<p>midsouthmom, it sounds like you have a wonderful son, but please please please don’t read anything into getting unsolicited emails from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. These schools and many others routinely send out unsolicited emails and snail mailings to many college seniors. If he is truly interested in these schools, he should of course apply, keeping in mind the very low acceptance rates. Your son is a great kid, but there are lots of equally great kids also applying. I’m sure he’ll end up at a school where he’ll be happy and challenged.</p>
<p>He sounds grounded and realistic about the finances of college, which will serve him and you well. And, just in the event that he DOES garner an ivy acceptance, read through this thread carefully. If you can figure out before applying that a school is going to be unaffordable, then there’s no point in applying. The OP had done her homework, has a hard-working kid who’s long known that finances are part of the equation, and the family still got blindsided.</p>
<p>That was me & I was responding in #59 to post #58 commenting on a negative equity amount and how while PROFILE asks for home & car information ( the first year anyway in my experience), they don’t necessarily care about your debt- but about your assets that you could potentially down size- the quote about the house- was not directly to the OP , at all, but in comparison to debt that could have been incurred for medical expenses to which they may be more sympathetic.</p>
<p>Often these threads are not precisely limited to OPs circumstance, but are a place to share hard won data in an effort to help other parents/students.</p>
<p>Since EK is clarifying her post #59, I’ll clarify my post #58 :)</p>
<p>My comment about the house not being an asset but a liability was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, although of course probably wasn’t read that way. I realize that consumer debt is not reported on financial aid forms. If we take midsouthmom’s specific example of Yale above:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>and replace the net equity of $175,000 with a net equity of -$100,000 (assume the house can sell for $300K, mortgage on the house is $400K, net equity is -$100K) then that become a very different calculation of EFC. Note that this is relevant for Profile schools/Ivies only, as FAFSA does not request a home equity value.</p>
<p>Also if I recall Profile correctly, there are 3 fields:</p>
<ul>
<li>home value</li>
<li>mortgage amount</li>
<li>year home was purchased</li>
</ul>
<p>The home value itself would never be negative, but the mortgage could be greater than the value. The year the home was purchased is used by those colleges (if there are still any out there) that use the Federal Housing Index to come up with a value for the house.</p>
<p>Slithey, believe me, I’m not reading alot into unsolicited emails, etc. as he’s gotten them from schools at both ends of the spectrums. However, I’ve been told by admit people @ a few top tier schools that alot of colleges of all kinds will pay for ACT/SAT score lists to prescreen potential top students to start contact with. I agree, also, that so many applicants are extremely well qualified and great kids all around–albeit, some may not be well versed on the collegiate financial aspects of college for them and their parents. I told my son that you can only do your very best and ,to some extent, admittance is a crap shoot at these top 20 schools. I’m sure he will be fine at any school as long as he can wake up on time for his classes (remember, I said he had faults, lol). Believe me, I wish we could just tell him to go wherever without any financial considerations at all involved but I knew that was never possible. I’m not sure that would change his final college choice anyway. </p>
<p>And Fogfog, sorry, about the 2 long posts, I’m not good at making a long story short, ha! Hope the first post had at least a little info. that helped you.</p>
<p>^ sorry but I have to dismiss just about anything a new poster posts…since there is no history to know who you are…</p>
<p>^ ^in our case, the mortgage is now more than the value of the house as the market has tanked…in fact it is worth less than we paid for it 8 yrs ago!</p>
<p>Wondering…
do the schools add back in the health insurance or benefits and Employer pays for employees?
Meaning shouldn’t then everyone have their Employer’s contribution to their pension or retirement as well as other untaxed benefits, vacation, health benefits etc, added back in as untaxed income?
Because that is in essence what the finaid office did…they added in Employer expenses into “income” whereas I wonder if they do that for those who work for someone else.
How would they know how much your employer pays towards your retirement each year, or what your employer pays for the health insurance, kwim?</p>
<p>Please–only if YOUR Finaid reading added your Employer stuff back in–respond…those without direct experience “need not apply”, ha ha</p>
<p>What we’ve learned about work-study:
You don’t have to take it. Basically the school is asking the student to be responsible for their own misc. expenses, and if students wants to work to cover those, school will provide a job.
Sometimes work-study jobs pay much more than minimum wage. At Yale the campus wage is 11$ an hour, for example.
If you bring in outside scholarship money, the work-study is the first part of your aid that goes. This was a disappointment for our daughter who really wanted to work. It was harder to find a job on campus. She got a job off-campus, but it pays less than the campus minimum wage.</p>
<p>fogfog, If you want to ignore the posts, that’s your perogative also. Just because I’ve not had a multitude of posts over 3 or 4 years doesn’t mean I’m totally ignorant on this and other related subjects. Sometimes, a person can learn more by “listening” rather than “talking”, imho.</p>
<p>^^ right and you have ONLY a couple of posts in THIS thread…</p>
<p>joining today</p>
<p>so you have to understand that here on CC it’s not like anyone has any idea who you are,
if you are a kid, parent, or a regular poster using a second profile…</p>
<p>often ■■■■■■ post without any history.</p>
<p>Being behind a computer screen makes anyone anonymous…if you are offended, then you don’t have enough experience here to realize people do look at post history to verifiy a ■■■■■ post</p>
<p>For example, you dont have a history of posting in the Yale threads, so there is no way to know if you even have a student at Yale to know the “inside track” of the schools fin-aid
kwim?
Sorry that bothers you.</p>
<p>I realize that consumer debt is not reported on financial aid forms.</p>
<p>There is a place to put what you paid for the house, and what it is worth- It has been a while, but isn’t there also a place to put what your monthly mortgage is & the current value?</p>
<p>Our PROFILE school expected us to get an equity loan, to tap into the ballooning prices our market was seeing- which we eventually had to do- but it was a better option than if we had bought a home at the top of the market like many did, only to see prices fall with the recession.</p>
<p>Almost like wrecking a fancy car you just bought, but at least you can live in your house.
:)</p>
<p>I would think loans would be the first to go, if you brought in outside scholarship money, but if you didn’t have loans, another student may really need that work study portion.</p>
<p>While the COA for the PROFILE school was waaaay above the EFC for D1, she had Perkins loans as well as work study & since she worked in computer services for three years on campus, she made pretty good money.
Her sister is attending a school where COA, is barely above our EFC, so she wasn’t offered workstudy, although she did get a subsidized Stafford.
Unfortunately all the campus type jobs seem to be for work study students and not only doesn’t she have a car, but the town just cut public transportation.</p>
<p>At my kid’s well-endowed, CSS Profile school with sort of comparable aid policies, I think, it works like this:</p>
<p>My husband’s employer pays his health insurance (mostly), and his income is not adjusted for that by the Profile – the value of it is not added to his income.</p>
<p>I pay for my own insurance (and the kids’), and that amount I am able to include as a “medical expense” on the CSS Profile – thus reducing income.</p>
<p>So the insurance costs are “free” either way.</p>
<p>My left brain is very tired this afternoon… I hope that makes sense. My apologies if it is not addressing the question, fogfog!</p>
<p>fogfog, my bad, I’m not offended, fwiw, I’m not a ■■■■■ or 2nd profiler, lol, and also, my son isn’t in college yet–he just started sending ACT scores out to them last year as a junior (I put as a senior in that 2nd post by error). He’s not at Yale, but he is interested in applying to it as well as others; I haven’t posted before at all because I’ve been trying to learn some things this summer to help him thru the application processes that are different in some cases. As Yale is one of his picks to apply to, I contacted their Financial Aid office for more info. on their methodology for my purposes. After the conversation with them, I’ve decided to forgo even sending Financial Aid materials until after he has the SCEA decision letter back from them in Dec. After all, if he isn’t accepted (and that’s a possibility with almost every applicant), I’ve saved myself that headache (estimates, etc.). If he is accepted, I will submit actual 2010 documents asap in 2010 and get his financial aid options then. He won’t make his final decision on which college probably till April anyway. Sorry about the lack of previous posts; I’ve actually been reading quite a bit on CC since last spring just trying to learn about a few things. I just thought I had a little info. today that might help at least someone out there. After all, everyone at one time or another had a first post.</p>
<p>yes, frankly my kiddo expected to be cleaned out of any birthday money from the last 17 yrs, (I am sorry kiddo didn’t enjoy that $ over the last 17 years…)</p>
<p>Are you opposed to having your child spend down his “birthday money account” now…before you submit your FA apps? Why not have him buy some school related stuff now… before he goes off to college?</p>
<p>I would think that would force them to replace that portion with grants. Wouldn’t it??</p>
<p>Just make sure that Yale doesn’t have a priority filing deadline for SCEA applicants. Some schools have one for the Profile. I understand not wanting to send them anything until you have an acceptance, but if they have a priority deadline, you do NOT want to miss it (or any other deadline for that matter).</p>
<p>I explicitly asked their finaid rep. about not submitting finaid documents until 2010 because our 2010 finances will be substantially different than 2009’s and didn’t want to go thru alot of corrections. He said specifically that it was not REQUIRED of SCEA applicants, just might be helpful if they wanted an estimate of their financial aid pkg. early as well. Since that estimate would be way off for us anyway, he said that would be fine to just wait till 2010 and send actual figures. Seems like their website says “IF they want a financial aid estimate with their decision letter in December”; can’t remember exactly where.</p>
<p>Greta: Thank you very much, hope someday to post something that helps someone as others’ posts have helped my son and I this year.</p>
<p>Obviously, they do not know and therefore cannot add back the Employer-paid portion. But they will have the data starting in tax years 2011+. One of the requirements of ObamaCAre is that employers will have to report the employer-paid portion of medical on W-2s. No, it will not become immediately taxable, and it is just an information item for tracking, until later when the Cadillac tax kicks in, and “high” cost plans do become taxable (to the insurer?).</p>
<p>^ Thank you for participating midsouthmom. Is your student applying scea this round? Good luck to you and your student.</p>
<p>^Bluebayou
Re insurance…as self employed --we pay All of the premiums, etc however, the finaid excludes part of that deduction and adds it back…
…it would be like adding to your income part of what your employer pays for you that right now you aren’t paying nor showing…</p>
<p>The Finaid rep said "no institutional method allows 100% of the allowances/deductions a family has/takes "…</p>
<p>this hits self-employed people harder since some of that is sheltered by an employer for those not self employed</p>
<p>I’m trying to understand the whole insurance deductions thing, but I’m having a hard time without actual or hypothetical numbers I’ll make some up. Suppose you pay the entire insurance premium, say $15K. You deduct it from your income of, say $90K, and claim an AGI of $75K. But the FA dept adds back some part of the insurance cost, like $7500, and places your AGI at $82.5K. Is that what you are saying? Or am I understanding wrong?</p>
<p>Sylvan, people that have their own business can run expenses that salaried people may pay for out of their income. For instance I pay about 80% of my medical insurance, company pays about 20% of the premiums. The 80% I pay is still in my gross income on my W-2. Private colleges will go back and add some value for the insurance (that the business owner is not paying) back into the business owners income to make it equitable with people who are salaried. That is what the OP is frustrated about. So as an illustration, say my income is $80,000 a year salary out of that 80,000 comes my portion of FICA, my Fed Tax, State Taxes, my medical and dental insurance, my 401K contributions, and any other benefits that I pay all or a portion of so perhaps my take home pay is perhaps $55,000, all of which is reflected on the W-2 (except the portion the company pays which apprently is going to change.) A business owner MIGHT run many of those expenses and others through their business and “pay” themselves some sort of income. The private colleges will go through and add back some portion of those expenses to the business owners take home income. That may not be a perfect example but it is what is upsetting the OP because it puts their “income” level higher than they expected. It works similarly with rentals. You might show a tax loss on a rental property (because you can show depreciation, expenses, etc.) but for college finaid it is the “value” of the property and the income…not what you show on your taxes that is factored.</p>
My apologies if it is not addressing the question, fogfog!</p>