<p>My dad didn’t do his paperwork correctly and know we’re still waiting for a reply from the financial office for my FA package. But, out of curiosity, how does the office consider divorces? Like, is my family’s income based upon both my mother and father or just my mother?</p>
<p>Typically, your family’s calculated ability to pay involves the income and assets of both parents, to avoid a perverse incentive to divorce. Some families have one or both parents who don’t step up, which limits the student’s choices quite a bit.</p>
<p>i’ve always found that soo unfair
i mean, why should one’s choices be limited by the silliness of one or both of one’s parents? as if a divorce - particularly one that would lead to a parent being unwilling - isn’t hard enough for a kid…
and i think one uncooperative parent would be a more common case than bodgy divorces, so they’ll be more often disadvantaging people this way than disadvantaging themselves if they were more understanding (and got hoodwinked a couple times)</p>
<p>“why should one’s choices be limited by the silliness of one or both of one’s parents?”</p>
<p>Because a private education is a luxury good, not a right. Parents can choose to purchase this luxury for their children, or not purchase it. If a parent decides to spend his money elsewhere, I don’t see why charity (a.k.a. fin aid) should fill the gap. A recalcitrant divorced parent is no different from a custodial parent who doesn’t want to pay that much for college. There is no entitlement to go to Harvard at a discount.</p>
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<p>That’s how the financial aid system works. Financial aid at all eight of the Ivy League colleges, and at some other colleges with similar financial aid policies, is based on the family’s ABILITY to pay, not the family’s willingness to pay. Parents who stay together can decide jointly that they will pay NOTHING for Junior’s education, and that leaves Junior shopping for colleges with a low list price, such that Junior can work his way through, or colleges where Junior can use his own youthful creditworthiness to borrow enough money to finance college. That takes the entire group of Ivy plus colleges off the table for such students, but that’s the way life works. That’s one of the reasons that students who aren’t admitted to Harvard can console themselves that they may be attending college somewhere with classmates who are smart but whose parents didn’t step up.</p>
<p>It’s a tough policy that can definitely work unfairly. But the alternative would probably not work at all: </p>
<p>Let’s say the rule was that if your noncustodial parent wasn’t willing to pay, his income and assets would not be taken into account. In most states, there is no legal compulsion for a parent to pay for college. How many noncustodial parents would pony up, if Harvard offered to replace their contributions with aid? How many college applicants would switch custodial parents to make certain that the lower-earning one was the one that counted? Would divorce settlements still commonly provide for sharing college expenses if there were an advantage to having one parent not pay? How many couples would get divorced because Harvard gave them an incentive to do it? And, finally, how many financial aid dollars would be diverted to students with at least one (noncustodial) wealthy parent, and away from truly disadvantaged students?</p>
<p>Well, just throwing this out there, I have a friend whose mother doesn’t make a lot but her father is very well off. She’s not going to Harvard, but the school she is going to only took her mother’s financial status into account, based upon the FAFSA. In case you didn’t know, FAFSA didn’t require that I submit information on my noncustodial parent.</p>
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<p>DO the great majority of divorce settlements in fact provide for sharing college expenses? I would be surprised to hear that they do, but perhaps someone has published research on this issue. Most children of divorce I know have a very hard time affording college.</p>
<p>FAFSA and PROFILE are two different sets of rules, applying to two different sets of colleges.</p>
<p>“DO the great majority of divorce settlements in fact provide for sharing college expenses?”</p>
<p>I would guess that the great majority of settlements between the parents of future Harvard admittees do include a provision about college expenses. It’s a non-random sample of the population if there ever was one.</p>
<p>So it would seem that the affluent child of parents who don’t love him is considerably more disadvantaged than the non-affluent child when it comes to attending Harvard and its peers. Interesting.</p>