Financial Aid Letter?

johnnycomelately
Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:20:04 +0000

Well folks, this thread has been an eye-opener for me. My S has been admitted to elite private colleges including Vanderbilt ( towards which we were leaning to until last weekend) and the top 3 public schools in the nation - all out of state - so we would anyway end up paying.

We have been doing financially well all these years and saved our share of college education for our kids. But 2 years ago when I was laid off and jobs were getting difficult to come by - we had a choice to make.
A) Either use up the savings on day to day expenses until we find jobs - or
B) put all our savings and investments into a startup software product company that we had been working on the part time basis - but was not going anywhere because the full time job took up almost 14-16 hours every day.

Option A meant we would defintely end up not having enough for S’s college - and the longer it took to find jobs the lesser chance of ever sending him to school

Option B meant that if we did everything right then we might pretty much end up having enough to send all our kids for college and retire as well. The timing was good, the concept was well received and success was quite certain. But if it failed, then we would still be in the same position as Option A, except we would have built up some assets at least - not cash.

Therefore we chose Option B. Things went very well, the product is in its beta - but just as the investors were getting ready - the financial meltdown happened. End of Story.

We still have a product, but the long story short - we have no cash - no savings - we might still come out of it very high - but it will definitely take another year. Have not taken a salary in the last two years. Subsisting on loans and credit card debts. But luckily, we were able to help our children with their academics and S has done very well and deserving of scholarships.

So, thankfully the needbased aid saved us. Vandy is giving full ride and the public schools are also giving great grants and scholarships and reasonable loans.

But seeing this thread has opened up our eyes. Apparently there are many parents who are “fullpayers” - who rightfully or otherwise think that their children are getting short changed. It also seems as if many of the Vandy students also seem to share that opinion. We definitely do not wish for our S to spend the next four years ( although we might be out of our troubles in the next year) being blamed for getting a full ride. I want the next four years to be the most productive and enjoyable years - he has worked really hard - we have worked really hard - but we ended up short and we as parents dont want our son to be miserable because of our failings. SO, our decision was made, after reading similar forums - that we will be sending our son to a prestigious public school - even if it means that we might end up increasing our debt.