My son falls into the high income bracket. He’s a high school senior heading to MIT in the Fall. I know he won’t qualify for need based scholarships and there’s no merit money from what I understand. Where to I go to look for scholarships? I don’t even know where to begin.
Have him check with his guidance counselor about local scholarships that might be available. Those are probably his best bet, although at least in our area most are small and only for one year.
Are you looking for $500 from the local garden club and $250 from the Realtor’s association? His HS should have applications for those ready to go.
What scholarships do you think are sitting there in March of his senior year for a high income kid? And did you run the numbers on MIT (very transparent about their aid) before he applied?
There are lots of on campus job-even for Freshman- that will likely be a better deal for your son than the onsie/twosie/non-renewable amounts he can get from local organizations. Most UROPS (MIT speak for undergraduate research opportunities, i.e. jobs) have the option of either cash or academic credit (especially for summer jobs). Tell him he needs the cash.
Unless you’re looking for $200 one time awards from the local ladies club, you won’t find any at this point. Outside scholarships are usually SMALL, ONE TIME ONLY, and often have a “need” component.
There is little incentive for outside entiities to be providing free money for affluent kids to go to college. As it is, there aren’t a lot of outside entities who provide money for low income kids.
You mention that your son is “heading to MIT.” So, that means that you’ve already committed to pay.
Best wishes for your son…and your wallet.
Thank you. Yes, he’ll be working to offset costs so he can go to MIT. We have a couple more kids college bound so we honestly can’t afford three in these types of schools so I was just wondering what was out there. Thanks!
Will any of your other kids be attending college while,this one is attending MIT? If so, when you have more than one kiddo in college, your MIT kiddo might get some need based aid from MIT…unless you are VERY high income.
The other two will have to aim for schools that offer merit aid: BU, USC, Northeastern etc.
if your son was accepted to MIT already…was this an early action acceptance? I don’t believe their regular decision acceptances have been sent yet.
Does your son alsohave other acceptances or pending applications?
MIT cost of attendance is well in excess of $60,000 a year. Can you pay this…or not?
<<<
we honestly can’t afford three in these types of schools so I was just wondering what was out there.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
I apologize for the bluntness, but this seems odd to me. Are you going to tell the younger two that you’re spending $250,000 on their older brother, so they will have to select cheaper options???
Why would you let your older child go to a school that will cost $250k+, when you can’t do that for your younger two?
Why not figure out how much you can spend TOTAL, and divide that by three kids?
[QUOTE=""]
MIT cost of attendance is well in excess of $60,000 a year. Can you pay this...or not?
[/QUOTE]
I think that the better question to a parent of three kids is:
Can you pay $250k for each of your 3 kids? If the answer is, “no,” then how can you do it for the first?
I pay a different amount for different kids. You try to give each child what that child needs.
In January, the OP wrote :
And…
Maybe the kid will get accepted to Stanford or Yale or Harvard which have generous need based aid for higher income families.
We’ll see how it unfolds. I was just curious. Thanks
@twoinanddone, spending your whole wad on kid #1 so the next two get stiffed isn’t the same as “giving each kid what they need”. My dad spent most of what he planned overall for college for kid #1, and the other 2 of us had to attend our state flagship because of it. Still smarts 35 years later. The OP should have been looking at the finances before ever allowing applications to be submitted. Money isn’t going to fall from the sky for kids #2 and 3.
Found this interesting page at the MIT website about affordability: http://affordable.mit.edu/
Parents should be thankful, apparently, that they are only looking at paying $60K a year, when the actual cost to educate their kids is, according to MIT, twice that. So, for those who do not qualify for any need-based aid, be thankful that $60K a year already reflects a 50% discount. I just had to laugh at that.
Anyway, M2CK has asked the crucial question: can you afford MIT?
It’s sad that MIT is so expensive, has always been so expensive, and that all of the taxpayer-funded research money they get along with all of the income produced by the patents they obtain as a result of that government-funded research has not been utilized to keep costs as low as possible.
Really the only options for upper middle class or more affluent students who are not rich enough to write a check are to (1) take out a ton of debt and allocate a good deal of income to pay, even at the expense of others in a family, or (2) get rid of that high-paying job and other assets so your kids can qualify for need-based aid. Get that income under $75K, and MIT is free (well, nothing is really free - the taxpayers and full-pay students are subsidizing those needy students.) Similar kinds of programs are available at Stanford. Be poor (or just poorer) and brilliant and the world of the elite university is open to you.
I realize that MIT opens doors not available everywhere, but when I look at that webpage above, and see where they tout the average starting salary for MIT grads in 2014 as being $75K a year, I just think about those in my extended family who attended public state universities to pursue engineering degrees, at a far lower cost (four years on campus for less than one year at MIT), and graduated with job offers paying a lot more than $75K a year.
I know others disagree, but if one child really needs the ‘wad’ as you say, I’m okay with that and I was the third child (and a girl at that) and my parents spent (borrowed) all they could for #1. I’m fine with that, was fine with my sister getting the education she needed. I didn’t need or want that. She’s only 3 years older than me, with a brother in between, and we already knew that she was different and wanted different things education wise than we did. My 3 younger brothers and what they would want was not considered. By the time they started college 6, 8 and 11 years later, circumstances were very different and it wouldn’t have mattered if sister gone to a state school or Harvard. Jobs lost, money earned, money borrow and spent.
Should parents make child #1 go to the cheapest school and then let #3 or #5 go anywhere because it turned out there was more money left (or more likely the family just made more in the later years)? Should all children have to go instate because the first chose that? It might be pretty apparent in the OP’s family that #1 child is going to MIT or Harvard, but that the remaining children are just not MIT material. Or the opposite, that the remaining children are so outstanding they are sure to get the top merit awards at schools that award merit (I fear the OP will be disappointed to learn there isn’t all that much merit available at BU and BC). It also may be that they’ve learned from this college search that there are other schools that do give much better merit awards and steer their other kids in that direction.
On another thread, the parent asked if is were still okay to say no to Princeton since they now know there will be no FA and the CC chorus sang out “No, you promised! you must not change now.” (not me, of course, I think parents can always change their minds and do the fiscally responsible thing). It’s March. We’re pretty far into the college selection game now. Maybe this parent is following the CC directive to follow through on what is promised. This child was promised MIT.
There are a helluva lot of attractive options between fullpay and cheapest school.
Just to clarify, the reference made to the Princeton scenario - “since they now know there will be no FA” – the OP in that thread did not even apply for FA and, in fact, in previous posts stated more than once that money was not a factor in the decision about where their child would be applying.
Agree that the Princeton thread is applicable to this OP’s situation - in both, kids applied early and the money conversation did not come up until weeks before the May 1st deadline for committing.
Tuition and fee information have been easily accessible to all parties for as long as both universities have had websites. Experience tells me that most colleges even put it in the brochures that they give out in the admission offices and when reps visit high schools and college fairs.
The cost shouldn’t be “new news” to anyone who has done the minimal amount of parental and financial due diligence - especially when their didn’t even apply for institutional FA.
Re: The Princeton thread
The parents also told the student throughout high school that if he worked hard, they’d pay. They told him money wasn’t an issue and helped him make a list of primarily high cost schools and a couple of in state safeties, allowed him to apply early to Princeton even though they didn’t want to pay for it because they thought he’d be rejected, let him buy their college shirt when he was accepted, and now (3 months later) finally told him they’re on the fence about paying. It’s a very sad situation.
I don’t think it’s wise for any family to blow their entire budget/borrowing capacity on kid #1. Just because one kid is “MIT material” and the others aren’t, it doesn’t mean that they deserve a larger slice of the family resources. If their stats are high enough for MIT, they can merit aid at another great school to supplement whatever the parents can pay. The siblings with lower stats will have to find colleges they can afford with their share of the college budget. I think dividing the family resources so unevenly is likely to drive a wedge between the children and lead to years of resentment.
<<<
spending your whole wad on kid #1 so the next two get stiffed isn’t the same as “giving each kid what they need”
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. @intparent hits the nail right on the head.
Our second child’s undergrad cost us more because his merit awards weren’t quite as generous as our first child’s…BUT, they both got the SAME experience. In their case, they went to the same undergrad, but even if they hadn’t, it was important that they BOTH had a similar experience.
As a matter of fact, when we were looking for schools for our first son, it was always in the back of my mind that I wanted BOTH kids to have a similar college experience, even if the cost was a bit different for each.
Our second child’s education AFTER undergrad is costing us a LOT more than our older child’s. However, if older child had gone to a grad school that wasn’t funded, we would have paid for that as well.
We never would put ourselves in situation where we knew AHEAD OF TIME, that choosing to spend an excessive amount on one child meant that the other child(ren) would have fewer options.
No one would get “stiffed” because we were spending more on one than the other. No way would I agree to spending X on one child if another child might ALSO have that need/desire and I couldnt do that. Obviously, a medical emergency would be different.
I’m talking about simple choices of college or similar…not anything health-related.