UVA - Actual amount paid for in state?

[Anonymous]

Ron Lieber has a book about this, if you want to learn more about college pricing: https://www.amazon.com/Price-You-Pay-College-Financial/dp/006286730X

Sounds like your coworker may have over-extrapolated from an article or review of Lieber's book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have seen what UVA posts as their tuition and room/board on their website. A co-worker of mine, who is in the same donut hole that I'm in for college, said that colleges just have that as list price but no one pays list price, except for maybe foreign students. It got me thinking and I want to ask, if your son or daughter goes to UVA, and you make over $300k, do you pay list price (what UVA posts on their website) or do you pay a lesser amount?

Curious minds want to know!

$300k HHI is not “donut hole”. You have had nearly two decades to save. College tuition is not a surprise and is not meant to be cash flowed.

OP here. There are a few responses that I would like to address about a misconception that we did not save. We have 529's and they are funded with about $160k, maybe not to the satisfaction of DCUM but I think we are in decent shape. We also weren't making $300k all of our careers, which I know the judgey judgey people will bring up that we should have saved more.

I'm here, admittedly asking a dumb question in many of your minds, but I'm learning and getting myself educated. My co-worker was obviously wrong about list price vs discounted price for UVA but it sounds like there are some privates that play that "JCP and Bed Bath Beyond" game as a previous poster wrote.

For what it's worth, my kid needs to get accepted into a school like UVA which is a task unto itself so I recognize that but I'm trying to get my head around the cost of everything college related to see if we need to keep adding to the 529 or accelerate our retirement savings.

You have saved enough for excellent options for your child. Just don’t say you are a donut hole family. Why do you feel that your child needs to be accepted to UVA? There are plenty of other excellent in state options.

OP here. Just wanted to respond back quickly on your question. I don't particularly need my kid to go to UVA. Truth be told, we just moved here a few years ago (from Maryland) and I wasn't aware of how great a school UVA is. It would be great for them to go to UVA but other state schools would be fine to attend. One day at work, I checked the tuition and brought it up with my "know it all" co-worker (who is obviously ill informed) at lunch. But perhaps he did make the distinction between public and private school and I got it wrong but we were talking about UVA. Most of the conversation was about how high college costs are and my thought generally is, why go out of state (and pay more) when you can go to a great school like UVA in state (and potentially pay less).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for describing my kid’s college as the equivalent of Bed Bath and Beyond or JCPenney. Really appreciate that.

The college snobbery about rankings on this board is just repulsive.

No shame in that game Ma'am! We all play it and if you don't bring a coupon to BBB, you're an idiot or too rich to be shopping there. In the same way, why wouldn't you take the financial aid (discount) from a college? We ALL would. But make no mistake, this isn't college snobbery, and no one on this thread is name shaming your kid's college. The inflated list price vs actual discounted price paid is a game that college admissions department's play and that is repulsive.

[Anonymous]

what is the income cut-off for aid at UVA? Assuming minimal assets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have an HHI a bit under $200k but our house has gone up in value from $600k when we bought it to nearly $1M, so we are donut hole and very much unlikely to get aid in a couple years, and W&M is one that DC is currently quite interested in (in 10th, so things could change). It’s a little scary, honestly.

So you also have $400k in equity you can borrow against!

I saved $5K a year per kid starting when they were born and together we made $125K a year, I took what we got back from our daycare flexible savings account and just put it in college savings. Now I have about $120K per kid, which will cover most of UVA or W&M or any VA college, so about $30K per year. I can cover most of the rest from cash flow, and if I had to take out $25K or so in home equity to pay for senior year--whatever!

I can't imagine complaining about having hundreds of thousands in income and hundreds of thousand in equity and worrying about coming up with $40-50K a year for college. Sheesh.