Thank you for your service.
The sticker price is what is ridiculous these days. I agree with @blossom that we are partially to blame since we expect so much out of these “homes away from home”. I wish colleges could be a little more decentralized and focused on core academics, like in Europe. College now is homeV2. Someone still babysitting your behavior (RAs and advisors), meals prepared, place to live and amenities, and even social activities!
Higher education in the United States, and the way that it’s paid for, both present unique circumstances, so I think it’s next to impossible to find “any other aspect of life” that match the phenomenon that you find troubling. I’ll give an example of another way in which this phenomenon presents itself, but because of the uniqueness mentioned above, there are similarities, but not a direct match.
Colleges that strive to provide need-based aid feel that they have a moral obligation to make their product available to as many qualified applicants as possible, regardless of the capability of each applicant to pay for that product. The education is not offered only to those who can afford it, in large part because providing a good college education to students form a wide strata of society is good public policy. It makes us a better country. Those who have the capacity to pay are asked to do so. Those who are qualified and admitted and cannot pay the full bill are provided assistance, on a sliding scale based on their financial resources. Again, not a perfect comparison: think of a hospital emergency room. The hospital and staff have a moral, and often a legal responsibility, to treat all patients in distress who present themselves. The indigent person living on the street who is the victim of a hit-and-run driver should get the same kind of treatment that the town’s wealthiest citizen would receive under the same circumstances, even though the hospital knows they won’t see a dime for treating the homeless guy, while the wealthy citizen would be expected to pay for his own treatment, either from his own pocket or from insurance that he has paid for. Doing this is good public policy, and it’s also the right thing to do.
If you truly believe that saving for college has put you in a less favorable position than if you had instead spent the money over the years on fancy cars and extravagant vacations, there are very easy ways to remedy that. From other posts I take it that your oldest child is now a high school junior, so you have time to adjust your reportable assets before the first financial aid document is completed a year from now. Take the college savings and give it away. Choose your favorite charity or non-profit organization. When your child first completes FAFSA or Profile, it will be like you never had the money; assets are reported based on the snapshot taken on the day the forms are completed. Or spend the money on yourself and your family in the next 12 months. Complete your bucket list now, while you’ve got the money to burn. On paper, college financial aid offices won’t have a clue, and if your child is being considered for need-based aid, more will be offered. Problem solved.
What is “all there in black and white”? It definitely can be a mystery as to how to get in. Schools like Harvard turn down perfect applicants every year.
What is your daughter’s major and career goal?
I understand that you felt screwed when you couldn’t go to ND because your parents had no intention of helping you pay. I can understand that a gut reaction would be that your kids shouldn’t ever have to face that. If you’re fine paying full freight, then super. If not, then I don’t think you should feel that there are only two choices…pay nothing or pay full freight.
But remember…if you have a $200,000 in college savings…that is adding only $11, 200 to your EFC. If you give all,those assets away, you will still have your income driving your family contribution…and you won’t have your savings to pay for it.
You mention on a previous financial aid query thread that you are interested in buying a rental property possibly.
Your financial situation sounds either better than you think it is…or complicated.
And you are hoping your kid will get accepted SCEA to Harvard…and if she does, you might just get the need based aid you hope to receive…as Harvard has very generous need based financial aid for families with even higher incomes but “typical” assets.
Your kid has options because you saved. Please try to remember that.
The sticker price for college doesn’t change based on your savings and income. Sticker price is reduced by merit aid and need based aid. Merit aid is generally unaffected by your savings. But by definition, need based aid MUST be based on your assets and income. How else could need possibly be defined?
“properly prepare a well rounded set of ECs with passion and bring out their true selves in their essays …”
Way more than that.
Well you could always choose a college in Canada or the UK that has a much lower sticker price and you have to pay that price no matter what your financial resources are. Many full pay families would consider Oxford to be much better value for money than Harvard. And many more don’t consider $70K per year to be good value for money no matter what the school is.
Tell that to the over 90% of applicants who are rejected from Harvard every year. The vast majority are well qualified applicants with excellent application credentials.
My only point is that I believe that the amount you pay for college should not change if you save up to pay for it. Many of you disagree but do not offer any evidence that this phenomenon exists in any other aspect of life.
I absolutely disagree with this. I have worked in financial aid for years, and I can assure you that it is the exception, not the rule, when someone who saves a lot for college gets the shaft compared to other people … that is, if the income is the same in both cases. I have had this conversation ad nauseum with a coworker who has saved about a million dollars for his 3 kids for school. Yes, he has worked really hard to save this money. But dang it, he HAS that money. So why should anyone pony up to “give” his kids money when it means that there will be less for the child of someone who does not have that money? And his income is such that he wouldn’t really get much, if any, need-based aid without the savings, anyway.
If your child “needs” a different educational environment than you are willing to pay for, find a suitable school that offers merit aid without regard to need. They exist. Otherwise, consider yourself incredibly lucky that you can afford to send your kid to school. MANY cannot do so.
OP, I understand your frustration, but I also understand how somebody can get riled over your post. As it happens, we also have 8 and 10 year old cars, haven’t painted the house for a while and our kid goes to a (great) public school, although we have money both for new cars and college costs. It never occurs to me that we live frugally. Frugally for me means living as I did when I was a graduate student - bought staff in Salvation Army stores and on garage sales and my idea of a splurge was lunch in Taco Bell. I wouldn’t know what to do with a 4000 sq.ft house.
“I need to contribute how much? OK, I better get on it then. That was me 6 years ago when I was thinking about my 6th grader and 3rd graders’ future costs of college. The cost was high and I knew we had to save.”
I re-read the OP, and this explains some things. OP started about half way through his kid’s K-12 education, and went off an actual EFC calculator. He essentially adopted (sticker - FA = EFC) as his savings goal. He found, over time, that FA and EFC numbers change depending on income and assets. His savings goal is a moving target, a frustrating situation indeed.
DH and I didn’t know EFCs existed when DD was born (maybe they didn’t back then). Along with pregnancy and baby books, I bought a book on how to save for college published by savingforcollege.com. Back then we (and savingforcollege.com for that matter), assumed the sticker price was the price everyone paid. If you got lucky, the student earned a scholarship or two. Over time, savingforcollege.com evolved and tweaked it’s calculators to include EFC considerations. We took notice, but didn’t change our savings goal, which was something approximating ((sticker price x 4) + estimated inflation). Very, very few families would actually hit that goal (even savingforcollege.com didn’t expect many to even come close), but that’s when you went to a different page of the web site to learn how to make up the shortage with scholarships and loans.
So… two different ways of coming up with a college saving goal, each with positives and negatives.
But we can’t expect the price 6 years ago to be list price today. Nor to be fixed at our financial position, 6 years ago. We have to expect prices can change as can our finances. If OP lost his job a year ago, his picture would change.
If a home in your desired neighborhood cost xxx 6 years ago and you wanted to put down 10%, saved for that, would you expect it to be exactly enough, 6 years later? Would you expect the exact interest rate now that you qualified for, 6 years ago? If you now need to put down 20%, to get that rate, would they be scamming you?
The OP has stated that their student is heavily involved in campaigning in AL. So, assuming they are AL residents, the entire conversation circles back to not liking how a tiny percentage of generous, elite schools determine need.
This student could attend Auburn tuition free
At Bama, the student could receive free tuition, apply AP credits, and use the extra time from the credits toward grad school
So is the issue really just about the unfairness of “top 30 colleges” schools determining need bc of having assets?
Any chance this student is a NM finalist? If so, that would open the doors for some excellent merit awards at many places…and even the potential for a very fine merit award from U of Alabama.
Maybe that’s this student’s safety school…which really is an awesome one to have.