CNI

I really really hope that you guys get off the waitlist. I had to give up my spot (huge reason was bc. of $), and if you guys get in, I would urge you to take their offer as Chicago truly is one of the elite schools in the world-right up there with Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Cambridge, and Princeton. Good luck to everyone still waiting

Consolation

From the Maroon article, this gives a false impression:

“the Odyssey Program” which eliminates the family tuition contributions for students from families earning less than $60,000 per year."

The maximum Odyssey scholarship is about $5,200. While it may cover part of "tuition," it does not address other costs, such as room and board. For example, our income is under the cited figure, our EFC was under $5K, and our expected family contribution to the cost of attendance at the U of C was over $20K. In my opinion, talking about tuition alone is somewhat disingenuous, since it leaves a major chunk of the cost unfunded. Not many acceptees can attend the U of C and live at home. I'm afraid that the U of C is likely to lose a number of candidates to the Ivies and other schools with significantly more realistic financial aid.

ohio_mom

From one of Consolation's previous posts:

"The amount that we are expected to pay as a family, beyond work study, is over $20K per year. Part of that involves drawing down assets placed in the student's name to zero over 4 years."

CountingDown

Yeah, Chicago does say that explicitly they expect all student assets to be used over four years in the FA booklet.

Consolation

Um, ohio_mom, the "assets" in question in their entirety would cover no more than 25% of the family contribution, leaving us with 3X the EFC to come up with. You are certainly entitled to your opinion of whether that constitutes "realistic" FA for a low income family, but in another thread in this forum you said that $15K or more per year is "too much debt" for a student to assume. I think it is too much debt for some parents, also. It depends on the circumstances. (BTW, I completely agree that it is perfectly reasonable of them to expect him to use the money we set aside for him when we were able to do so. That's what it's for, after all.)

For us, it's a moot point, since he chose another school. For others it is something to consider.

JHS

There are really three or four different questions:

(1) Using education-specific assets, like 529 plans, or trust funds for the student. Of course the college should expect that to be used over four years, although some seem to make allowances for possible graduate school use.

(2) Using student savings from jobs, etc. That seems a little more controversial to me.

(3) Using parent retirement-type savings. Bad, but taken into account. Home equity is similar, and lots of colleges assume that it should be available.

(4) Using illiquid, indivisible business assets of parents -- family businesses, a farm. There may be value there, but it may be totally unmonetizable, or it may be wildly imprudent to try to monetize it by borrowing against it. Colleges differ a lot on how they deal with these types of assets, and Chicago has never seemed to be especially sophisticated or sympathetic about the issues involved.

ohio_mom

JHS -
I'm actually not that surprized that more colleges are looking at retirement funds - for a long time, that was a protected place to save money, as opposed to putting it in a bank account or home equity or (more recently) a 529. When my son applied to colleges, the only one he applied to that asked for retirement fund info was Brandeis - Chicago is asking for it now, and if some of the threads are on Parent's forum are any guide, so are many others. Retirement assets are, it seems, no longer sacrosact.

All families are different, and there is no question in my mind the the financial aid calculations are harsher in some situations than others - Consolation's combination of decent assets and moderate income is one such situation. Another is families with farms: FA offices just don't understand weather.

Consolation

On another note, I bumped into a parent whose kid is on the wait list a few weeks ago, and he told me that their understanding is that when it comes time to take kids off the list, they have a sort of round robin/draft pick arrangement, where each regional adcom gets to pick a kid in turn. He said that his kid's adcom had told him that he was at the top of his list.

(This is what I actually came here to post, before I was distracted by the FA thing! )

1990Dad

IMO the most ridiculous assumption in financial aid is that divorced and re-married parents provide the student 4 independent pools of income and assets. Expecting the birth parents to pay is certainly fair, but assuming that step-father or step-mother will provide $50,000 a year out of their assets or income is assinine.

RedStorm

With the first overall pick in the University of Chicago draft, the New York adcom selects...

ohio_mom

Interesting news, Consolation! Best wishes to your friend's kid in the waitlist and FA lottery ...

RedStorm

On that matter, supposedly, waitlist decisions will be released next week.

...How often are we supposed to be calling them, anyway? I don't want to annoy them too much.

ohio_mom

If you have contacted them already with an update, I think you are good.

RedStorm

Alrighty, thanks

I sent in a packet and had my counselor call.

unalove

^^ That technique sounds like the best, as the regional counselors are all the most in tune with their applicants.

In semi-related news, I went to a conference on grad school admissions today and the grad school deans described a scene I thought was probably universally familiar: the admissions committee sees two or three roughly equivalently wonderful students, and only has the resources to take one. Who are they going to take and why? It's a whole reality show waiting to happen, all we need is a Tyra Banks or a Padma Lakshmi.