<p>Yeah, a few problems with your hypothetical.</p>
<p>What lobsterman with a $55,000 income is buying a new car every 4 years? That’s crazy.</p>
<p>You really expect your parents to buy all their clothes at the Salvation Army so you can attend Hopkins?</p>
<p>Most families with a limited income and kids in college are already taking the measures you suggest, but to extend them for 20 years is unreasonable.</p>
<p>There’s no such thing as being admitted as a pre-med student, but if there were it would be crazy to take on a big undergrad loan and leave nothing to pay for med school.</p>
<p>A kid who would get into JHU would have more options than just Machias. For instance, the honors program at UMaine Orono.</p>
<p>OP, while you are coming up with examples that work for you, I have been through the financial aid and loan scenario, (now paid off, yay.) You minimized the impact of an 80k loan to an 80k income family by telling us it would only cost $300/month, per some friend who had an old low interest rate and 30 year term. If it was clouded, it was from the beginning.</p>
<p>I’d suggest the kid go to Machias. What planet do you live on? You CAN’T be a parent, with the assumptions you make. Plus a lobsterman is probably self-employed, cannot predict income from year to year (you follow lobstering?) The suggestions you make are offensive. Trollish. Na</p>
<p>collegehelp, you’re what, in your mid-twenties? Married? In a relationship?</p>
<p>For pity’s sake, go off and have some kids. Raise your family. Then come back here in 20 years and tell us how it went using your theories about how parents should sacrifice for their children.</p>
<p>In the meantime, as the old saying goes, stop trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.</p>
<p>Your example is silly. A family with a yearly income of 55,000 and without significant savings is not going to have to pay 16000 at Hopkins. I just used a net price estimator, which put parent contribution at 4500, and student at 2000, assuming that he doesn’t have any siblings. So, if this student applied to a number of schools, I find it highly unlikely that he couldn’t find a better deal at a very good place.</p>
<p>It is possible that if this student is that much of a hot-shot, he could get UM-Orono’s Presidential Scholarship, which would leave him with a much more reasonable COA of 8000 per year. </p>
<p>If somehow neither of these options work out and his SATs are high enough, he can go to University of Alabama Huntsville or Louisiana Tech - still “mediocre,” but considerable better, score-wise, than UM-Malchias - for free. Both have honors programs. </p>
<p>Again, you’re creating a situation that doesn’t, or very rarely, exists. Most parents of any means don’t insist that their kids go to the cheapest school possible without regard to any other factors. If the parents’ income is low enough that they genuinely can’t afford to send their very bright kids to a reasonably appropriate college without drastically altering their (ordinary, non-luxurious lifestyle), a combination of aid, merit money and (gasp! horror!) perhaps some kind of financial contribution on the student’s part should make it possible for to find an academic option that works for him.</p>
<p>apprenticeprof-I got my $16K figure from the US Dept of Education as the average net price at JHU for families with incomes between $48K and $75K. Not sure why there is a discrepancy…maybe $16K is what a family would pay toward the upper end of this range. If so, then all the more reason for the kid to go to Hopkins.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus-So, you would send this kid to Machias to get a higher gpa and save money for med school. OK, that might be part of a family’s thought process. Do you think that perhaps a 3.3 at Hopkins might carry more weight with an admissions committee than a 3.6 at Machias? Perhaps a JHU education might yield a higher MCAT score? Change the scenario a little, as I suggested. Say the student was going into engineering instead of medicine and might be fully funded as a grad student. Or, that U Maine would not give a free ride. Or, that the student had to choose between U Maine and Colby with a net price of $12K instead of $16K.</p>
<p>The questions I am trying to answer are “where is your price point for taking out a loan?” and “how much would you tighten your finances?” Give me some scenarios where you might take out a $50K loan or a $40K or $30K. It sounds like almost all of the posters in this thread would not take out a loan if it meant sending your child to a top 30 school instead of a mediocre public. If so, I would be really surprised.</p>
<p>I would be willing to bet the farm that your lobster fisherman is already doing those things just to make it from week to week, much less to pay back a large loan. But don’t forget, fisherman also has two other kids, and what you do for one, you should be willing to do for the others. So now where does that put him? </p>
<p>If I’m that fisherman, NO, I’m not taking out the loans, even if I could qualify, which is highly unlikely.</p>
<p>Lobsterman’s family likely has been treated by very good doctors for years who did not attend JHU for undergrad or med school. Convincing the average person of the supposed value of prestige–especially when it involves financial hardship–is a tough sell.</p>
<p>The real life situation is that the parents who tighten their finances to help pay their kids’ college costs probably did so years ago and have enough money to pay without needing parent loans.</p>
<p>Those who do not have the money to pay are unlikely to be able or willing to make all of the household cost cuts needed to afford the parent loans, since they have probably ratcheted up their baseline ongoing costs in dozens of categories, rather than a small number of large extravagent luxuries that are relatively easy targets to cut.</p>
<p>“Reasonable risks” is a completely subjective term. Two sets of parents, who love their children equally, will possibly view that term entirely different. They will spend their money as they believe they should and will not consider that they did not make sacrifices, even though the financials of the two families may be totally different.</p>
<p>Let’s go back to basics, because OP is spinning his head: There is no formula. There is no one way to do things, no one place that tells you exactly how life will work out. No one-two punch that says, do this, all will be perfect-- send him to the better name school, your kid’s life is set and so is yours. For someone on CC since 2005, this message should have been clear.</p>
<p>All the time I have been on CC, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone go to Dept of Ed info to project costs for a particular family. Use the NPC- except that this family is probably self-employed. And, no matter what NPC tells, each family has to make it’s own decision. </p>
<p>The averages are useless. And there OP sits, roaming the web. The data is legit. The application is not. </p>
<p>If you love your kids, take all this seriously. Be smart, for them. And mind your hs math. If you love your family, none of these decisions can rest on some preconceived notions about love, nor how narrowly love can be defined to benefit one at the expense of the others. - And all based on some data someone found somewhere.</p>
And my point is that people who have spent their money on large-ticket items and haven’t saved for their kids’ education are unlikely to be able to afford an $80K loan, or be willing to take it. People who are willing to save for their kids’ education usually do so well before college acceptances come in. Those who don’t, won’t take the loan, and those who would usually don’t need to take one quite so large.</p>
<p>(By the way, I’m one of those who sacrificed to save for my kid’s education throughout her childhood years. We didn’t need to take out large loans. I do believe in sacrifice, but I also believe in looking forward.)</p>
<p>
Apparently, then, kluge, you’ve never had to take financial responsibility for a destitute parent. We have. And that took the “oxygen” that we needed for our child. </p>
<p>My view of saving oxygen is arranging things so that my child will not need to take care of me financially. I’m doing it to “take care of me” so she won’t have to. I don’t think that’s so far-fetched.</p>
<p>
Agree 100%. What we are quibbling about here are definitions: What is a “reasonable” risk, and for what? What is value for the kids’ benefit and our money? And what are “reasonable” sacrifices?</p>
<p>We saved for years when it wasn’t always easy to do and we had to give up some immediate pleasures to do so. Living below our means became a habit, and today we have college savings, a paid-off house, retirement savings, no debt, etc. Since we can now pay for college from annual earnings even without the savings, was it unnecessary to have been frugal? I personally think not, since perhaps it is not a coincidence.</p>
<p>Ucb also suggested some have “ratcheted up their baseline ongoing costs in dozens of categories.” Another mentions, “spent their money on large ticket items.” </p>
<p>We don’t know that and it’s tricky to assume everyone can do what we did, because, after all, we could. Or that there’s got to be some faulty decision-making going on. Think about what you did cut and realize it’s not necessarily even on the other guy’s budget, to begin with. Think about what it means to some families to live low, when it’s already their only option, not some neat thing you and I do out of choice. </p>
<p>It works to point out some waste their money- it just doesn’t apply, across the board.</p>
<p>Nobody can think of a scenario where they would take a loan…I think this is atypical.</p>
<p>You would send your child to U Maine Machias rather than JHU? This is weird. U Maine Machias had 442 apps in 2012 while JHU had 21,313 apps. I think this suggests a strong preference for JHU among the general public. </p>
<p>Many parents DO take out loans. There was an article that indicated 20 billion in PLUS loans was expected in 2014 and the expected lifetime default rate was 9.2%.</p>
Let me quickly say that upon re-reading my post, it appears that I might be dismissive of the difficulties some families operate under. That isn’t the case. I learned from my father, who mopped the apartment building stairs at night after a day’s work to get a rent reduction so that his children could have a better life. My point was that living within and below your means can become a habit, a virtuous habit. I didn’t mean to imply that our lives, even during the years when we postponed gratification, were anything but comfortable and cushy compared to many.</p>
<p>What a strange, odd scenario you posited, college help. The lobster fisherman making $55K is likely ALREADY buying used cars and running them into the ground, going out to dinner only very occasionally, NOT buying the latest greatest electronic gadgets, etc. And he ISNT likely throwing 15% into a 401k in the first place to be able to reduce it to 5%. </p>
<p>I get the sense that you’re completely oblivious to what reality is like for most people who aren’t upper middle class. You’re also out of touch when it comes to the idea that one needs an elite school to achieve a decent lifestyle.</p>