Will she go to a name brand school?

Paying for College
21

Perhaps the next best thing would be to live like a poor (or middle income) household.

The New Jersey median household income is $71,629, according to http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34000.html . After paying income and payroll taxes for a married couple and two kids, http://www.tax-rates.org/income-tax-calculator/?ref=nav_income estimates $59,330 left. For comparison, the same household with $250,000 income has $178,109 after income and payroll taxes. So if the OP’s household with $250,000 income budgets as if it were a median household income family in New Jersey, it would have $118,779 per year in extra after-tax money to save. That is nearly enough to full-pay two students at expensive private colleges. If that amount per year were saved for even a few years before, that would pre-load the college fund by quite a bit.

22

Why is Rutgers “very poor”?

Biology majors do not have the greatest major-specific job prospects, so avoiding large amounts of debt would be a good thing.

23

What is she going to do with a Bio degree? That’s a staple major. Not worth spending a lot of money any way. Every decent school has a good bio dept.

24

We have decided as a nation that an important goal is to make sure that children from ALL socio-economic levels have an equal opportunity for a good education.

We reject the idea that only wealthy children, whose families can afford it, are eligible for our finest institutions of higher learning.

If the so-called “poor kids” don’t get aid, guess what? They don’t get to go to college. Is that the outcome we want? Obviously no, that is not what we want. It’s unfair. It is immoral. It is contrary to American values. It hurts us all by foreclosing many people, disproportionately people of color, from contributing in all ways to our society.

If you feel this is unfair to your children I’m sorry. Life isn’t fair, if nobody told you yet. And I am sure that children from disadvantaged families can tell you much much more than you can stand to hear about what isn’t fair. Including going to bed hungry. Including going without lunch. Including taking subways and multiple buses to school instead of having mommy and daddy drop them off at the front door and pick them up. Including not being able to afford pencils and paper much less a laptop or equipment for after-school sports or dance lessons. I’ve seen kids with duck tape around the holes in their shoes because they can’t afford another pair. What have they “done wrong?” And please I am sincerely hoping you are not holding some bizarre idea in your mind that their parents are some kind of “lazy welfare queen drug addicts” who “deserve” to be poor. It is so much easier to blame the poor than to admit the system is broken, isn’t it? When people work 3 jobs and still can’t pay rent - the system is broken. And they haven’t done anything wrong. Wages have stagnated while productivity has soared. That’s called wage theft from working people. And it creates poverty and destroys the middle class.

“We’re being punished for doing everything right.” - Are you under some assumption you are entitled to send your kids to certain schools? This delusion, where you invent a non-existent group of people who are supposedly taking away from you what you think you’re entitled to, is wrong, inaccurate, ignorant. I’m telling you right now you are absolutely, completely wrong and have suffered an embarrassing departure from reality for someone your age who certainly should know better. Educate yourself and turn off whatever “news” source put this ugly and ridiculous idea into your mind.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with telling Future CEO she needs to get a job and pay for her own college education. Pull herself up by her own bootstraps. Be a maker not a taker. I’m sure she would rather be self-reliant than take a handout from the school or from mom and dad.

25

What HS5331 said. =D>

26

We have?

I agree with the rest of your post but I absolutely disagree with this. Even public schools are out of the reach of many, many low-income students. Even with loans, even with full Pell.

(I won’t even get into gross disparities in K-12 education…)

27

True, @romanigypsyeyes…and not to put words in the mouth of HS5331, but I read his post as meaning that it is the goal of the nation to give equal opportunity to all. That said, of course, the nation is doing a poor job of implemeting the best tools to make that goal happen, and the soaring cost of college tuition is, in my opinion, one of the biggest separators. Only the wealthiest or book-smartest students can get educated without the average 25,000 (or more) debt burden - which many people have come to accept as a perfectly fine amount of debt for a 22 year old to have. (!)

So we have the wealthy who can afford any school, the good grades/scores kids who can get merit aid, the upper middle and middle who can squeak through with sizeable debt (and many schools are closed off to this group due to cost) …and then the rest who really have a struggle to get an education.

So, yes, I think the poster articulated the “goal” accurately. But you are right, sometimes it’s all a bunch of “all talk no walk.”

Romani, I think you are a fairly recent grad. I can assure you that 25-30-35 years ago, college was largely affordable with a good summer job. The top privates were more, sure, but generally accessible. We have gone backwards in providing higher education, in my opinion, and I don’t see any real way to reverse it.

28

This original post is absurd and likely posted from under a bridge. Let this one go folks.

29

True. Thanks for the reply.

30

Prospect, I’m aware that college was affordable to my parents’ generation and back but I just disagree that it’s a goal that we’ve decided on as a nation.

Maybe it’s because I used to work in education but I don’t think affordable, quality education is a national goal at all. Maybe in theory but certainly not in practice.

31

I think the post is real. I’ve seen too many posts from parents who assume low income students get buckets of free money to go to school to believe otherwise. The “they got in (and stole my spot) because they’re poor, URM, etc., etc.” gets pretty ugly on some threads. People can be pretty nasty.

Wow. The ~$79k they’d be living on is more than our family of 4 lives on (in NYS) and they’d have roughly twice our yearly (gross) income left over. And we do okay. We own our own home, take the children on vacation now and then, own decent used cars, and provide our children with riding lessons, sports leagues, and other assorted ECs. It’s too bad OP feels the way they do. Their children will probably be able to not only attend great schools, but dorm there, and still may feel dissatisfied with the opportunity.

32

You are right, the 3.92 weighted GPA and lack of world changing ECs or hooks will make the Ivy League or a top 20 school unlikely, so your wallet can sigh in relief. So, realistically you are looking at a top 100 USNWR school, page through them and see what you like or dislike. Small, large, etc they are all there.

For bio specifically, you need to stop the anti-Rutgers rhetoric. There are actually two good bio programs at Rutgers, one on Busch campus and the old land grant program on Cook Campus. TCNJ likely is fine. I actually recommend NJIT or at least a visit to you … precisely because you have to stop being a whiny NJ suburban priviledged person and drive to Newark and see how a quarter of a million people who do not earn a quarter of a million dollars a year really live (hint, it’s not the leafy suburbs of Princeton).

The STEM programs at Rutgers are and always were, even in the 80s, rigorous and a good way to get an education. If you went to a second tier school, which possibly is below flagship Rutgers, you have a lot of nerve …

Other possibilities are other state schools with merit, U Del, Bama, OSU (wait, they play football! egad).

You are too cheap and too fixated on no-loans to consider Tulane or Case or Rochester, so just don’t. $26K+5K in loans a year => $31K which is closer. $25K in debt would be OK, but then again as a Bio major … you need to start reading those threads.

Forget any top state school, the UMich, GTech, UWisc since they are busy giving money to their own residents. Certainly don’t think UCs.

While NJ is expensive, I know $250K+ is still nice, you are in a nice house in a good school district and have alredy given your daughter that opportunity. Or do you drive an Escalade and live in some hick town.

33

OK, I’ll bite. You could afford it, but you don’t want to afford it, because the value added might not be worth it, correct?

Here are some options:

Have you actually looked at Rutgers? It is subdivided into smaller schools and is quite manageable. The Honors Program is good. I went to Rutgers, never attended a football game, went to maybe two frat parties in my freshman year, studied hard, got to know my professors well, and went on to be admitted to many top flight graduate programs. With her GPA, assuming her test scores are consistent, she might be in line for some merit money. I’m sure she could flourish there. The alumni network is huge.

If you could up your budget to say 40-45K per year as opposed to 65K, there are numerous good quality LACs and universities in the region that offer merit money to students like your daughter. Again, test scores would be helpful info. But I’m thinking places like Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Dickinson. Temple has good merit money above a certain GPA/SAT/ACT threshold. If she wants to go farther afield, U of Alabama offers similar incentives to OOS students. And there are MANY choices if you push your boundaries further into the Midwest.

34

Outside of NJ, Rutgers is actually name brand, and if you leave the mid-Atlantic there are still people who almost think it is Ivy League since it is one of the oldest colleges in the US.

NJ is a powerhouse of the pharmaceutical industry, Stevens brags about this, but location of Rutgers is actually closer to most of these companies.

While your wealthy suburban friends might hate Rutgers as much as you, once your daughter goes there, well, it’s hard to laugh if you are going there. She will meet a more diverse socioeconomic group of people, but there are plenty of middle to upper class people there, including some 2250+ SAT presidential scholars (competitive).

And, in my list of Busch and Cook options, consider also the Honors College, brand new on main campus, which really looks promising.

Take a tour, talk to the biology departments, read the web pages, etc.

Re - biology, that is also a field that is popular with women. If you daughter wants engineering or harder science, she would stick more out of the crowd, and engineering pays much better. I would not invest tons of money in a bio degree, but engineering salaries are high enough that she could pay back reasonable amount of loans fairly quickly.

The party atmosphere is really on main campus with the frats and the liberal arts majors. Busch campus is more STEM oriented, so people do study, a lot.

35

OP - just stop playing the prestige game! Your daughter will be fine. You can afford to pay a boatload of money. TCNJ is an excellent, up and coming school that your daughter should check out in addition to Rutgers.

We’re in the same position as you. We’re willing and able to go up to ~30k annually for each kid. And that’s it. We’re not allowing any loans. Our oldest had several excellent options from free all the way up to our full price. She did apply to her dream school, which offers 15 non-financially based scholarships. She received a financial rejection. It ended up being the only school we couldn’t afford. Life goes on.

Stop worrying about whether or not the financial aid system is fair. It’s not giving YOU any benefit, so just opt out. If your kids are bright and hard working, and you do your homework, you will find a college at which they will excel and they will emerge with little or no debt. You have that option not only because your kids are awesome but because they have had all the advantages. Awesome kids “who aren’t quite Ivy League material” without all the advantages will likely have to borrow a car payment or two to obtain their degrees. Your kids don’t.

One final thought. Speaking personally, my husband and I had plenty of student loans of our own and refuse to borrow another penny for education, but lots of people in our income bracket borrow to send their kids to Ivy league and other top tier schools. I live among them and know many of them well. Nobody’s tracking those home equity and retirement loans. And for families that only have one or two kids, big loans usually work out fine, although I do know higher income families who took hits in the recession and had to downsize significantly after, in my view, foolishly borrowing too much to put their kids through fancy schools.

36

If it makes OP feel any better, it sounds like we make about 1/4 of what you do, and we don’t qualify for any aid either. IF my kiddos had stellar stats instead of merely above average maybe they’d be competitive for the elite schools that would pay their way, but they don’t. If we earned several thousand dollars less, we might qualify for a few thousand dollars of federal and state grants, but we don’t qualify for that either.

Between savings & current income we can pay ~$8k/year which, combined with DS’s summer work earnings, is enough for him to commute to our local SUNY. He won’t have to work during the school year to pay for school like I did and he’ll graduate with little to no debt. It may not be an elite school, but I think that’s a pretty good deal. If you open your eyes to what’s around you, I bet you could find a great fit for your family too.

37

I think this is a more common frustration than you all think. We too are in that gap of not qualifying for aid but where the cost of some schools is out of our reach. Looking for ways to help pay for our kids who have work so hard can be frustrating. But, high achieving middle-income kids can get merit scholarships (financial need not taken into consideration), just not at the very top schools who have huge endowments to cover low-income students. For example, in my state, both Duke and UNC Chapel Hill have several full-merit scholarships, as well as most of the other 15 state colleges here. To this parent, these are the opportunities for full rides. True they are hard to get. However in comparison, the reach is easier for our kids than the reach for low-income kids to get into the very top schools. There is a post somewhere is this forum that lists full-merit scholarships by state. If anyone knows where it is please post.

38

Ok. I’ll bite. I suspect you live in the tri state region around NYC. I understand the inflated expense issues very well. Your house, to live in a decent district for your kids to even be able to get into college is probably costing you $4-6k a month between mortgage and property taxes, right? Plus you have commuting costs, and some of the highest state tax rates in the nation. Car insurance? You haven’t lived until you’ve paid a car insurance bill in Jersey, right? Understood. And I understand it is a huge leap in expense between here, and say, upstate, or Iowa. And that is precisely why we make so much more than people in those places make. So why should our kids be penalized bc we “made it”?

They are not. I grew up poor. There was no real FA for me outside of pell. I went to the school that gave me the scholarship bc I had to. When I left law school, I was in debt up to my eyeballs. I had to make money. And paying off my own loans slowed me down from buying a house, saving for retirement, saving for kids’ education. It also limited the number of kids I had bc I wanted to be sure I could fulfill my commitment to all of them.

It would be hard to pay $60k at $250. I agree. You can’t just pick up and move to upstate for lower expenses bc your income would also tank. Nor do you want a 1 BR apt with a 2 hour commute. I get it. It may require loans to pay over 4-8 years.

But, our parents educated us AS BEST THEY COULD. And they never asked for anything in return, but that I do the best I could with my kids’ educations. So I am paying full boat to whatever. I hope he gets some scholarship $, but I know if he doesn’t, it means he likely got into one of his top choices. So I’ll pay, bc it is “the best I can do”. Notice my mom didn’t say “the least I could do”. The best. If $26k is your best, then so be it. If you can do more, IMO, you should.

BTW, things are different from when we went to school. Tuition is no longer cheap. R&B is no longer $5k a year. It is a reality we have to live with. We can’t just pretend it isn’t. Same with loans. If your D wants to take her max $5500, you should allow it. Don’t hamstring them. Just tell them what the payment is and when it starts so they can decide.

Yes it is grating to be the one who pays more for everything. I agree. But the alternative is being poor. No thanks. Been there. Stay in your lane and don’t worry about some homeless kid going to Harvard. It has nothing to do with you.

39

So- I’ll chime in here, because this was almost exactly my situation.

My father told me he would pay for the best in-state school (which in my case was in Virginia) but I had to fund anything above that myself with scholarships. I applied to all the best LACs and private schools and got squat- so I went to my state flagship.

Did it work out for me? I had a great time, got a Fulbright, and am headed to an Ivy League law school on a named scholarship afterwards. (Why am I on CC?- a) I’m SUPER bored and b) I’m doing research to help my younger brother who is currently in Grade 12)

If your daughter is as talented as you saw (i.e. she WILL run a major corporation), then all she needs is a school which can get her access to IBanking or Consulting opportunites- any school in the NE. From there, it is all about her MBA and performance. Sure, an IVY would help, but it doesn’t sound like those are in the cards. Is there a difference between a Top 100 Public and Top 100 Private- nope. Only in price!

The point is- if she is super driven, then being a big fish in a small pond will let her develop her abilities.

40

The OP is not “middle income”.

The OP is right that a bio degree isn’t worth $250k, particularly when Rutgers, TCNJ, and others would be much cheaper. Don’t know why he trashes R…it’s likely better than that lowish tier FL school he attended.

Depending on his D’s test scores, there may be many mid-tiers that would offer substantial merit. Again, Bio is such a staple that all would have strong programs. Bio isn’t some hoity-toity major where strong programs can only be found on a handful of campuses.

Seriously, blindfold your self and throw a dart at map of the US. Likely the map will hit an area that has at least 1 (probably 2-3 univs) with a strong bio program.

I think the bigger problem is this. DD is used to living in a high income household and has a bit of an entitled “I worked so hard, I deserve this,” attitude…compounded by Daddy’s undying adoration that she’s the snowflake above all others.