The New America: Elite Privates forever out of reach for UMC?
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Anonymous
This is a false argument. No one has anything but sympathy for families who have had extraordinary hardships. I'll point out though that 1) no one has made that claim that I have noticed, and any hardship would have dramatically affected assets, right? Which would make them more qualified for financial aid? Also, 2) elite financial aid offices have experience dealing with those events for students they want, and I haven't heard anything about those appeals either. |
Anonymous
I live in VA. I was recently looking at the "cost of attendance" of UVA (in state) and UMD (out of state). UVA = $33,000 a year UMD = $53,536 a year Assuming 5% a year tuition increases, when my current 7th grader attends, UVA will cost ~$190,000 for four years and UMD ~$300,000 for four years. OK, so that's "better" than the $440,000 that four years of an Ivy would cost, but it is still utterly insane! |
Anonymous
you clearly don't know what poor means. Even CC is out of reach for the truly poor. |
Anonymous
NP. I think your insinuation that people could afford the most expensive colleges if only they didn’t buy that beach house (or luxury cars, or whatever) is where the pushback is. I don’t have a beach house, or a luxury car (love my Honda), my kitchen just screams 1992 (when the house was built), and so on. Still couldn’t have saved the $80K needed to go to Amherst or Yale. |
Anonymous
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Looking at this issue from a historical perspective, I think we would find that it's only been within the last two or three generations (depending on how you count) that private colleges were anything but the province of the wealthy and well connected. Back in the day these schools offered scholarships to young bootstrappers but didn't consider an obligation to be accessible to the general public. I would warrant that this is how things are going to be moving forward.
The 50 years following WWII is proving to be a time of unusually broad-based prosperity rather than the new normal for generations to come. |
Anonymous
Sorry, but I was speaking of my own decision only. I would like a beach house. I could have bought one. I didn't. Me. No insinuation. My choices. I don't know how many times I have to say it. As for you: What did the NPC for Amherst or Yale say when you entered your data? |
Anonymous
$69L |
Anonymous
| $69K** |
Anonymous
If it is Yale: https://admissions.yale.edu/affordability-details Families earning between $75,000 and $200,000 (with typical assets) contribute a percentage of their yearly income towards their child’s Yale education, on a sliding scale that begins at 1% and moves toward 20%. There is no income cutoff for financial aid awards. Some families with over $200,000 in annual income receive need-based aid from Yale. So your income is well above $200k? Or do you have assets that you cannot liquidate? |
Anonymous
Not PP, and I would like a beach house, too - but cannot afford one. The NPC for Yale (where my DC was admitted) for us said $68K. Yale offered $5500 in student loans and work-study. That's it. |
Anonymous
I will politely ask you also: https://admissions.yale.edu/affordability-details Families earning between $75,000 and $200,000 (with typical assets) contribute a percentage of their yearly income towards their child’s Yale education, on a sliding scale that begins at 1% and moves toward 20%. There is no income cutoff for financial aid awards. Some families with over $200,000 in annual income receive need-based aid from Yale. So your income is well above $200k? Or do you have assets that you cannot liquidate? |
Anonymous
No, income is $210K. I’m not liquidating my retirement account or selling my house to pay for something that research shows makes little difference in one’s life trajectory. |
Anonymous
But a lot of the PP's experiences are based on fears of what they think will happen rather than what they have directly experienced. Or they chose to not try for private schools because of these fears. As someone who has gone through the process, the net price calculators for each school are dead on--or slightly less generous than reality-- to what we received as a family whose income is considered in the "donut hole" and who have assets. Private elite schools had more generous financial aid policies, less elite private schools had more generous merit aid policies. There are places to write about extenuating circumstances in your financial aid application (for instance expenditures on parents). So the best advice is to go to the net price calculators and see what they say. In our experience, a portion of the aid for some schools will be direct unsubsidized loans through the govt--but these have maximums ($5,500 freshman year, slightly higher each year after--no more than $27K total for undergrad education) but the rest of the aid is grants at many elite schools. |
Anonymous
I don't know what Yale means by "typical assets." Our house is paid off and our HHI is $240K. We have about a year's worth of living expenses in a savings account per our financial planner's advice (the FP also advised us to have the house paid off by the time DH was 65), and we have retirement savings. I'm 60 and DH will be 65 this year, and has Parkinson's - he will retire in the next year or so. We certainly expect he will need long-term care, which neither FAFSA nor the CSS contemplate. He has other health issues that have made him ineligible for long-term care insurance (and for that matter, for disability insurance other than what he has at work). Dementia and longevity run in both of our families. We can pay about $50K/year per kid for college, and no more. I anticipate that DCUM will tell us to use everything we have outside of retirement accounts, including our home equity, but our FP (and any others who know what they are talking about) would disagree. |
Anonymous
This needs to be pinned at the top of the thread. Thank you. |