<p>Northern Michigan reduces their OOS tuition by $4,000/year at 3.0/19, and their OOS tuition is already very reasonable. </p>
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<p>It’s not a “loophole,” but a very viable OPTION. The thing is, college is not a guarantee the way K-12 is a guarantee. Families must make choices as to what they are willing to pay, and they need to find options that work with their choices. You sure could do worse than NMU for anything related to the outdoors … and off-campus housing is pretty darn cheap, so that may help.</p>
<p>Here’s a related twin question - if one twin is fortunate enough to get a full tuition scholarship, does that affect the EFC for the other twin? For instance, if your EFC for each child is $10K, does EFC for the twin without the scholarship now become $20K? Presumably, full tuition scholarship may not be a certainty when filling out the FAFSA for the first year, so perhaps it doesn’t affect year one, but would it affect subsequent years?</p>
<p>FAFSA doesn’t ask any questions about how much you are paying for another kid in college so it won’t affect FAFSA EFC in any year. However, schools that use profile or their own financial aid form in addition to FAFSA may ask how much you are paying for the other twin and take that into consideration in awarding need based aid.</p>
<p>Thanks, annoyingdad. We’re looking at private for Twin #2, so that’s not good news, since most privates don’t use FAFSA… But, it’s what I was guessing would happen.</p>
<p>The fact that the question is asked does not mean it will be used to reduce your aid. It might, it might not. The best way to know for sure is to ask the school’s financial aid office. I can tell you that my D’s private, 100%-need-meeting college did not seem to penalize us for the fact that her brother had a scholarship at his less-expensive public school.</p>
<p>You are preaching to the choir. I have tried with all of my might to get them to give me any sort of clue. My dad is a very theoretical man. He says, “you guys make the tough decisions you need to make with choosing the schools, etc, and the financial implications, and we’ll help make it happen.” He also says, “it will depend on interest rates on student loans.” </p>
<p>I think this means if student loans are cheap, he thinks we should lean more on those and less on his/my mom’s contributions. It’s so frustrating. I honestly think my dad is trying to say whatever he needs to say so we save as much as possible on our own, and THEN, whatever we can’t do, they will help out.</p>
<p>Realistically, we should have enough saved for the first full year of college/room&board/etc. Then we will be pretty depleted going into year 2, and need a lot of help.</p>
<p>To answer a question that was sort of asked, we live in perhaps the worst state imaginable for college. Illinois. Our state is broke, and yet as a ton of intellectual IQ. In other words, all of our in-state schools are considerably more expensive than their out of state counterparts for their in-state students. It sucks. IL schools have no incentive to keep students home, because there are so many people here. They always have enough to draw upon. And there’s not as big a need to attract OOS students.</p>
<p>So we are looking hard at “bargain” OOS options. NMU keeps popping up. Murray State is another. Some schools offer the Midwest Student Exchage for IL students for some majors. MSE allows IL students to pay 1/2 way between OOS and in-state tuition, which is sometimes a better value for us than in-state at one of our compass schools.</p>
<p>My wife and I have decided that we will help our kids pay off their loans after college as best we can if they are over-burdened. Kind of our punishment for not saving enough beforehand.</p>
<p>I appreciate this comment. I went away to school. My wife commuted her first year (not to a CC, but local 4-yr school), then went away in year 2. We feel we should do the same for our kids, if at all humanly possible. We also realize, that in order to do so, we need to seriously bargain hunt and take advantage of every option we can.</p>
<p>We’ve had a couple of very frank discussion with the twins about the money aspect, and talk about grades constantly. One of the boys is starting to get it, and is really focused. The other one is still in la la land and oblivious to real life challenges. We’ve outright told them both that if they don’t get certain grades and fall off, they can get a job after graduation and take classes at the CC, while their friends go away to college.</p>
<p>*the schools, etc, and the financial implications, and we’ll help make it happen." He also says, “it will depend on interest rates on student loans.” *</p>
<p>To me, that could also sound like, “if interest rates are too high, then we’ll lend you the money at a lower rate.” </p>
<p>It’s as clear as mud. lol… They might “gift” some money and they might be low interest rate lenders as well. I would ask the question about whether their intent is to “gift” money or to lend money.</p>
<p>We’ve had a couple of very frank discussion with the twins about the money aspect, and talk about grades constantly. One of the boys is starting to get it, and is really focused. The other one is still in la la land and oblivious to real life challenges. We’ve outright told them both that if they don’t get certain grades and fall off, they can get a job after graduation and take classes at the CC, while their friends go away to college.</p>
<p>Has the “la la land twin” visited any colleges that interest him? If not, that can be a motivator. Figure out what type of school would interest him (quiet, rah rah, big, small, etc) and take him to a couple of nice looking ones.</p>
<p>It can affect your financial aid if you parents “gift” you money as PROFILE does ask about that. Better they lend you or your student the money and then turn that into a gift upon graduatihttp:. It’ would take a few minutes to run off a loan document from the internet, make the necessary changes and cover you, if there should be an extensive audit which is rare but can happen.</p>
<p>1) yes, we’ve looked at GVSU’s website. When my less focused son originally thought he might want to go into digital arts, it came up as a nice option, as they have that program there. But 2 concerns are that a) the tuition breaks appeared to be generous only for those at 3.5/26 or something like that, which is going to be very tough, and b) from the reviews it seemed like a suitcase college that cleared out on weekends- local kids go home or to other uni’s for fun. Since we are not local, he may be pretty lonely there as a result. Still on the list though.</p>
<p>2) Since they are only sophomores, we haven’t visited any yet, HOWEVER, we are going to see Mississippi State (for focused one) and Murray State (for both) this spring break. We are doing this to hopefully dangle carrots in front of them.</p>
<p>CPT = what if when the bill came, they sent me a check, I put it in my account, and then in turn, paid the bill? Or something like that? Isn’t there a way to do that, after the whole financial packaging process?</p>
<p>Check out Ohio U in Athens, Ohio. Has some nice awards and a great digi arts program. If you search through the archives, there are a lot of posts/threads that a dad, whose kid went there, wrote that has a wealth of data in it. His name escapes me, but I think it had “digi” in it. Maybe Digidad? Doesn’t sound right.</p>
<p>CPT = what if when the bill came, they sent me a check, I put it in my account, and then in turn, paid the bill? Or something like that? Isn’t there a way to do that, after the whole financial packaging process?</p>
<p>No. It may be best to have them loan you the money and then forgive it upon graduation. If you have siblings, then this might need to be clear to all so that in the sad event that your parents pass before graduation, it’s understood that you don’t owe anything. </p>
<p>However, since it sounds like they’d be going to FAFSA only schools, I’m not sure if this comes up for FAFSA.</p>
<p>1) yes, we’ve looked at GVSU’s website. When my less focused son originally thought he might want to go into digital arts, it came up as a nice option, as they have that program there. But 2 concerns are that a) the tuition breaks appeared to be generous only for those at 3.5/26 or something like that, which is going to be very tough, and b) from the reviews it seemed like a suitcase college that cleared out on weekends- local kids go home or to other uni’s for fun. Since we are not local, he may be pretty lonely there as a result. Still on the list though.</p>
<p>You may need to make it clear to Twin #2 that even if he ends up going to a CC first, his transfer options will be more limited. Transfers rarely get good aid or scholarships. His best options will be as an incoming frosh. He may be thinking that as long as he does well at his CC, then he’ll have lots of choices later. he won’t.</p>
<p>Ohio U would be a great choice. My cousin’s husband went there and loved it. Even with the awards, it’s at the very top of the $$ range, however. It would be a financial reach for us, but we will likely take him there to visit this summer.</p>
<p>Mom - thanks for the tip on transfers. Another reason to try to make it work at a 4 year school right away.</p>
<p>Two questions on awards…</p>
<p>1) Mississippi State offers in-state tuition for OOS students getting 3.0/26 (not guaranteed, but I’ve been told it’s generous). When is the timing on that? Do you have to commit to going to that school before they offer the scholarship, or can you apply, get news of yes/no on the scholarship, and then decide to pull out if you don’t get it?</p>
<p>2) This, and other scholarships like it, are renewable if students meet GPA requirements. How often is that reviewed? Is it annually, or each semester? If a kid gets a 2.8 his first semester, is it gone 2nd semester, or does he have the chance to bring it up by year end before renewal for the next year?</p>
<p>Schools differ on how they enforce their GPA requirements and it is important to know exactly what they are because at a number of them, if a student ,for ANY reason slips under, that is it for the award. So a number of different schools can interpret the gpa requirement either of the ways you are asking. You have to check each school.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses. Basic question on the math.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<p>COA = $30,000
EFC = $20,000 (per child let’s say - this is for one student)
Need = $10,000</p>
<p>Student loan = $5,500 Stafford Direct
Tuition award = $4,000</p>
<p>In this case, let’s just assume I have ZERO money saved and have to borrow every dollar in one form or another. How much do I have to borrow, not including the Stafford loan?</p>
But, it’s what I was guessing would happen.</p>