<p>Williams doesn’t care that most people haven’t heard of it. That’s not their audience. I guess I’m lucky enough to actually be middle class so it was affordable for our family. It’s a really great place, the academics are not for the faint of heart though. </p>
<p>So if this family makes 175k, that clears about what, $10K a month? So what’s stopping them from getting on the 10 month plan and paying 4k/mo while the son takes out the max stafford loan? If this level of income is new to them, one would think they shouldn’t have a crazy mortgage. Why can’t they get by on 6k a month? Is the mother staying home to care for the grandchildren? </p>
<p>Yeah, ND would have had to have offered this kid merit aid (and a fair bit) for it to have been affordable for them.</p>
<p>Anyway, Exhibit A (actually, more like Exhibit VF) why making acceptance decisions based on rankings is a flawed way to go about things. I respect all the WAS LACs a fair bit, but you can certainly make the argument that ND is as good or better for certain scenarios/student types/careers/regions.</p>
<p>The kid got his package 4/30 which is right at the deadline, and leads me to believe there was some negotiation going on here. Also, the comment that ND was hinting about giving a large award made no sense to me. When you apply to colleges like the ones on his list, you get your offer letter and your fin aid packages pretty much together. He either got an award from ND or did not. How much later could have waited than 4/20 which was when he got the Williams award? </p>
<p>Also, the amount he owes to Williams is about $8K more than what his state flagship would have cost. I don’t think it’s the $8k that is causing the problem UI does not tend to give much in the way of aid or merit, so he would have been in the same boat there, just $8K less deep which isn’t the deal breaker.</p>
<p>He did not check out a whole big category of schools that he needed to include to be sure of affordable choices. NPCs would have made it clear what his family contributions would be like at schools This is a family that does not qualify fo fin aid.</p>
<p>I see situations, and read about them quite a bit where it does hurt when you see families that truly cannot pay struggling, but this is not one such situation, IMO.</p>
<p>@thumper1
This student is a football player. ND gives football $$…no need needed. ND had hinted that he would get money…guess that means an athletic scholarship. </p>
<p>This family is going to get a painful slap in the face sometime soon.</p>
<p>Several posts (re: ND vs Williams) here seem to imply that the brand of the school (even to a layman) and its potential networking potential (outside the Wall Street) matter, esp. when the student may not attend a grad school after college.</p>
<p>However, it is funny that there are also no lack of CCers who would not hesitate to swear that there is no need to be too obsessed with the brand name: as long as a student has what it takes to get into such an elite college, it will not hurt him/her a bit if he/she goes to a cheaper alternative.</p>
<p>Oh good lord. From the 10,000 foot level, there just isn’t that much difference between ND and Williams on the criteria of “very good education and access to opportunities.” They might be different opportunities, but still opportunities. If ND was cheaper, then it would have been a slam dunk. </p>
<p>You know, I think that it is odd people are getting up in arms about $100,000 of debt for four years, when most people who make what the father makes owe around $500,000 on their home - or more.</p>
<p>So if he owes only $300,000 on his home, and let’s say $300,000 of home equity is accessible, what’s the problem with $100,000 over 4 years? If you are paying $3,000 per month into your house, for 17 years, that is around $600,000 paid off, assume interest was 50% of that on average (easy to get there if you prepay even a little), and you can refi to access the $300,000 or so paid off.</p>
<p>Oh, the <em>father</em> doesn’t want to pay. It is abundantly unclear whether the father <em>can</em> pay and won’t, or really <em>can’t</em> pay - either way, he doesn’t want to. I know in our case, we <em>can</em> pay for my son to go to any school, up to full pay, but we <em>won’t</em> pay for anything over a certain amount (around $40,000 per year but I’d be sore pressed to do so).</p>
<p>It’s like the kid is whining that “dad make enough money, so why do I have to take out loans?”. The answer is, because it is YOUR education and HE would have to take out loans for you and HE doesn’t want to.</p>
This is especially true if HE (the parent) is near his retirement age and he has not accumulated enough money in his retirement account yet - assuming that he will not have access to pension or his pension will be small.</p>
<p>Regarding refinancing the mortgage: Even if the parents may be able to have access to the equity of the house by refinancing, or by opening a HELOC account, they may not want to if they think they may not have many years left to make money to pay back the loans - again, this is related to the question about the retirement issue mentioned above, and how old the parents are (and/or maybe having other financial responsibilities in the near future.)</p>
<p>In our case, we were willing and able to support our child’s college education, but we do not want to do the same for his post-college education. Actually, our income when DS was in college was like two-thirds of OP’s - and we were asked to full pay for two years! Now, we think we are not capable of financing his post-college education anymore. If we continue doing that, we will likely have to eat ramen noodle for the rest of our lives. </p>
<p>The lure of rankings was a factor in Weathers’ decision but also…<< His advisor from Kappa League said he’d get much more personal attention there (Williams) than at a big university…Everywhere he turned, administrators were checking in with him, asking if he had questions, pointing him toward seemingly endless resources. “This place treats their students right,” he said. Weathers benefited from a pre-orientation program devoted to first-generation college students, meant to soften the blow of culture shock…bigger schools don’t have the ability to devote so much energy to helping these students." >> This kid clearly chose Williams for more for rankings - he may have believed (and maybe rightly) that a small LAC was a better place for a first generation AA kid to get support and thrive. Clearly he is having a great experience at Williams.</p>
<p>The bizarre piece is that no adult involved was concerned about the 42K cost of college which they knew about from day one - last April. Not his father who has slowly built a 6 figure career, or his mother who has managed a large household on a budget for ~30 years. He is the youngest kid. They must be used to watching the bottom line. That number didn’t scare anybody? All the quotes in the article where the father describes the modesty of their lifestyle and how many adult offspring and grandkids he is supporting (!) were true last April when the FA package came through. All the other colleges sent FA offers too. There must have been FA plus merit from WUSTL, and we know that ND offered more robust FA. And all the kid can say is:<< I didn’t think I’d go broke trying to go to school.>> ???</p>
<p>But what is even more frustrating is how the article uses this highly irregular situation to try to highlight a problem with the system. The problem in this case is so clearly with the family’s poor decision making, not lack of opportunity - this young man could be thriving at an affordable (excellent) college right now. The truth is that low income <em>high achieving</em> students have amazing opportunities in higher education right now, and they are getting better every year: <<three-quarters of="" the="" students="" are="" in="" top="" quartile="" income,="" “and=”" then="" there="" poor="" students,="" and="" almost="" none="" between."="">> There are very real issues with the middle class being short changed in the FA world, and they need to be talked about and addressed. This story was NOT an illustration of a family in that plight. So the problem remains and this article hasn’t really done anything to bring attention to it.</three-quarters></p>
<p>Guessing that the parents are getting close to retirement age (based on the fact that the other sibs are older), so doing things like borrowing against one’s home is risky.</p>
<p>The dad hasn’t had those high earnings for long, so he may not be adequately prepared for retirement. </p>
<p>@rhandco
We know that your philosophy is borrow big for child’s choice of school. That is fine since you seem to have figured that you can afford it…I believe that you have no mortgage. We haven’t heard that this family has no mortgage. We’ve heard that the high income is new. We’ve heard that the family is borrowing all of their EFC, which suggets that they have no extra money (are their business loans, maybe?) There seems to be an assumption that the CHILD will pay it all back, and the parents are having to subsidize adult children (for unknown reasons) and that doesn’t seem to be ending soon. </p>
<p>There is nothing to be had at Williams (as a premed or prelaw) that couldn’t be had at a number of other schools for less, much less. </p>
<p>The odd thing is, if the parents end up borrowing $170k+ against their home for the four years, and they are thinking that junior will pay or help pay that back, they’re in for a shock. If he goes to med school, he won’t be earning any money for awhile, and if he goes to law school, he’ll have that debt as well, so in 7 years he may be earning some money, but it will be spread out over a bunch of loans. </p>
<p>Unless the parents have accepted that THEY will (and can) pay all that back, this is a horrible decision. </p>
<p>It’s crazy, but if the father is supporting other adult offspring, maybe he’s thinking that youngest son needs the elite education in order to become self-supporting? That is, maybe the dad is thinking: “if son goes to Williams, he’ll get a high paying job when he gets out, and at least I won’t have to also support him.” </p>
<p>I agree with frustration at the article uses an irregular situation to try to highlight a problem – and that this is not a “middle class” family caught in-between. And while I agree that many people receive poor advice, I don’t like the “somebody else’s fault” mindset in a situation where the parent has proven himself capable of earning $170K. At that income level, he has to know a little bit about money management. (And I think he does, as the article says that he is looking into refinancing his home). </p>
<p>I think the son kept his parents in the dark so that it would become “too late” to consider other options. His parents weren’t college-savvy, so they probably didn’t know about gap years and such. Plus as a football player, a gap year probably isn’t advised. </p>
<p>So, by the time he revealed that he had exhausted all of the private merit possibilities, the parents felt that they had to scramble to pay with loans. </p>
<p>Sorry, it wasn’t clear that you were specifically referring to where you can be successful from and making great contacts. Where I come from, “six of one and half a dozen of the other” means that there is no meaningful distinction between the two.</p>
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<p>Nope, I understand perfectly well, as do I think most of us “on the east coast.” Different schools will have different “brand pulls” to different degrees in different areas. Did you consider that as a mid-westerner, maybe Notre Dame has a bit more of a “brand pull” for you?</p>
<p>Really? Is there some reported evidence of this? I’d be surprised if families with 175K in income routinely owe 500K on a house. Maybe I’m just naive. But maybe that would explain all the foreclosures out there. I thought it was getting harder to borrow that kind of money for a mortgage if income didn’t support it. </p>
<p>^^
I thought the same thing. I don’t know anyone in that income range with mortgages that high. That would suggest a pricey home…pricey prop taxes and pricey mortgage. The people I know with those incomes tend to live in homes that cost around $300-400k and their mortgages are around $200-250k. </p>
<p>When we had incomes of $60,000 a year, we were told we could handle a $180,000 mortgage (back in 1985). Maybe the bank thought so…but we didn’t. Our first house cost half that amount. </p>
<p>I think that $100,000 of debt, regardless of the source, is too much debt for undergraduate school. </p>
<p>I totally agree with you, Dr. Google. Totally. What I’m saying…just because a bank says you CAN get a mortgage that large doesn’t mean you should.</p>
<p>But then…just because you can take out $100,000 plus in college loans, doesn’t mean it’s necessary…or well advised…or you should!</p>
<p>ETA…mortgage interest rates now are about 4%, right. In 1985 they were 13%!</p>