family contribution is extremely high.
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Do you qualify for HOPE?
Probably many/most parents of college-bound students are about 10 years from retirement age.
You need to talk to your parents. I suspect that either they don’t have enough saved for retirement and are trying to play “catch up,” or they see that you have modest stats and don’t think spending $100k-250k on college is justified.
If your stats don’t qualify for HOPE, then that may also be a reason that they don’t want to pay.
What is your career goal?
You may not like it, but most careers can be reached by starting at a CC, doing well, and then transferring.
Does HOPE allow a modest-stats student to go to a CC, do very well, and then qualify for HOPE for years 3 & 4? If so, then there is your solution.
I feel for you it is all to common in the middle and upper class. Private education with the exception of some private schools that try to meet 100% need is a “bad” financial decision for most families. Without “merit” aid it is just stupid to spend $70K/yr. on a liberal arts major.
Your choices are community or public colleges and live at home. I believe you will be “attached” to your parents income until you are about 24 years old, so a GAP year is worthless. Even kids that have great “packages” from low income families often can not afford a private school if they live on campus.
Now let’s talk about your parents, if they make money and want to save it good for them. You are most likely 18 or older right now and are technically an adult they really don’t owe you anything more. Do you actually want them to sell their house to send you to college? Yes you can move out and get a job. But you can’t get any FAFSA “break” on financial aid until you meet the conditions set forth here https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/dependency
If your set on a free ride via the FAFSA (note that 95% of the schools out there won’t even come close to meeting the EFC) then get yourself married (it can even be platonic) or join the Military and when you get out of the service then go to college.
Education (and now health care) is something that has a “hidden tax” those that are needy have one price and those that are wealthy have a different price. It’s all to be “fair” obviously what you consider fair and others consider fair will differ greatly depending on your situation. We all know a supermarket doesn’t look at your bank account and charge $2, $10, or $100 for a carton of eggs depending how much you have in the bank. In fact lots of kids and parents in your exact situation “feel angry” about the cost of education at this point when you realize this just happened to your family and it impacts you and you feel your dreams just crashed.
IMHO anytime the government gets involved with any aspect of the economy prices always go up. The government isn’t paying anywhere near enough for college it pretends to at the expense of others (but remember someone called the consumer or the tax payer always pays). The government is actually forcing your parents to pay a “higher price”. Whether this policy is right or wrong is a moral argument. But at least in the case of education your parents can just say “no”, however for health care they are currently forced to buy it via the PPACA.
From my perspective I think you are indeed being hurt (not by your parents but by the “system” that doesn’t give a hoot about you or your parents). Others in this forum will strongly disagree with me. But before anyone responds directly to what they deem my “wrongheaded opinion” I invite all to read the following and then ponder what will happen to our education system when families that make too much money for college breaks all send there children into the military or overseas to avoid what they see as a rigged system. Remember they paid their taxes and now they believe subsidize others with a higher prices in the name of “fairness” you parents are too smart to buy other’s beer.
What? Getting married will not get someone a “free ride” to college. It might get the student independent status for financial aid but the max that would get them guaranteed is $5500 in loans, and $5775 in Pell Grant monies. Plus…they would have to show that they could pay their own bills…all of them.
Re: the military. No one should join the military unless they want to join the military. It should not be used for college purposes if the student really doesn’t want to be in the military.
Thumper1 - for someone who posts as much as you you really should read more carefully. I was pretty clear when I said the following: “note that 95% of the schools out there won’t even come close to meeting the EFC”.
The student obviously knows what the EFC means and I also gave the link https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/dependency that showed more details to what I hinted at. Oh I left out another option have a baby and be a single Mom. These are indeed three real options albeit ones that few of us take when it comes to education. You have an issue with all this take it up with “studentaid.ed.gov” I didn’t write the stupid laws and yes they are very hard to get around.
But you hit the nail on the head concerning Federal help for privates is a joke if your parents won’t help they indeed only give $5500 in loans, and $5775 in Pell Grant monies - that’s why choosing a college with great institutional aid like that given by Rice, USC, Vanderbilt or Princeton can be critical.
@artDad222: that’s not how it works, actually.
Free rides correlate with high stats and those correlate with high income, not low income.
FAFSA allows students to receive, if they wish, $5,500 in federal loans, and if their parents earn 30K or less, 5.8K in grants. So, at BEST, $11,300 in loans and grants. That’s not enough to pay tuition at many state universities, let alone room&board.
Increase in costs at public universities can be attributed to many factors (budget cuts from state funding, building of luxury amenities, bloated administration, increased federal regulations, take your pick), but federal financial aid is totally unrelated. The pace of federal aid growth is dwarfed by the pace of college costs growth. They have absolutely nothing in common, you can’t even claim correlation let alone causation.
Getting married allows one to be considered an independent, provided one pays for 50% of one’s own expenses. It doesn’t entitle to any financial aid beside the above, ie., sufficient for community college.
Also, joining the military should be a vocation. It should not be seen as a way to pay for college. I’m not sure this was in jest, but since this thread is by a distraught or confused senior in high school, better be straight with her.
@xXMeganBDXx :
Are you in 12th grade?
What are your stats - your GPA and your test scores?
What do you want to study?
Where have you been admitted?
Will your parents at least pay for your food and housing (ie., you have to live somewhere and eat)?
Will they at least refund you the $4,500 they’ll get because they get to declare you and declare you in college (American Opportunity refund)?
Is there a university near where you live?
Or would you rather take a gap year, work and “prep” for tests until you can increase your scores, and go to an “automatic merit” university?
This student doesn’t have the stats for schools that give great aid like Rice, USC, Vandy, etc.
I think this student needs to have a chat with her parents. If they assumed that their child/children should earn the stats to qualify for HOPE so that tuition would be nearly free in Georgia, then that would explain why they’re not willing to spend $40k-60k per year for their non-HOPE student to go elsewhere.
It is mid Mar ch and OP still has no idea of his/her EFC. It is way too late to ask this question fom a senior.
MYOS1634 - “The pace of federal aid growth is dwarfed by the pace of college costs growth. They have absolutely nothing in common, you can’t even claim correlation let alone causation.” - quite the opinion, I would advise you to read the WSJ article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-aids-role-in-driving-up-tuitions-gains-credence-1438538582
I know it “gains credence”, in that some people want to believe in that claim, but facts don’t bear that out: if you look at actual numbers, you’ll see it doesn’t work in any way.
The maximum Pell award, in today’s dollars, was $5,400 in 1976. It’s now $5,800. It’s stayed about constant. Actual amount was $1,405 in 1976 dollars. Many state universities cost $200-600 a year in 1976 dollars, some were entirely free. So, Pell was well above the cost of tuition (in fact, average tuition, room, and board was $1,827 so Pell covered most of tuition, fees, room, and board.)
If Pell had simply followed average public university costs along those lines, it’d currently be slightly above $20,000 a year - not $5,800. So, college costs have increased nearly four times more than government grants.
If you just look at the past 10 years, Pell was $4,564 in 2006. It grew to $5,800 in 10 years.
Average costs at a 4-year university were $14,200 public and $38,000 private in 2006; If costs followed Pell expenses, public universities would cost an average of 18,500 a year now, and COA at private colleges would cost 45,000 – when in reality, it’s $31,000 public (these costs more than doubled and are the greatest cause for concern), $67,000 private now . College costs don’t follow federal aid at all.
The same holds true for federal loans, which are now $5,500 for freshman year. There’s not a state where you can attend college for $5,500.
Finally, states that have excellent financial aid (ie., New York State, California) do not have public universities with the highest tuition costs (Pennsylvania, Illinois.)
https://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Documents/FactSheet-Pell-Grant-Funding-History-1976-2010.pdf
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp
OP:
if push came to shove, would you rather take a gap year or attend a community college?
(GA Perimeter has good transfer agreements, for instance).
Is it true you won’t qualify for HOPE? If you improve between now and next year, will it be too late for HOPE anyway?
Payback time!