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Thats me and actually at first it felt like that but now its no big deal. Have a job lined up in a fairly well financial investing firm from my internship this past summer and my debt is no where near close to a few of my friends that got accepted to the big time schools.
On my phone so can't pull the research I did, but I found this to be a very under-studied area. Basically, there are more good scores on Math 2 and the sciences than all the humanities combined. Don't do languages because the native speakers take them and destroy the curve and percentiles. And don't submit math/science unless those scores are way better then humanities or your kid is applying for engineering or science
I feel like either you go to an elite school that gives great need based aid, or go to a less selective school with big merit money, or go in-state. No sense in racking up $100k or more in undergrad debt. We make between 150-200k, have a younger kid in private school, and are paying Brown about $28k with no student loans. That's on the extreme high end of what we can swing. Son got merit aid to some other schools - bringing cost down to around $18k. We decided to eat the $10k difference - if he had scored a full ride we probably would have had him take it and earmarked most of the $28k/year for his grad school.Some schools give a ton off the "sticker price" , others don't. We are paying roughly 22k a year for Williams . They are very generous to even decent income families. State school that my daughter liked about 5 miles from Williams was 20k
Syracuse was 60+ and offered zip
I would never let my daughter do this unless she was taking a major that was a near guarantee of an immediate high paying job.SHIZNITTTT said:
I was asking what the benefit is of passing in early. Do schools give out financial aid on a first come first serve basis?
Schools have a pool of federal/state need based aid. How it's distributed varies school to school, but there is some fcfs to it. This is the first year fafsa has been bumped up to October 1, so I'm curious to read what impact it has on how institutional aid is factored, if at all. When it was January 1 application deadlines had already passed at many places.
thanks!
How did you manage only 28k for Brown when full ticket is 65k? Sounds like you'd be out of the range for financial aid.The_Man said:
ok I think I found the answer. There are a bunch of questions they use to determine whether the student is dependent (uses parents income/means) or independent (only uses the students means/income).
my daughter is applying to Brown as her reach school and we tried the online financial aid calculator they provided and we got crushed on the means section even though we have almost no income.
i think you mentioned this early, but i think they look at everything. my dad who retired recently thought that it would benefit him with my sister in college this year. he was sadly mistaken.
Well, other than about $100k in home equity, we don't have a lot of assets. I hear the financial aid formulas kill you on any properties you own other than your primary residence. They basically feel you can sell those off and use the proceeds for tuition. And we get some break for having another kid in a tuition paying institution. But like I said, the super rich schools give out tons of aid. At Harvard and Princeton, your family contribution is capped at 10% of household income, up to $150k. From there, they reduce aid on a sliding scale, until you get 0 somewhere north of like $225k. Brown can't afford to be quite as generous but they still give tons of aid
. Her fallback is CU/Boulder--major party school, but it is like UCCS here in town--the acceptance rate is ridiculously high and I can't say I want my daughter going there and I honestly don't think she wants to leave her home town.
It kills you on the primary residence as well. When I played around with having little equity compared to the full equity I do have in the house, it seemed to make quite a bit of difference.
This is one thing we have not looked at yet.
I guess there's hope. I knew the ivys gave out a ton of aid, but I was leaning towards most of that going to low income although I was hoping that wasn't the case. My philosophy has always been to have enough to send my kids to wherever they want and if we got aid, then gravy. Checking out the harvard site and filling out their little aid calculator at 250k family income, we'd get 2k in aid and at 150k family income, we'd get 47k in aid.
I'd almost be better off quiting my job for 4 years.
USAFA is in town and has a pretty good math program. Can't beat the cost. ?See like I mentioned above I am a little shell shocked at some of this. My wife and I do okay (not FBG rich), but our debt to income is a little higher than I like at this point in my life and that is primarily because we have given our two kids too much--bottom line. I believe the families financial situation is considered on the FAFSA--at least I hope it is.
The school my daughter is set on is Colorado College, I don't quite think it is the best fit for her field of choice (mathematics), but it is close to home, is not a party school and like I said, my wife is an alumni. Her other choice is Colorado School of Mines. We have looked at it and it is an engineering/science school about 2 hours from here in Golden. She called it a nerd school and said it was boring--which may not be a bad thing as far as dad's perspective
The plan is we will get our FAFSA done this weekend. We have some mutual friends that got us a one on one with the admissions director at CC next week. My girl is already working hard on scholarships. The Boettcher would be a dream (it is a full ride to a Colorado school of her choice) but it is only awarded to one child and that is it. We know two of the past winners and are working with them to help. We have a wonderful gifted and talented teacher at her high school, who also happens to be an AP English teacher, who is going to help her refine her college application essays. I have told her to apply for every scholarship under the sun, I don't care if it is KFC giving a $1,000 for an essay on chickens. You write the best damn Chicken essay every conceived.
I have always tried to be that laid back, let's just keep focusing on the forest thru the trees type parent, but I am now stressed beyond belief that I am going to let her down. Her school of choice unfortunately is a very elitist, highly liberal, rich person school--which in no way describes my wife and I. If she get accepted but can't go because of $$$ after all she has sacrificed because of us, I am going to feel like crap. But In the same vein, we have another daughter that is 12 (and already equally gifted) that we can't cripple ourselves financially and mortgage our/her future for this.
Yeah, that's not going to be her gig, Um...how can I put this, my daughter has danced ballet/pointe for the past 13 years including professionally with a couple major companies. She's head cheerleader at her school. She's sort of high maintenance and would last about 10 seconds there.
Right, the date change can be key, I'm thinking. Let's say you're fairly poor and you send out your FAFSA info on Oct. 1, well before the typical Nov. 1 early action or early decision deadline date. Don't the "need aware" schools have your financials available to them when considering your application? At least some of them say they will make a decision by late December. Before this year, they would have made a decision before they could have had the FAFSA info, no? Please enlighten this rookie.
I googled this and it looks to be a common question with many different answers. Some say this is not what colleges want to see in the awards sections, others say it can show the colleges the student is well liked in her class.
I forget the name of the tool, but there is a fairly reliable estimator my school uses during the application process. Unless an applicant lies Admissions is usually able to estimate their efc within about $100. I work at a smaller school that's generally a safety option for applicants, so I'm sure wealthier schools at the very least have similar abilities. I don't think the unknown surrounding the actual financials is going to play much of a role with this date change. The variable will be how Admissions handles early admits vs those pushing the deadline. Will they get antsy with those that have applied but not submitted FAFSA and offer those that have a more generous package before another school does? My gut says initially, no, but a couple/few years from now? I'm keeping an open mind.
Sorry to sound obtuse here but you're saying that just from the Common Application, which I, unfortunately, haven't even looked at yet, Admissions can tell what an EFC will be?
I think he's talking about the Net Price Calculator, which every college is required to post
What if you leave the 529 under someone else's SSN until it's time to pay, but after the FAFSA is submitted?
There are probably many games that can be played.
That seems weird to me. If you're not sending them in, my guess would be that you didn't do well. I can't see how doing well and sending them in would hurt.
I think every test optional school is more than happy to have you send in the scores if you did well. It only helps them in the rankings.
In my experience by other parents and kind of by high schools themselves.Now I've been through 3 different private HS . Its a shame.
My younger daughter, a junior in HS, visited Wesleyan in August and loved it. We came away with this same impression re: the test optional aspect. Definitely in her top 5 schools that she's visited thus far.
That is great!
How do they measure school quality? Or is that just code that they prefer students from feeder, private high schools?
I just don't see how the colleges can compare academic achievement across so many different high schools.
They did not say but I have read that some schools use their own history of seeing how previous students have achieved at their college from the specific high school. I am sure they have various methods of slightly arbitrary measurements.
me neither. I would think so many applications look so similar to each other. It must be a very tough job to do fairly.
I mentioned this earlier but the Fafsa is very easy to complete. The CSS profile is significantly more in depth. They want to know where every penny is.Courtjester said:
