Too Rich for Aid, To Poor to Afford

Just quick background: First person to go to college in my family (and I did it alone, my parents had no real clue so it was all on me). I went the route of Community College for 2 years, then to a 4 year college to end up with a double major. Now I have my first child who is a senior this year, about to apply (so this is also a learning curve).

My child is in my opinion a solid student, but I understand not an amazing student. Strong school system, 3.6 GPA (would be higher, but she takes all honors and AP classes to challenge herself, so the net result is a mix of As and Bs, not straight As. She scored 1300 on the SAT, and while not Ivy, it’s a decent number. Her ECs are probably average. Clubs, selected to Agriscience program and takes UCONN ECE courses. A job. Some volunteering.

Knowing she isn’t getting into the elite schools, she has targeted schools where her GPA (again, challenging course and a better high school) is within the low end of the range, and her SATs tend to be in the high end. For whatever reason, the norm seems to be for schools with a 1100-1300 SAT score, the GPA is between 3.5 and 4.0, where as she is a 3.6 and a 1300. Which feels like it’s good enough to be accepted to plenty of places, but not good enough to get merit aid, or win scholarships, etc.

But we live in the Northeast, and she does not want to be too far from home (driving distance), and the schools around here are expensive. We bring in over 200k for income, but have nothing in college savings (was never a possibility where we live, it appears we’re going to be badly dinged for living in a very high cost of living area. Our salary goes a long way in this country, just not around here). We’re seen as rich, but I drive a beat up Honda with 200K miles. We’ve maxed our 401k, but that’s all we could afford.

We are applying to UCONN (our state school), along with every other kid in the entire state. It’s not easy to get in these days. It’s not her top choice in terms of were she wants to go, but the price is 15K for tuition, vs 35-40K going anywhere out of state that is equivalent. If she does not get into UCONN, that is where it gets tricky for us. We can send her to subpar schools and hope for some merit. Or we can send her to a school she deserves to be in, but I can’t see how we can afford it. We can afford some, but I can’t imagine trying to come up with 30K per year. Maybe 15-20 tops if we make a lot of life sacrifices. Examples are UVM ($55K for out of state), UDenver ($60K), and so forth.

It saddens me a bit as a parent if we have to tell her that “no, you cannot go to the schools you have earned your way into, because we cannot afford them”. It is what it is, I guess.

She also tends to like the larger schools, for a few reasons. (A) more options in terms of majors, (B) more options in terms of social groups, clubs, © often better facilities and (D) she is dead set on studying abroad in Asia at some point, and there are more schools with strong programs there that are larger.

I’m open to any and all suggestions. And as luck would have it, in addition to this 2019 college entry, I also have another ready to off to college in 2021, and another in 2024.

Welcome to the club. :slight_smile: We couldn’t pay for the places I might have liked to be able to send our kid to. It is tough to get through that. Happykid’s list was our local community college or any place she could get to be as cheap as the community college. She looked around a bit, then applied to the community college and was one-and-done. She transferred to one of our state Us after her AA, finished there in two years, and launched successfully.

This is a common pathway where I live (suburban Washington, DC). Many kids like yours start at our community colleges then transfer to one of their home-state public Us. So have that formal money talk with your daughter. Get real with yourself and with her about your financial limits. Discuss her responsibilities for helping out by taking on part-time and summer jobs, and maybe some federal student loans. Once you are on the same page about the money, a lot of the places on her current list will just vanish.

Some of the state Us in Maine charge only what a student would pay the home-state public U. Check them out too.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ can search by tuition and fees, and can take into account your state of residence so that you are searching the out-of-state rates.

Yeah, I’ve mentioned UMaine a few times, since they match Uconn prices. Each time I mention it, my daughter pretends she can’t hear me and changes the subject :slight_smile:

I’ll be honest. I went the CC route, and I found it to be terribly depressing. I powered through it anyway. I transferred to a 4 year college after that, but found that as a junior transfer, I had missed out on most of the “college experience”, which was also depressing. In the end, to put it mildly, I was disappointed by that stuff but overall didn’t give a @^#% enough to let it stop me. Not sure my kid would see things as mercenary-minded as I do.

Does it make sense to bother looking at medoicre/subpar private schools in the hopes to get merit? Or just throw in the towel and go the route of subpar CT state school / community college purely for the money?

Have you told her the price limit?

Also, is college choice the first time that she will face significant cost constraints on her choices?

UConn in-state is about $30k per year for in-state residents, not including books, according to https://admissions.uconn.edu/cost-aid/tuition# , although it may be less expensive if you are close enough for her to live at home and commute.

Connecticut community colleges are about $4-5k tuition per year, but then you have to add books and costs of living at home and commuting.

How are you calculating UConn to be $15K? Instate tuition is $30K. Or would your daughter commute? I think she’d probably get into UConn, and it’s a great school. But I understand because my daughter wasn’t interested in any CT schools. FWIW, several of the tippy top students at her high school are attending UConn.

Thanks ucbalumnus. When I say we can’t afford 30, that doesn’t include loans. I graduated with 40K in loans in 1998, and while at first that was tough to pay back, it wasn’t bad at all after a few years. I was a comp sci major and started out of school at 45k. I would expect some of her college to include loans that she would have to pay back.

She’s never really faced cost constraints, but then again, has never really asked for much. She has chosen not to have a drivers license or car, as an example, to avoid even worrying about those costs. She’s been focusing entirely on “what schools can I get into?” and “what schools do I like and have the major I like?” to this point, we haven’t had deep discussions about the limits on costs, because quite honestly, I don’t know for sure how much we can bend, and I don’t know how much college will truly cost. My guess is that it will be more expensive than it’s supposed to be up front, with surprise costs and all. I’m sure by my 2nd or 3rd, I will understand how this game works. Right now I am just guessing, and it’s absurdly complex.

Stop thinking of other schools as ‘subpar’ and she might have more options. A lot of really nice schools offer merit aid for students with her stats. I have two kids who got merit for similar stats and they were happy at their (not)subpar schools. Happy.

U Del might be an option. Some schools in Ohio are big and yet offer merit. If she doesn’t want to leave the northeast, she is limiting her options and she might have to look at smaller schools, but if she’s willing to look at some of the flagships in the south or midwest, she’ll have more options.

While competitive scholarships can be unpredictable, you should be able to figure out from your own household finances and budget what you can actually afford. If you have not evaluated your household finances and budget, you need to do so now, so that you can set a price limit based on what you can afford for her and the next two kids. This should be done before she makes her application list, because you do not want to end up with the April let down (where everything she gets into is too expensive). Also, if a college is such that a competitive merit scholarship is needed to be affordable, the college should be listed as a reach, even though it may be a match or safety for just admission.

Also, the first year federal direct loan limit without a cosigner is $5,500. College students commonly work during summers or part time in the school year for a few thousand dollars more, though that is contingent on finding jobs.

Have you run the Net Price Calculators that can be found on the website of any school that your daughter is interested in? That can take at least some of the guess out of the process.

@HankCT Your post sounded rather familiar, although we only have 160k miles on the Toyota. Reading through it, I kept thinking “U.Conn”.

In the long run, maxing out on your 401k is going to be big in a good way. If possible I would not cut back on it.

You can run the NPC on some schools in nearby states and see what it says. I would try the SUNY’s, but I am not sure that it will come up with affordable prices. U.Mass Amherst and U.Mass Lowell are others to try. Lowell of course would be a safety. Again, I am not confident that you will like the NPC results.

The schools that I can think of that might have some chance of being no more than U.Conn would be U.Maine, or some of the less well known (but still very good) universities in Canada. Since you want big, Concordia in Montreal or Dalhousie in Halifax might be affordable. Either would be not much different from U.Conn from an academic point of view, but in a different environment and possibly with some different programs.

And you should give her a budget soon so she’s aware of financial reality.

Some schools with merit $ have November or December deadlines for RD.

Canyou afford the $ the NPC is calculating? That is if the NPC is accurate for you (not divorced, not self employed, etc.).

Not sure about big schools in NE with merit. UMass gives some money to out of state students but it’s probably higher than UConn in-state. Maybe someplace like Wheaton?

Agree with twoinanddone, stop thinking anything not top ranked as subpar. Once we started visiting merit rich schools we realized that most of those schools are really quite good. With similar stats, my dd had about 5 or so schools (in the NE) that with merit matched UConn’s tuition. They were all in the top +/-100. That’s really not subpar when you think about how many schools there are in this country.

It’s really her decision. Yep, hers not yours. She gets to decide if she wants to go for the better school higher debt ratio or vice versa. I would counsel her based on her personality. Does she have a plan? Is it a serious degree with good opportunities or something she’ll make 20K in for a while. Look up actual salaries don’t guess. Likewise, apply to a large number of schools. Consider downsizing your home or moving further away from whatever expensive NE city you live near. That could free up lots of dough. I’d never tap the 401K, ever. Also, what are her long terms plans? If she plans to get a graduate degree, I’d go where it’s cheap. If she doesn’t know then other decisions are in order.
You won’t know what the plan is, until you get all the packages. It’s a crazy system. That’s why it makes people so stressed. But once you know it should be more clear.
Also, kids can earn a LOT in the Summer if they work 3 jobs. I did this until I was about 25. Had zero college debt. And plenty of spending money.

“It’s really her decision.”

The problem is that most kids have no sense what a loan will do to them down the road. An 18 year old has no experience paying for anything that costs $150,000 or more over four years.

My oldest would have been happy taking on loans for university. I would not let her and “put my foot down” rather hard. She recently graduated with no debt at all. Now that she is trying to earn her own way in the world she is very glad that she has no debt.

I think that parents need to set a budget. Then yes, the child has to have a choice where they go. They are after all the ones that are going to do the homework and take the exams.

“It’s a crazy system. That’s why it makes people so stressed.”

I agree entirely. Senior year is a stressful time for kids and their parents.

My kids are both in high paying (100k+) jobs shortly after graduation. They are both living in high COL areas where rent in a decent area (even with a roommate) is at the “barely supportable” range. Fortunately they don’t have debt, so they actually can start to contribute to 401ks and you know, have some fun every once in awhile. Kiddo needs to understand what loans will do to that dream of “independent adulthood.”

Students can take out a loan for $5500. Full stop. Parents can contribute what works for their budget and savings. The student can make the decision within those constraints.

Our financial advisor recommends we spend 1/5 of what our EFC is. I think he knows a bit more about healthy saving than the fafsa calculator. So don’t feel guilty. But also don’t be calling perfectly fine institutions sub par. It can be a big advantage to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. If your daughter is very anxious and excited, have HER do the leg work and the math and find some options where she may get good merit.

In many high cost-of-living areas, $100k+ income is more than the median household income:

$90,303 San Jose, CA
$87,701 San Francisco, CA
$58,516 Boston, MA
$55,191 New York, NY

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewyork,bostoncitymassachusetts,sanjosecitycalifornia,sanfranciscocountycalifornia/PST045217

If you are looking for other big school options, I think she has the stats for South Carolina in state tuition. That would get her costs in the $25k range. The federal student loan + summer work gets the parent contribution into your 15-20k range.

This is all great feedback and I am glad I chose to post on this site. Thanks all, very much.

  1. I'll stop referring to schools as sub-par. What I really was referring to was schools that my daughter's academic performance places her above (or well above) average in.
  2. I keep hearing people referring to Merit-friendly schools, but I still don't know which ones they are, to be honest. I know that UMaine offers a Uconn price match.
  3. One of my challenges is that she wants to go to a school that (A) has a solid AsianStudies minor, and (B) has a travel abroad program that has a strong relationship with Japanese colleges. In addition she wants to major in Env. Science or Agriscience. So those two things in conjunction really narrow down the options.
  4. What is the story with the $5,500? Have things changed since I was a kid? I went to a school in the 90s where tuition was around 12-14k per year, and all in it was about 18-20 per year. I graduated with 40k in loans. Which would be about 80k in todays dollars. If a kid can only borrow $5,500 out of 50K per year, how does that work?

If your kiddo attends one of the public funded colleges in CT, her costs will be in the $20Ks. Including everything. But you view those as less than worthy…which is your choice, of course.

No one…repeat no one is required to attend a college that costs $50,000 a year or more. No one. There are publicly funded colleges in every state for that state residents that cost less than $50,000. Thousands upon thousands of kid graduate from these schools every year, and get jobs.

Most colleges have study abroad programs, and many allow students to also participate in APPROVED study abroad programs offered by other colleges.

I would suggest you check the SUNY campuses. There are a LOT of them. Their prices for OOS students are more reasonable than at many other colleges. Maybe one of their campuses has what she wants.