ethanrt

Archiemom: I guess I'd just have to say that, unless my parents are lying to me, then yes, I'm fairly confident. It helps that I also filled out nearly all of the finaid forms involved in the application process (though no tax returns besides my own, obviously), so I had/have access to nearly all the same information that my parents did/do.

I also feel that too many of this forum's "adults" (I put that in quotes not to be demeaning, but as a reminder that we should all be skeptical of fellow forum-goers, especially those claiming a certain supposed superiority/etc.) make a few too many assumptions about everything that supposedly comes with that standing.

And while I understand the whole "affluent CT town" thing, I think you're falling into the trap that I was talking about earlier, which leads some colleges to give terrible finaid estimates: that of appearances versus means. If it's a choice between using investments to pay for college instead of holding them to pay loan/mortgage in a few years, or a choice between keeping the business (and therefore any hope of someday viably making a decent amount of money; business are sort of long-term commitments, if you will) and selling it to use its value for college... well, the "financial advantages" of the whole situation start to seem a bit less distinct, and those are choices that colleges which claim to "meet 100% of need" should not ask a family to make.

Obviously there are people around who have it much, much worse than me; that's utterly undeniable. One just gets frustrated when a college financial aid office doesn't take into account any of what I would call the fairly obvious financial factors I discussed in the preceding paragraph.

archiemom

Well, my point would be that there's no "trap" involved. Why do you think there's a difference between appearances and means? My household is also supported, primarily, by a small business. But we have no illusions regarding its impact on college funding. We'll use it when and if our kid needs it. I do not expect others to pay for our child's college education because of the choices we've made over the past 30 years.

The obvious financial factors that I see are that small business assets are available for college financing. "Need" in this case is such a fluid concept. Parents who own businesses are much less "in need" than many parents with average-paying jobs. It appears that a family like this has need (perhaps because of cash flow issues related to irregular paychecks), but in reality they have options that most families do not have.

ethanrt

Again, you're making an assumption: that you could sell your business and immediately get a decent job. From what you've said, I'm assuming you or someone in your family could. But for the sake of argument, say that's not true. Say that all you had was a 25-year-old degree in computer science; the family's in trouble if you ditch the business and hope to make a decent wage with that. Not to mention the fact that as soon as you sold the business, college grant offers would plummet, thus partially nullifying that move :-p

Also, there's this: "I do not expect others to pay for our child's college education because of the choices we've made over the past 30 years."
Following that logic, we might as well just do away with the concept of college aid altogether and make kids pay for their parents choices in the college arena - to an even higher degree than they do now. Thankfully, many colleges today see beyond that dubious plan.

triskadeca

Received 15K-$18K/yr merit aid from 3 other comparably selective private colleges (and smaller merit scholarships from 2 public universities).

From Villanova: not a penny in merit money.

Their only offer---- to enroll in a 10 month payment plan and send them a check for $5000 each month (not even an offer of a loan!)

munchkin3590

Northeastern gave me at 17k scholarship+grants package, not bad, but not good. That still leaves me more than 30k short.
Georgetown gave me 2k. Wow, thanks! Where do you think I'll get 53k a year?
Tufts gave... nothing! My father makes less than 100k a year after taxes, for my family of 6 to live on, and they think I'm not qualified for any aid at all to pay their 50k+ bill?

Actually, the ONLY good offer was Harvard. My parents have to come up with about 16k a year, which is at least doable. If I hadn't been accepted there, I'd be going to U of Edinburgh or St Andrews, in Scotland. Not qualified for aid, since I'm American, but still far cheaper than anything I'd been offered!

usky666

From my own experience and what I have noticed from here, it seems that colleages make their financial aid decisions not based on the families' needs but on their desire to accept a student. Need-blind is not true. Can anyone confirm this impression based on your own experience?

breckw

Bucknell was very disappointing, especially after having been offered sizable grants in addition to merit scholarships from 4 other schools. They gave me a $10k merit scholarship, but being the 3rd most expensive school in the country, that didn't to much to soften the additional $40,000 my single parent family is going to have to find.

I also have a very special situation: my father is in the end stages of a terminal illness and has not been able to work for the past 8 years (he was the sole provider for our family of 4) and my parents have been going through a complicated divorce for the past 3 years. My dad and his family refuse to pay any part of my college education (or my brother's $15k private school tuition) and because the divorce in ongoing, whatever money we had is in a trust that can't be divided until the it's been finalized (there is currently no end in sight). My mom also just got laid off, and there's about $50k of liquid money in our accounts right now.

So yeah. I'm going to appeal my award this Thursday at Bucknell. Hopefully they come back with a more generous offer...

openyoureyes

i got a disappointing aid reward at bucknell too. no merit money and only 7000 in aid. i'm planning on going into a ridiculous amount of debt and i had no idea they were the third most expensive school in the country. oh crap.

entomom

Last year:
H & P>Y>>>>Brown & Amherst

khsstitches

Northeastern is known for low finaid packages. From what I have read and heard their rationale for this is that students earn money during their coop experiences and therefore have more available towards college expenses.

JustAMomOf4

D4 get merit money from a school. It really wasn't enough - she got a much better deal elsewhere. So she sent in the postcard declining enrollment.

Yesterday she gets in the mail a letter offering her an INCREASE in her academic scholarship - it now has jumped from $8500 to $12500!
yep - $4000 more. The two schools are now comparable in price.
After 4 kids I thought I had seen it all.

WayOutWestMom

Almost the same thing happened to my D. She wrote a letter declining admission and the merit scholarship she'd received from the state flagship U here in town. She mailed it Monday (which means Admissions got it Tuesday.) Today she received a letter ( dated andmailed yesterday) increasing her scholarship by another $2000... I wonder if they'll offer more money if she turns them down again?
(It's too late anyway. She's already committed to another college.)

kelsmom

khsstitches, do you know what Northeastern's endowment is? I worked at another co-op college, and we did tell students that they would be earning a substantial amount of money that they would be able to put toward college costs. However, we did NOT give low financial aid awards for that reason. We gave low financial aid awards because we didn't have enough money to give higher awards!! It is not a good idea to assume that schools are gapping students intentionally ... many times, there simply is not enough institutional money available to provide grants to all deserving students. This is something very basic that families just don't seem to realize or understand.

churning

I went to 2 Northeastern open houses and at both the kids who were speaking were on UNPAID co-ops. Both said there was no guarantee that you would get a pain internship, or a good paying internship, no matter what the advertisements for the school says. And I believe the school does have the money, they are just not giving it out, and you don't know either. There awards have been paltry and calls to the Fin-Aid office go unreturned for weeks. Pretty much have given up on this one although this is my D's first choice. 40+k out of pocket is too unrealistic with our EFC.

kelsmom

There is no way to know whether or not Northeastern "could" pay more, because they do not release endowment figures. However, their CDS shows that spending on financial aid has increased from $111m in 2004 to $115 in 2007 (not a lot, I know). During that time, the balance has shifted from $85m need-based/$18m merit-based (2004) to $82m need-based/$33m merit-based (2007). Clearly, the decision has been made to focus on merit scholarships as a tool to raise the average profile of the student body. This seems to be paying off, with SAT 25th-75th%ile changing from 550-640 V to 570-660 V and 570-660 M to 600-680 M in that time (ACT composite from 23-28 to 25-29).

This is the type of info many veteran CC'ers encourage people to look for as they choose schools. It may seem unfair that colleges choose to spend their money as they do. However, it is their call & the info on financial aid spending patterns is contained in the CDS for most schools. This may be too late for some ... but if you have other children, please make sure you check into this kind of info early if need based aid is an issue.