Financial Respect 101

paying3tuitions
Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:58:57 +0000

“Tuition increased by $1450, and $6850 in financial aid grants were unceremoniously eliminated.”

That’s a huge loss in grants. I can imagine that happening due to an income increase or home expenses diminishing, causing FAFSA to evaluate you differently than when the child began to attend. Once this happened here because an older kid finished college, so the EFC spiked up since part of our finaid EFC understanding was that 2 were in college simultaneously. But it wasn’t a surprise to us.

To me, it makes no difference whether $200 is for a fee or tuition, it’s all money required to go to that college. But since it is a new fee that you couldn’t have known about when deciding to go to the college, that is irritating.

After 2 of ours graduated (one just a few weeks ago), we’re left with thoughts about not only the great educations they got, but also how we felt about the financial aid officers treating them and us in phone and mail communications. In our situation, the correspondence was plentiful and humane. There were a few places where we encountered chill hostility in conversations with S-3’s applications before admissions decisions came through. While I wouldn’t keep him from attending because of weak communication from a finaid office, it was a relief when a few of the nastier ones also declined his application. I repeat: this is no criterion to favor or disfavor a college. The parent has to absorb this, and it burdens kids a lot over something they can’t control to hear parents rant about wretched finaid office glitches.

My kids felt too guilty when they thought their educations were causing us any additional stress, and it wasn’t a helpful or productive guilt for them. I know that many times my H vented to me but downplayed the problems when discussing it with our kids.