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<p>Can you say “price fixing”? It kills me how there are basically three price levels - Private, Out-Of-State Public and In-State Public - with virtually no adjustments made for quality of education or perceived reputation. But if people are willing to pay…</p>
<p>On another note, does anyone know if it’s Bates or Bowdoin which has the “Welcome Back First Day of School Lobster Feast”? Maybe they could save a few bucks by switching to a Lobster-Style-Processed-Food-Product.;)</p>
<p>vinceh-
Based on their locations, I am guessing its Bowdoin that has a lobster fest. Sign me up!</p>
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<p>The list prices certainly look like tiered pricing … however through merit aid the actually cost to attend is not nearly as consistent … and as a student heads down selectivity the cost of attendence often goes down (as the student is “bribed/incented” with merit aid)</p>
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In addition, I would like to see that ratio in historical perspective. A ratio of the number of Coffee shops/cafes/bistros per campus building would also be interesting.</p>
<p>I’m so happy I’m poor and can expect to pay almost nothing for these colleges.
Middle class is screwed though…</p>
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<p>At least there is this one aspect of life where poor people aren’t screwed. And you could choose to be poor. Before your child starts applying to schools, quit your job, drain all your investments, move into the ghetto, and send your kid to a crappy inner-city or rural public school. You’re child will be accepted to top universities and it won’t cost you anything!</p>
<p>(This shouldn’t be necessary, but <em>sarcasm</em>)</p>
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<p>:) That really is not amount to much. Lobster is a dime a dozen around there, you can get Lobster sandwitch at McDonals in NH and ME.</p>
<p>Regarding price fixing, lets face it, statistically the schools know who is coming to attend and at what “discounted” price will attract what level of students. Therefore, the “LIST Price” is just a number they know that they will get when a lower stats student with rich parents applies. Its a money game they play and the losers are the parents.</p>
<p>But it is sad when you have just enough saved through years of hard work to care for yourself and family, a little bit for retirement, pay all the bills when due and live within your means (and quite conservatively I might add) but cannot qualify for Financial Aid yet cannot write the checks for tuition to the schools your children really want to attend and have worked hard to earn the grades which gain acceptance into the school. While I fully support a reasonable financial aid policy at some point it is crazy to price the students who have worked hard and will likely succeed in school and beyond out of the market. We can only pay for so many students to go to college and right now it feels like we are paying for other students through taxes etc. and full pay is our option for our own family. It is a frustrating situation. I would not give up the security of knowing that we have a decent family income as that is a far greater responsiblity to ALL members of the family not just the college student class of 2015 but it is hard to look that child in the eye and tell him even with his hard earned, very good grades at a very tough high school - but he is not a brainiac or super star but strong showing- and very respectable border-line terrific test scores, the cost is out of our reach if we continue to exercise prudent financial practices such as excessive debt that would otherwise be required to meet full pay- isn’t the “don’t live beyond your means” what we have been trying to demonstrate for the first 17 years of his life? Why would we change that for college. With costs escalating I wonder as a practival matter what options this leaves for the “upper middle class.” Probably not much sympathy as there are certainly many who can barely meet life’s expenses for a myriad of reasons or are willing to mortgage their futures for a college education for one child but the hard facts are tough to swallow.</p>
<p>Questioningmom, I feel your pain - we’ve been lucky in that my husband has never been laid off, but he and I have worked our a**es off, him putting in 70 hour weeks many a time over the past 20 years. We started out in a SMALL 20 year old mobile home, saved every dime and paid it off early and then rented it out in order to buy a house half the size and four times the age of most people with his income and last year for the first time ever we bought a new car; we have always bought used cars and then driven them till the wheels fell off, I do mean over 200,000 miles. We don’t have very much for retirement, though. Where did all that money we earned and not spend on cars and houses (or vacations or expensive clothes or eating out or new furniture or movies or ANYTHING much beyond the necessities) go?</p>
<p>To necessities. It’s taken that much work to maintain our old house and cars, and pay insurances, utilities, and the extra costs of educating our children that the public school did not offer. (we could not afford private school and the public one didn’t offer much enrichment)</p>
<p>Now we make enough that we pretty much qualify for zero need based aid. Yet looking even at an in state school, the sticker price is close to half of what we actually take home AFTER taxes.</p>
<p>So my daughter can graduate with loan debt. Yet her cousin who’s single mother is on disability will get her college 100 percent paid for.</p>
<p>I’m glad she will get the help…but…she will graduate with the same ability to pay off loans that my daughter will. Yes, she’s poor NOW, but once she has the education, the field has been leveled as far as ability to pay, so why will my daughter get to start off with possibly 40,000 of debt, even though she won’t have any more ability to pay if off than her cousin? ~we canNOT afford to pay her loans, we’ll have to start TRYING to get our retirement together in the 12 years we have to do it after she’s out of school…yeah, piece of cake.</p>
<p>I’m entirely for the very poor having help, but they way overestimate what a middle class family can afford. I’m trying to figure out what we can cut out. There’s a couple hundred dollars a month for lessons that one would figure would end when she’s in college, but other than cable tv, it’s not like any of our expenses are really optional…we are riiiight above the line to get aid, but we don’t make enough to actually be able to afford sticker price.</p>
<p>So I am spending on ACT tutoring instead of saving for tuition. It’s a gamble as I think she’s as far as she can get…</p>
<p>Don’t know how exactly we’ll get her through. But I predict college costs are going to be the next bubble. They can’t just keep on increasing the cost and shoving it onto debt.</p>
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<p>You’re first assuming that you can even get into these colleges. They are tippity top colleges that are, for the most part, very selective. The upside is that if you ARE middle class and you CAN get into these schools, then there are plenty of lower ranked schools (but still very, very good schools) that will give you plenty of merit aid. </p>
<p>And, as someone who has grown up in/near poverty her life, I can tell you that I would much rather have grown up with a stable family and stable income and be struggling a bit to pay bills, rather than growing up in an extremely economically unstable household where I moved numerous times. </p>
<p>It’s one of those the-grass-is-always-greener things.</p>
<p>Hats off to you and your family for all of the hard work and responsible decisions. I know your child will hold those lessons close to her heart as she makes life decisions. At least I hope so since I have tried to teach by example the same principles! I do hope the bubble pops as I have S2 coming up. ( I cannot think about what costs will be by then! Losing the cable will have no effect on either child’s tuition obligations!!!) I just hope that in the heat of emotion and the desire to “do all we can for our children” families do not risk too much and allow the students in this tough “full pay” group to get into too much debt. Even with a good job (and this market whoa…!) that is a hard way to start out knowing that they too will face the tuition years for their own children. I cannot help but think that the lessons our children learn from us in terms of fiscal responsibility will take them a long way- college is only part of the picture- and look where so many have gone without college and those that did not make the most of their college experience. With this said, the race for prestige, anxiety over “where will I get in” and all of the things every parent on this board are considering now, the only way I can “de=stress” is to remember these 3.X students will most likely continue and complete their educations and have many opportunities to make it- in whatever way that manifests itself for the particualar young adult- and our unique opportunity as parents to continue to try to keep them on a responsible path is our most valuable contribution to the process. It is a bear and I am still trying to figure out the real life response to “I got accepted to X school” when paying for it is tough if not impossible but the cc route and lesser state school is a tough pill to swallow the the aid to X school flows to an equal ly qualified (in terms of academics) student sitting in the desk 3 feet away…</p>
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<p>Indeed. Give me student loans and a middle class family any day over need-based aid and poverty.</p>
<p>Merit aid? Look at the hard numbers- few, very few scholarships at what you admit are not necessarily even the schools of choice for which the student is qualified. 15 scholarships in a freshman class…or something like that. So, yes, the full pay is looking at very good schools now, bumped out of the ones he is qualified for due to cost- as per my comment above- look 3 feet across the classroom, if- and I am assuming that they are both accepted-let me say again, both accepted at a school- one goes because it is free- one can’t because it is +40,000. And what part of that $40,000 is so that others may attend on aid? So, full pay either does not go at all or knows that he is going with a GREAT sacrifice to himseflf and family to fund another student’s aid…A tough but real lesson for a 17 year old. </p>
<p>With this said, I cannot calculate the number of hours my child has spent writing essay contests, serving community service through which he may compete for scholarships, etc…the part-time job actually counted against him in terms of potential aid…now that is backwards…but he is not giving up! And neither is his family!</p>
<p>There is a big difference between poverty and overcoming true adversity and being in the full pay mode. As I said- I am not opposed to aid based on need and applaud the efforts of every stiudent to excel. And middle class does not equal stablity and perfection- but a collee tab out of reach after all of that hard work is undisputably frustrating. I do not mean to imply it is a choice between poverty and instability or a student loan and what you assume is a “middle class lifestyle” i.e. a walk in the park perhaps? I am sure most middle class families would agree it was anything but a walk in the park to provide for their fmailies. I know I work like a dog to be where I am. If you live at the poverty level…my hats off to you for dealing with that challenge and positioning yourself such that you (student) or your fmaily (parent) are in a position to vie for aid to a good school- Great work! Keep it up!</p>
<p>questioningmom, did he try Stanford? They waive tuition for students in families making less than $100,000 a year.</p>
<p>If you make more than that, than I cannot feel sorry for you.</p>
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<p>Sometimes students can’t go to their school of choice. It happens. I may want a BMW but if all I can afford is a Toyota, then guess which one I’m getting?</p>
<p>If you can get into the tipity top selective schools that give great financial aid to low-income kids, then you CAN get merit aid at other colleges. Trust me, there aren’t many colleges outside the most selective colleges that give great financial aid to low income kids without terrific stats. Just because you’re low income, doesn’t mean you’re getting a free ride to the school of your choice. </p>
<p>I am one of those near-poverty kids, and I just happen to be just above the income cut off for getting a mostly-full ride through financial aid at my state U. (The cut off is about 22k or so… my family makes about $25k now because my mom just got a huge raise- before that, we made under $20k). I also had great stats (3.8+ GPA, 33 ACT) and managed to get great merit aid. I also work my butt off the same as your kid does. I work three jobs and take on 17 or 18 credit courseloads. Contrary to popular belief, us poor kids don’t get a free ride to wherever we want. My government financial aid barely covers 1/5 of the cost of my public state U. And you know what? I made the choice to go to a public state U because it’s what I could afford. I had the stats to get into nice, selective colleges- but not ones that were easily affordable and not ones that allowed me to stay close to my jobs. I made the choice to stay local and I am happy with that. Yes, it was a hard choice for a 17 year old to make, but a quite necessary one.</p>
<p>I worked my butt off for outside scholarships as well. I had literally over a thousand hours of volunteer work under my belt because I ran a non-profit sports league all through high school. I managed to receive a lot of merit aid based on my academics and received relatively little financial aid. So please, don’t pretend that your family is making some huge sacrifice while us poor kids make none. It doesn’t work that way. I’d swap places with your child in a heart beat. I’d love to have grown up with a stable family income like your child did. </p>
<p>I understand it’s a hard pill to swallow to realize that you can’t go to the most selective schools possible, but truly that is life. Fair? Probably not, but you have to make the best of the situation you’re in. I’m sure that your child, if he is eligible to go to these tippy top schools, then he will find great merit aid somewhere. That is how life works for everyone not in the very upper class.</p>
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<p>I understand. Now take that frustration, that realization that you can’t afford to pay your kid’s tuition and slash your income by a lot. There are NOT a lot of options for most low income kids outside of the very tippity top private schools. We have the Pell Grant, but that’s pretty much it. So even if we’re lucky enough to get that, even public Us are still requiring poor kids to pay $10k+ (after government loans) per year or take that out in private loans (which many low income people cannot get because the banks are stingy with loans right now and people in that income range tend to have worse credit). Now, would you like to be facing the $22k that you would pay at my public state U (that I made the choice to go to BECAUSE I knew I was low income and it was what I could afford to pay) with a $5k grant from the government and a $20-25k income, or pay that same $22k without government aid and a $60k income? (Btw- most of these top colleges have significant financial aid for those under the $60-100k mark, or higher depending on which schools you are looking at.) If you are above that mark, then I don’t really think you are technically classified as middle class. </p>
<p>I know which one I would pick.</p>
<p>@questioning: If in-state tuition at the public universities in your state of residence is out of reach after including financial aid and merit scholarships, as a taxpayer you have the right to protest. Otherwise, I concur with romani; while I might like to drive a BMW or Mercedes, I don’t complain about pricing because I can’t afford one.</p>
<p>I find this funny-- printed on the Forbes website-- [10</a> Costly Mistakes in College Admission - Steve Cohen - Admissions - Forbes](<a href=“http://blogs.forbes.com/stevecohen/2010/09/14/10-costly-mistakes-in-college-admission/]10”>10 Costly Mistakes in College Admission)</p>
<p>his “mistake #2” is those awful, terrible, very bad “top college” lists
Forbes loves to print these silly lists.oops.</p>
<p>^ Again, as I said earlier, my favorite is that fact that Forbes’ second biggest contributor to their “top” list is RateMyProfessor.com.</p>
<p>Yeah, because THAT’s not subjective and skewed :rolleyes: LOL!</p>