Crazy time for my family! (:Twins:) DD- BS Game Design and Development was accepted at Drexel University 64K, SUNY Polytech, Becker College 56K, Quinnipiac 48K, waiting to hear from Champlain College (her favorite), WPI and Stevens Institute of Tech. Her twin brother, DS History/Premed was accepted to Goucher College 68K, Drew Univ 64K, Susquehnna Univ. 88K, Assumption College 56K, Siena College 40K, waiting to hear from Juniata College (his favorite). Congratulations to all you hard working parents and your hardworking students!
There is a college that costs 88k per year??!! Or are the amounts listed the aid total for 4 years?
Congrats on the loot! My BIL has twins and when they were applying to colleges, I could not keep the stories straight. One at a time is barely what I could manage.
I’m guessing the amounts posted are the aid the students are receiving for four years…so divide by four for the one year award.
Is that right NEMOM?
Sorry, I’m new to this posting jargon. Yes, that’s for four years, so divide by four. Even then, it’s going to cost us a fortune. Hopefully the EFC will help out, but that depends on the percent that the college will pay.
NE- congrats.
Try to move past the idea of a percent. The folks I know who have run into a financial buzz saw over college tuition are the families who got caught up in “50% tuition” or “25% merit award”.
You don’t pay your visa bill every month with a percent. You pay with actual dollars.
Try to ignore the idea that the greater the percentage the more they want your kid. At the end of the day, You have to take the annual cost of attendance, subtract whatever subsidy you are getting, and then stare at an actual number. (divide it by 12 if that helps).
Where are you getting that pile of dough from? If it equals one fourth of a college savings account then you are home free. Every year you liquidate a portion of the savings to pay the parent portion. If it equals the amount you have “leftover” from your paycheck every month then congrats!
But dial back the conversations in front of your kids about whatever percent this or that. You can’t pay your mortgage with a percent. And if the people I know in real life are representative… many of them regret falling for the “But they’re giving us a 50% scholarship, that’s how much they want her” line when (or if) that leaves an unfundable sum on the table to be paid for out of family resources.
But congrats- your kids are clearly talented!!!
Blossom, thank you for the advice. Not sure what you’re trying to say, but I will try to keep this all in perspective. It’s a little overwhelming for me and my husband, as neither of us graduated college. New waters for us and trying to do our best to navigate this college stuff.
Congrats on your twins great accomplishment!! The finances can be swung though. A set of triplets in my D’s graduating class are now attending UPENN. Yes, they are there together. I see your twins decided to split up. That’s great? But I agree with @blossom, look at the tuition amount you have to pay as a real number. I take what I have to pay and divide it by the 10 payments I have to make. The fact that it is twice my mortgage payment is shocking, but then we went about finding the “discretionary” income to pay it. Luckily none of us are taking loans, but I am bringing breakfast and lunch to work both days. Thank goodness gas prices went down. Every little bit helps.
I tell parents paying for your child’s education is a individual choice. Some, like me, are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, others aren’t quite so willing. Both are valid stances. Good luck to you and your twins. It will work out.
Congratulations to your twins on their acceptances, and merit awards.
I think what Blossom is saying (not wishing to speak for her…)…is that you need to look at your net actual costs per year for your twins…not the %age of aid they are getting. You will have a better picture of this once you get your need based financial aid packages. The question is…can you pay the costs you will be asked to pay?
Have you run the net price calculators for these schools…for both kiddos?
It sounds like you are still waiting for your need based financial aid packages. Those are all great schools, but I don’t believe any guarantee to meet full need for all accepted students. This means there could be a gap between the cost of attedance minus the EFC…and the aid offered to you.
A couple of things to consider.
- Schools will not give you funding to pay your family contribution. They expect that to come from you.
- In some cases, your kiddos' merit awards will actually reduce your financial need, and therefore will reduce your need based aid. This is college specific, and some schools do allow stacking of merit and need based awards. You would need to check these policies for each school.
- Unless the FAFSA EFC is less than $5000 for each kiddo, they will not be eligible for federally funded Grant money (Pell Grant). Both will be able to take a $5500 Direct Loan in their names for freshman year.
This calculator might help: http://www.finaid.org/calculators/awardletteradvanced.phtml
Thumper- thanks for clarifying.
OP- sorry to have been confusing. Just want you to go into the final inning with your eyes wide open. There is no “financial aid fairy” who can take the family contribution (as defined by each college, NOT defined by your bank statement) and make it go away. So even with some generous aid packages, there will likely be a chunk which you guys will need to fund.
So focus on how big that chunk can be before you are cutting too close the bone. Even a generous sounding package is out of reach if the family contribution is going to be more than you can swing. And not just for three months or five months- FOUR YEARS.
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Sorry, I’m new to this posting jargon. Yes, that’s for four years, so divide by four. Even then, it’s going to cost us a fortune. Hopefully the EFC will help out, but that depends on the percent that the college will pay.
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Not sure what you’re saying here.
Have you run the schools’ net price calculators? What were the results.
Do these schools “meet need” ??? If not, then it won’t matter much what your EFC is.
Some schools that give merit awards, do so because that’s the only “free money” they have to give…so they try to target that money towards certain students.
If the NPCs do not show the merit, you can’t just add the merit onto the award. You can’t use merit to reduce family contribution. The school is going to reduce its aid.
How are you going to pay this “cost us a fortune”?
Do you know what your EFC is? Do these schools use CSS Profile?
for a history/premed major, there is NO NEED to spend a fortune…NOT AT ALL. Med school is VERY expensive, so you don’t want to spend too much for undergrad. If attending a state school or another school would be cheaper, then do that. Med schools do NOT care where you go to undergrad so to spend a lot of extra money on undergrad would be a waste of money.
I have a son in med school…we paid less than $20k TOTAL over 4 years for his undergrad.
Also, watch out for the minimum grades necessary to keep the scholarships. Some schools have no minimum grade requirement, others can have a 3.2 or higher.
That may be true, but a percent-based merit award might track tuition increases, whereas a fixed dollar amount wouldn’t.
In other words, assume tuition = $40K, and the student is awarded a 4 year renewable scholarship worth $20K.
Assume that over the 4 years, tuition goes up by $1500 a year - so over the course of 4 years, that ends up costing hte family an additional +$9000 above and beyond their anticipated 50%, $20,000 share from the first year.
If the merit scholarship is described as $20K per year – then the family pays that extra $9000.
But if the merit scholarship is listed as half-tuition or 50% – then the family only pays half of the increases, as with that hypothetical, the merit money is increased by $750 each year to cover the other half.
I said “might” because it is not always that way – my D. has a half-tuition award at NYU that has a fixed dollar amount attached --she can get 50% applied to her tuition each semester, but there is an overall dollar cap so it’s likely she’ll run through the maximum and have to pick up a larger share of her fees in her final semester. So it definitely is important that the exact terms of the awards are clearly understood.
A good way to do things is to calculate
(tuition, fees, room&board) - (scholarships, grants) =
for each university.
If you post it on this thread, the CC community is used to doing cost analysis (discussing value, ROI…) and I’m sure a few people will gladly do that for you.