<p>For an income of $150,00 with a kid in college?
I know fin aid depends mostly on each applicant’s unique circumstances, but does anyone have a general estimate?</p>
<p>UChicago’s financial aid has matched what FAFSA has predicted in my case. Take a look a this to give you an idea. </p>
<p>[Office</a> of College Aid](<a href=“http://collegeaid.uchicago.edu/prospective/average_aid.shtml]Office”>http://collegeaid.uchicago.edu/prospective/average_aid.shtml)</p>
<p>To be completely honest with you, unless your other kid has to pay a significant amount of college tuition (above $30k/year), you probably won’t receive financial aid.</p>
<p>Same experience here.</p>
<p>Unlike the Harvards and Yales of the world, Uchicago does not have the huge endowment that would allow it to join the bidding battle currently going on for middle class students.</p>
<p>IMHO, we are going to see further stratification among elite universities:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A tier that has the financial resources to provide generous financial aid to most anyone. This tier will have a dozen or so members, university and LAC together. (others have a better number? I just guessed)</p></li>
<li><p>A second tier that more or less follows the FAFSA, with perhaps a bit of merit aid thrown in, much like the status quo at UChicago.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The impact will be that the first tier’s yields will climb even more - who would not pass up the free money?</p>
<p>Here is some data, from 2006, for endowment per student. Keep in mind that the numbers may mean something different at a research U like Chicago, which has lots of grad students to feed, than at a LAC or a Dartmouth.</p>
<p>I think the money stops at around $900,000 per student - Caltech, although Williams and Amherst should be competitive given their LAC status.</p>
<p>Princeton University $1,900,000
Yale University $1,751,927
Rice University $1,557,600
Harvard University $1,456,940
Grinnell College $1,076,056
Stanford University $946,944
Pomona College $942,530
Swarthmore College $841,000
Massachusetts Institute of Technology $816,161
Amherst College $820,846
Williams College $783,000
California Institute of Technology $945,140
Berea College $666,667
Dartmouth College $614,035
Wellesley College $603,969
Wabash College $485,882
University of Notre Dame $481,738
University of Chicago $421,167</p>
<p>One of the problems w/ U of C’s financial aid is that, unlike other schools, they consider your 401K and, from what they told us, expect parents to borrow against it to pay for college, without regard to whether you will be receiving a pension or not. So if you are run a small business and will not be receiving a pension, but have saved for retirement with a 401K, expect to spend that 401K money on college at U of C. Everybody’s experience can be different, but I have 2 in college and I found that other schools provided better FA than Chicago.</p>
<p>srparent, </p>
<p>They did NOT, and DO NOT consider 401K balances.</p>
<p>They DO, just like the feds, include current year 401K contributions as income. But schools that follow the federal formula all do so.</p>
<p>S received a merit scholarship, but we had also applied for FA, so I contacted the FA office at Chicago nonetheless to see what they had calcualted our EFC to be. (We have a HS junior as well, and I wanted to get a sense of what Chicago thinks EFC is for us as we approach funding two kids.) </p>
<p>While our EFC was less than the merit award, it was consistent with FA awards S got at other schools. (We knew going in that if we got FA, it would not be a large amount.) We have some ongoing extraordinary medical expenses, and it looks like all the PROFILE schools handled that in a comparable manner, as in our PROFILE EFC was lower than our FAFSA.</p>
<p>The best way to get a handle on your EFC (both federal and PROFILE methodologies) is to enter your family’s info on an EFC calculator. [FinAid</a> | Calculators | Expected Family Contribution (EFC) and Financial Aid](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org/calculators/finaidestimate.phtml]FinAid”>http://www.finaid.org/calculators/finaidestimate.phtml) PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE talk to your parents <em>now</em> about what your family can afford to pay for college. Every year there are kids and parents whose hopes are dashed when they realize the school they love isn’t going to happen financially. Be sure you have schools on your list that your family can afford and that you would be happy attending.</p>
<p>Chicago (and most other schools) will expect your parents to suspend 401(k) contributions while you are in college – they throw that money back into the pool of available family resources. Make no mistake, though – there will be financial pain.</p>
<p>newmassdad:
That is what a counsellor in their financial aid office told us last year in a telephone conversation.</p>
<p>I anticipate that Chicago will start giving more financial aid over the course of 5-10 years. Alumni and fundraising efforts have been improving drastically and continue to improve, and I hope somebody realizes how much the school loses out on great students just based on financial aid. </p>
<p>There are a bunch of students on CC who, if Harvard and Chicago had cost the same, would have chosen Chicago but instead chose Harvard.</p>
<p>And whatever’s Chicago’s cost might be to some, it seems like the University doesn’t have that much of a problem drawing in students from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds-- or perhaps it’s all a fluke that I run into a lot of students on lots of financial aid, who are the first in their families to attend college and the first in their high schools in recent memory to attend a “top” school, etc.</p>
<p>srparent,</p>
<p>The counselor was wrong.</p>
<p>Unalove,</p>
<p>No amount of current fundraising will cure the competition problem Chicago has compared to the richer institutions, short of some sort of record breaking hail mary donation. The efforts to improve alumni donations are just efforts to try to come close to what others have been doing for years. (If you look at historic numbers, you would see that many years ago, Chicago’s endowment was up there with the best. It is not now)</p>
<p>Chicago is rather late to the aggressive fund raising party. It is sad but true.</p>
<p>Chicago is also handicapped by the often observed fact that college alums, along with many of their grad student peers, historically tended to go to less well paying professions (academe, social services, education etc.) than their peers at Harvard, Yale and others, who more often went into well paying professional jobs.</p>
<p>Just the facts. Wistful thinking will not solve the financial realities that Chicago does not and will not have the kind of money it takes to compete with Harvard, Yale et al with regard to middle class financial aid.</p>
<p>unalove - I agree with newmassdad. Chicago has fallen too far behind to catch up to the likes of HPY in the endowment department unless some massive,multi-billion dollar donations role in. It is really a shame that such a fine institution let itself fall behind this way. I say this as the proud father of a student about to leave for O week. I am ofetn struck by the paradox of educational institutions known for excellence in a field or fields (like economics) not being able or willing to use this academic excellence in the real world (and grow their endowment).</p>
<p>I was thinking about Chicago’s alumni giving performance relative to what I think its potential is rather than its performance compared to other schools. (Last I checked, Chicago had an extraordinary return on its endowment, but I’d rather not check that out right now ;-)). I also confess that I’m no history of higher ed or finance whiz, so most of what I’m saying is somewhat reasoned speculation.</p>
<p>And yes, higher education provides many paradoxes, and that’s something that hasn’t been lost on me. Some of the best economists and sociologists come from the University of Chicago and go on to try and change the world (for fun, check out programs like Penn’s “Education, Culture and Society” graduate program and tell me where about half of the professors teaching there earned their PhD). We send the highest number of undergraduate students into the Peace Corps for schools of our size range. Though the University of Chicago and “change the world” mentality aren’t often associated with one another, there are definitely strong currents here.</p>
<p>But we are still an elite institution, we still don’t provide accessible educations for all who academically qualify, and we still have this major divide between theory and practice.</p>
<p>It is also true that financial stratification exists among elite colleges. It has for years. For example, if I recall correctly, it is only in recent years that Brown was able to meet all need for its admittees. </p>
<p>The reality is that Chicago will be outbid by a handful of other places in the coming years for middle/upper middle income students. So what? It has been losing the cross admit battle for these same students for years.</p>
<p>More importantly, is the precision of admissions decisions such that one can really discern meaningful distinctions among these students? Have the outputs been different? (meaning, do Chicago grads underperform post graduation versus Harvard grads, for example? Depends on your metric. By many measures, no.)</p>
<p>We can’t fix this problem. I sure can’t. I don’t have the assets - barely paid for 4 years for my D. </p>
<p>So let’s discuss the question: Does this financial aid disparity matter from an institutional point of view? (It surely matters from a personal POV, when it comes to paying the bills!)</p>
<p>You probably won’t get any need based aid.</p>
<p>My bigger concern with the lack of loans and financial markets tanking is how much tuition will go up next year. UC has already shot past its peer schools. Another 5 or 6% increase (or more) would be insane. It would basically be in a position where it costs a lot more and doesn’t offer comparable aid. Yield would plummet and transfers would balloon.</p>
<p>For me, at least, Chicago wasn’t too bad. It was 7k higher than Cornell (worst by far for me) and matched most other private university’s aid offers. I agree with the two tier suggestion; unless you secure an offer from one of a handful of the wealthiest schools, fin-aid would probably be around the same across the board.</p>
<p>However, unless Chicago radically changes its fin-aid policies this year, I can seriously see myself at least trying to transfer because the university tends to increase its tuition at a rate higher than the already high inflation figures… even more so than other schools.</p>
<p>This is a sobering thread. Chicago has been at the top of my daughter’s list … For those who received aid, was it in the form of grants? loans? or?</p>
<p>I think they provide all grants for those making less than 60k and cap loans at 5k for those making over 75k. Those between 60 and 75k have half their loans replaced with grants.</p>
<p>“Chicago (and most other schools) will expect your parents to suspend 401(k) contributions while you are in college – they throw that money back into the pool of available family resources.”</p>
<p>What, exactly, do schools expect you to suspend? We contribute a small amount each year to a 403(b) and to a Roth IRA. Is it assumed we would do neither during our D’s college years (which, for us, aren’t that far from retirement – well, weren’t, until the recent market downturns!)?</p>
<p>Zetesis,
Yes, it’s those current retirement contributions that schools will count as an available source of college money. We didn’t save for retirement when we had student loans and day care expenses, and we are still trying to catch up.</p>
<p>In fairness, these calculations are not limited to UChicago. MIT offered us less than Chicago FA would have, even after taking into account the difference in COA. I don’t expect the situation to get better anytime soon – gotta wonder how college endowments have fared with recent events and what the implications for institutional FA will be.</p>
<p>Get those rolling decision apps in early this year – I think we’ll be seeing a flight to less-expensive schools.</p>
<p>It is not true that Chicago expects you to suspend 401K/403b contributions. I don’t know why some folks post such fiction. </p>
<p>As CD says, Chicago, and many other schools, count salary deferrals (which are what these retirement contributions are) as current income for financial aid calculation purposes. How you get the money is your problem. </p>
<p>To be even fairer, don’t blame Chicago et al. Blame congress. They are the ones that wrote the rules for federal financial aid that treat 401K contributions differently from corporate contributions to a defined benefit plan. Is it fair? I for one don’t think so. But Chicago does not deserve the blame.</p>
<p>Many of us are paying tuition bills while we listen to friends discuss their pending (or recent) retirement. We also note that these same friends often had kids at an age quite a bit younger than us, sent their kids to a state university, and live in low cost parts of the country. </p>
<p>It is all about choices.</p>