Make sure she applies for the Chancellor’s scholarship at Vanderbilt (separate application required in addition to the common application). All forms due by January 1.
Help – with the search of safeties… and the top heavy list of a stubborn daughter and her increasing
You admit that the list is not realistically affordable. Given your daughter’s interests, how about a gap year so that she can fine-tune her list to better fit the budget, and so that she can have some time away from the prestige focused college application babble that she is hearing every day at her high achool?
Popular with a lot of IL parents, and not too bad for students with a business orientation: U of Northern Iowa. That might be a safety she finds acceptable.
Edinburgh sounds unaffordable so she needs safeties she will get into and can afford to go to. University of Wisconsin is a common choice for Illinois residents. There is little merit aid, but the total cost of attendance is around $40,000, and room and board costs after freshman year – when most students move into apartments and leave UW housing – is within your control, you can go cheaper or more expensive. If you can afford UW, it is now on the Common App, and has one supplement, I believe. If UW is unaffordable, she needs real financial safeties and has to apply to Alabama or other substantial merit award schools.
I’d pull some of the Ivies, maybe say she can apply to 2-3 Ivies, perhaps U Penn and something else. NYU comes off the list. ND, Wash U, Vandy like high scores – a 34 is not exceptional at ND these days, though it is a school which works to maintain some diversity so she could be an interesting applicant on that basis.
Perhaps show her some of the spring threads about the high-flying kids who had no affordable safeties, and were coming on here, desperate they did not get in anywhere they could afford. Or enlist a family friend or other trusted adult to talk with her about the process, and being realistic. She needs to get her head on straight, quickly. Good luck, she sounds headstrong.
She can only bankrupt you if you allow it. Discuss finances with your spouse and come up with a number you can afford without borrowing or mortgaging properties. Then tell your daughter that’s her limit and any acceptances whose net cost is above that number will be going into the garbage. She can find an affordable college, attend community college, or get a job and pay for the college she can afford. Repeat as necessary and follow through in April.
OP- there are two kinds of “borrowing” for your kids education.
The first is assessing your overall financial health- life insurance, home equity, 401K and IRA accounts, health of the breadwinners, etc. and determining a level of debt which you can all live with- doesn’t impact your retirement, might mean buying a Honda when you are 75 and your old car falls apart and not a BMW.
Then there is making a wild and crazy bet that everything will go right- nobody gets sick and has to retire early (I’ve got early onset Alzheimer’s in my family, so it is generally on my mind when I think I can work for another 20 years. Maybe I can and maybe I can’t). There is no extreme currency fluctuation or political instability in your country of origin which might make retiring there either dangerous or unaffordable or unpalatable. Or that your health insurance/long term care policy in the US can’t be transported there. Or that your D finishes in 8 semesters- never has to drop down to two courses due to mono or another unforeseen medical issue-- and you just can’t swing that extra semester she needs to finish.
Without knowing anything except what you’ve posted- you guys seem to be doing Plan B, not Plan A. Your D has way too many schools on the list; she is likely to get into some schools which you realistically cannot afford; she is going to be calling the shots on your financial future with the maturity of an 18 year old, not the wisdom of a middle aged person who pays taxes, buys life insurance, knows that costs go up every year, etc.
Your life here. But I wouldn’t hand over the reins on my retirement to my kids- even though they had a lot of financial savvy by age 17. And they all understood the concept of a “parent pick” on their college list- a place which if financial disaster struck, we could still afford. Was it the be-all and dream college? No. Would they have headed off happily? I believe so. Sometimes you get a pony for your birthday, and some years you go out for ice cream and get the flavor of the month at Baskin Robbins and thank your parents for making your day special. That’s reality.
William & Mary has a joint degree in economics with St. Andrews that she might find sexy enough.
Agree with others, though–there’s no way I’d even pay for that many applications, much less mortgage my future to the hilt to pay for her top choice.
My kid! Dead set on going to a selective school. A measure of her self-worth and a reward for how hard she worked in HS. Unwilling to accept what we could afford. Turning her nose up at the affordable schools I added to her list. Angry at us, very angry, that she was the only one of her friends who didn’t get to choose where she went to school. Embarrassed to let her peers know that a student of her caliber was going to take a big merit package at a lowly OOS public.
It’s not easy. We want to see our children happy. Give the Kool-Aid time to wear off, then look at the FOUR YEAR cost. It’s one thing to see the numbers and think, okay, $30K per year would hurt, but I think we can do that. But how will you finance it? It’s +$120K per year. And for what?
Yes, people will be proudly announcing where their kids are going to school come May, and there will be a lot of judgement being tossed around. And then? It will be over and everyone will be moving on to the next big thing. High school will be in the rear view mirror.
Thanks all. Great GREAT advice from all of you.
Deep down I have known it all (It is probably easy to guess so from the OP). Following through will not be easy though. Not easy and I see now it has to [for sure] start with me wife.
One day she sees perfectly clear what “doing every thing we can for our kids” will do to our finances and is excited what the affordable choice will do for us. The next day it is “we have to do EVERYTHING for our kid”. Everything includes mortgaging our future literally and figuratively, if need be… It is partially a cultural thing, I think. This always remind me of scene from “My Fat Greek Wedding” - when for their wedding this bad tempered father gives the keys to a new house to the newly wedded couple… believe me it is fully paid house. While not Greek, we (my wife more than me) also believe “the young kids of ours” should have a very solid start in their life… and this includes paid house…even if the parents have to mortgage theirs to achieve it. Does not make too much sense but it is true.
btw the site cut my comment in half…weird… any way
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@Midwest67 I do not know if this indeed happened to you, but you describe our situation like you are observing our situation first hand.
@happymomof1 We have not researched U of Northern Iowa. Will do for sure. Thanks for the suggestion.
On the gap year thing – Isn’t it viewed as a generally bad thing by schools? What is a good thing to do to make it not so bad – work 40h/week? She will not save near enough to make a huge difference in her collage cost. The “coming in contact with reality” thing is probably indeed needed for her, but I do not think it will work - She will still live with mom and dad, so will not really see firsthand what paying your bills really is. Maybe just seeing how 1 y worth of wages goes in collage cost in a second will help enough. idk, I will have to think about this a bit more.
Will try to keep you updated as things move on.
University of Edinburgh lists the EU tuition as GBP1820. It would be hard to beat that.
If she really wants to go the more selective school route, then she should at least have some skin in the game. Right now, it sounds like you’re presenting options to her that are totally abstract to her, as they all relate to how the college payments will affect your future, not hers. Why not propose to her that you’re willing to make some additional financial sacrifices to send her to a school that she would be really excited about attending, but only if she’s willing to take on some student loan debt herself? Make it concrete by picking out a loan amount that would make at least somewhat of a difference in the impact on your retirement plans, and then figure out what her monthly payments would be after she graduates. My parents asked me to pay some of my student loans when I was in college – I thought that was perfectly fair of them, and made me take the whole thing more seriously than if it had just been totally handed to me on a platter.
I don’t understand your comment about 30% above NPC. Can you afford the EFC at generous/prestigious schools like Duke, and the Ivys?
She will get into Syracuse and has gotten into St Andrews… 2 schools she would be happy to attend. Can you afford those 2 schools? If so, then you have your safeties. Get rid of the middle of the list schools that she doesn’t love. Don’t apply to more than 10 schools - WASTE OF MONEY.
@bouders yes this is the in state (UK and European Union) tuition. For international students it is 17,000 EUR (and the cost of living there is higher than in USA). We are appealing the decision to treat her as international [because she has EU citizenship as well]. If they cut the tuition to instate it will be simply great but the chances for that are not good, I believe.
Have you (parents) evaluated your household finances to determine what you can contribute to her college costs without (a) creating obvious unfairness to later kids with respect to their college costs, or (b) making it difficult to save for your retirement?
If so, have you clearly told her your contribution limit?
@suzyQ7 - the 30% NPC comment means - yes if the actual contribution expected from us is what the NPC (of Duke and the ivies) shows, or even if it 30% more than that - we can pay it from money already saved. Syracuse’s NPC ,on the other hand, comes to about 2.5 times more expected from us than Duke. Still theoretically doable but will take mortgaging all the equity we have in real estate.
[all those calculation are for the full 4 years]
@soxmom The talk agreement for more than 2 years has been that we will try to pay the undergraduate degree for her. Anything after that is her responsibility [taking loans paying, them etc.]
You list "Rochester (NYC). " If you mean the U of Rochester, it is a LONG way from NYC. Is this an error or do you mean a different school?
You haven’t said what most of her APs are in and, believe me, it matters. Are you counting “half” APs as whole ones? For example, AP micro econ and AP macro econ count as half each; together they are one. Government is half an AP.
Your daughter seems focused on business/accounting, but most of the schools she’s applying to do not offer undergrad programs in business. Is she applying to arts & sciences at NYU or to Stern? To Penn arts & sciences or Wharton?
The issue with Edinburgh is that home fees status is based not only on citizenship, but also residence, and it’s set by the government so the university can’t ignore that.
If you have a child who feels entitled and does not understand finances and what affordable means (that is not an insult, just a statement), my suggestion is to not green light any applications to any schools you are not 100% willing and able to pay for.
We went into application season with a loose idea of what we’d be willing to pay and a rough estimate on the NPC. We allowed her to apply to some reach schools (admission reach and financial reach) in part because she was so insistent on “just seeing what happens” and we had the thought in the back of our minds that she’d likely get rejected and the schools could be the bad guys.
Nope. Accepted.
To make matters worse, when I sat down seriously this time, to run the NPC, I realized I had not taken into account H’s new bonus structure at work and a likely increase in income. Also, his employer decided to give management a raise to act as a stipend for buying health insurance through the ACA. More increase in income. Also, in late November of application season, two gigs landed in my lap and it was unclear if those would last or disappear. If it worked out, another bump in income for the upcoming year.
Someone here on CC said, hey don’t forget about inflation, and plane tickets, and other expenses. Okay, I updated the spreadsheet to more accurately reflect true out of pocket costs. Then, someone here on CC said, how many kids in college. Crap. I had NOT looked at four years and I had NOT accounted for the older child being out of college.
That blew the budget right there. It was one thing to scrimp and save and cross our fingers for a financial stretch for what looked like the cost of year one. But year two through four, with the older D out of school, looked insane. No can do.
We tried to explain, we whipped out our carefully crafted spreadsheet, we talked about our age, retirement, risk, needing a safety net for what life will inevitably throw at you…we talked about how they will lend a parent any crazy amount of money, resulting in so much debt it will crush you… how our jobs are dependent on a good economy, how bad things were in 2008 and how we suffered. We talked about the virtues of keeping debt to a minimum, we talked about how she could go to a sexy grad school.
She doesn’t understand. We are giving her the space to be unhappy with us and unhappy with how “unfair” it is. It hurts, when you feel like you’ve done your best and have sacrificed so much, for the good of the family.
Once we had an much more accurate picture of what we’d be expected to pay (NPCs with updated info) and firmly decided what we were willing to pay for, things fell in place. Not for her necessarily, but for us.
OP- I understand where your wife is coming from. I am first gen American and have lots of family members who think the way you do.
Guess what- their kids are less happy with the “great start in life, fully paid for” program when it means elderly mom and dad moving in with them. Or an adult- at the peak of their earning years- having to downshift at work to help take care of an ailing parent. Or to move a parent to an assisted living facility AND come up with 10K per month to pay for it. Or to keep the parent (or both) living at home, with them, but to find a way to pay for private care during the day while they are at work.
Think this is farfetched? Call any insurance broker who sells long term care insurance or disability insurance and they can lay out for you how poorly prepared most people in America are for what is likely to be their retirement years. You are likely to outlive your money if you spend more than you can afford on college.
If your D is prepared to become your backstop in exchange for her top choice college then terrific- although I’m not sure I’m seeing indications that she’d have any clue what these numbers might mean.
Do you really want to move into your retirement years having spent down your dough on tuition?
Percent99, if she could get merit aid, would she consider a selective, though not tippy-top LAC or smaller university (over a big state U like Bama?) I am not the most knowledgeable here on CC (so anyone correct me if I’m wrong.)
Right now, I’m thinking of Denison University in Gambier Ohio. Though not highly selective it is respectable and coming up in the ranks. Unlike may LACs it has a business school. I have read multiple times on CC that it is currently generous with merit aid AND trying to increase diversity in order to improve its ranking.
Gettysburg College has a major in Mathematical Economics and a minor in business. Have no idea about merit aid now, but a friend’s daughter went there three years ago and I know they were dependent on a big chunk of merit aid. I know the daughter’s stats were not quite as high as yours.
Also, what about Miami University in Oxford Ohio. Does anyone know about its merit aid or lack thereof? It has a large and (I think) well-regarded business school. Beautiful campus, as well.
Those are just examples…I’m sure there are many more…and smart, high-achieving kids at all of those schools.