When the reality of college cost hits. Cannot do dream school.

[Anonymous]

Being clear is being kind. Tell the kid what you can pay. Let them decide the rest. Maybe taking out loans or working or whatever is the best path for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I don't believe you

This is an odd post.

Under the circumstances OP has described, I don't believe an Ivy would require the parents to pay 75k. I just don't.

I’m actually with this person. All of the Ivies either exclude home equity or cap it at a low multiple of income when considering how much the parents have in assets. Most (all?) also take into account medical expenses not covered by insurance.

I ran the Columbia (who I think uses the highest multiple of income for home equity) NPC calculator quickly with the limited info OP provided and some generous assumptions and it only had a family contribution of $19k, with Columbia picking up $78k. There are some major assets missing from this story.

I ran it again with even more generous (and probably unrealistic) assumptions and it spit out a family contribution of $29k with Columbia covering $68k. Something is missing here.

Did op kid get into ivy or columbia? Why are you mentioning Columbia?

Because, as stated before, Columbia is the harshest Ivy with regard to home equity. So if home equity is truly the problem, Columbia should spit out the least favorable number. Everywhere else would be better for a high home equity case. And yet the expected contribution from Columbia is still quite low.

Hence, there are missing assets from this story.

harshest how? yale doesn't exclude any real estate, even primary.

Yale is more opaque about how they calculate EFC. In any event, I ran the Yale NPC with $1.2 million in home equity and a handful of other assets and it still spit out a family contribution of $31k, with Yale covering $60k. Still something missing.

on what income? I asked Yale about this and it's 1x income. also what did you put in as a "handful" of other assets. like what about the 529s for 3 kids.

See, I believe Columbia is 2x income which I why I used that originally.

Assumptions for Yale were $200k income, $5k in interest/dividend income, $70k in checking/savings, $50k in investments, $50k additional in sibling assets, $5k in income and assets each for the student. $1.2 million in home equity as previously indicated. Seem like fairly generous assumptions.

Did the same for Cornell and it spit out $42k in contribution with the school covering $51k. Getting closer but still not that close.

this doesnt seem generous at all. my kids each 75-90k in 529s. we've been saving for 15 years. and we can't put money in Roths on our salary so we're limited by the 8k in tradition IRAs. we have about 200k in investments.

And are you a teacher with a teacher spouse with three kids making $200k now and less before? No, no you are not. What you have is irrelevant to this discussion and your retirement assets are irrelevant too (the above are non-retirement assets).

No dual teacher, three kid household just now hitting $200k has $75-90k per kid in 529s and an additional $200k of non-retirement assets on top of seven figure home equity. But there are other assets in OP’s scenario not being accounted for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't believe you

This is an odd post.

Under the circumstances OP has described, I don't believe an Ivy would require the parents to pay 75k. I just don't.

Believe it. We make just over $200K and got $26K from Cornell. We did a re-fi on our house that we’ve owned for 20 years with great appreciation. We don’t have other debt. This approach is working for us.

School in question is Cornell.

Cornell is not worth the extra loan, selling home, and/or gap year. Some people like Cornell (esp if you’re from a large public high school) it plenty of people who can afford full pay never apply. There are at least 20 schools as good or better than Cornell. If your local public is UVA, Cornell is definitely not $200k better.

Maybe if it were Harvard or Princeton (maybe Yale, depends on major), I'd agree, but not Cornell or any of the other Ivy League schools. State universities are better than those.

[Anonymous]

By 2039, there could be 15% fewer 18-year-olds.

So less kids entering college, less colleges and more applying to the same colleges.

The demographic cliff is real

And guess what? It's irreversible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By 2039, there could be 15% fewer 18-year-olds.

So less kids entering college, less colleges and more applying to the same colleges.

The demographic cliff is real

And guess what? It's irreversible.

It’s still going to be a long time before there aren’t enough 18 year olds on earth to fill the freshman class at Princeton. And until that time, college admissions will get worse every year, and make people crazier and crazier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't believe you

This is an odd post.

Under the circumstances OP has described, I don't believe an Ivy would require the parents to pay 75k. I just don't.

I’m actually with this person. All of the Ivies either exclude home equity or cap it at a low multiple of income when considering how much the parents have in assets. Most (all?) also take into account medical expenses not covered by insurance.

I ran the Columbia (who I think uses the highest multiple of income for home equity) NPC calculator quickly with the limited info OP provided and some generous assumptions and it only had a family contribution of $19k, with Columbia picking up $78k. There are some major assets missing from this story.

I ran it again with even more generous (and probably unrealistic) assumptions and it spit out a family contribution of $29k with Columbia covering $68k. Something is missing here.

Did op kid get into ivy or columbia? Why are you mentioning Columbia?

Because, as stated before, Columbia is the harshest Ivy with regard to home equity. So if home equity is truly the problem, Columbia should spit out the least favorable number. Everywhere else would be better for a high home equity case. And yet the expected contribution from Columbia is still quite low.

Hence, there are missing assets from this story.

harshest how? yale doesn't exclude any real estate, even primary.

Yale is more opaque about how they calculate EFC. In any event, I ran the Yale NPC with $1.2 million in home equity and a handful of other assets and it still spit out a family contribution of $31k, with Yale covering $60k. Still something missing.

on what income? I asked Yale about this and it's 1x income. also what did you put in as a "handful" of other assets. like what about the 529s for 3 kids.

See, I believe Columbia is 2x income which I why I used that originally.

Assumptions for Yale were $200k income, $5k in interest/dividend income, $70k in checking/savings, $50k in investments, $50k additional in sibling assets, $5k in income and assets each for the student. $1.2 million in home equity as previously indicated. Seem like fairly generous assumptions.

Did the same for Cornell and it spit out $42k in contribution with the school covering $51k. Getting closer but still not that close.

this doesnt seem generous at all. my kids each 75-90k in 529s. we've been saving for 15 years. and we can't put money in Roths on our salary so we're limited by the 8k in tradition IRAs. we have about 200k in investments.

And are you a teacher with a teacher spouse with three kids making $200k now and less before? No, no you are not. What you have is irrelevant to this discussion and your retirement assets are irrelevant too (the above are non-retirement assets).

No dual teacher, three kid household just now hitting $200k has $75-90k per kid in 529s and an additional $200k of non-retirement assets on top of seven figure home equity. But there are other assets in OP’s scenario not being accounted for.

Meh, that’s not necessarily true, especially if grandparents were making 529 contributions. Given that average S&P returns over the last 18 years were over 13%, $250 a month from birth would result in 188k. Lots of dual teacher households are investing more than that.

[Anonymous]

We are full pay, but when we toured schools, every single one of them insisted that they met 100% of financial need, and some specified that it would not be with loans, but with work-study or grants. I didn't do any research, since we were not the target audience, but... now it seems like they were lying all along???

This is one of the things I hate about American college admissions: the system is so opaque and colleges have the upper hand and can bamboozle families so easily without repercussions. I don't think any other country has such a murky, subjective system prone to misuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By 2039, there could be 15% fewer 18-year-olds.

So less kids entering college, less colleges and more applying to the same colleges.

The demographic cliff is real

And guess what? It's irreversible.

Or reversible WITH MIGRATION.

But here we are. Not learning our lessons yet again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My niece got into her dream school, an Ivy. Cannot make the numbers work, two-teacher family making just over 200k, expected to contribute 75k per year (roughly 20k per year in aid), have two other kids (twins three years younger), sizable medical expenses. They simply bought a home at a good time and have a lot of equity, ruining financial aid calculations, and they aren't selling their house to pay for college. My sister is heartbroken and feels like she failed her kid. This is not a good feeling.

These posts come out like clockwork this time every year. How is this a surprise? They presumably knew about their other kids and the med expenses and the home equity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My niece got into her dream school, an Ivy. Cannot make the numbers work, two-teacher family making just over 200k, expected to contribute 75k per year (roughly 20k per year in aid), have two other kids (twins three years younger), sizable medical expenses. They simply bought a home at a good time and have a lot of equity, ruining financial aid calculations, and they aren't selling their house to pay for college. My sister is heartbroken and feels like she failed her kid. This is not a good feeling.

These posts come out like clockwork this time every year. How is this a surprise? They presumably knew about their other kids and the med expenses and the home equity.

A lot of times the surprise is that the net price calculators are very wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My niece got into her dream school, an Ivy. Cannot make the numbers work, two-teacher family making just over 200k, expected to contribute 75k per year (roughly 20k per year in aid), have two other kids (twins three years younger), sizable medical expenses. They simply bought a home at a good time and have a lot of equity, ruining financial aid calculations, and they aren't selling their house to pay for college. My sister is heartbroken and feels like she failed her kid. This is not a good feeling.

These posts come out like clockwork this time every year. How is this a surprise? They presumably knew about their other kids and the med expenses and the home equity.

A lot of times the surprise is that the net price calculators are very wrong.

That's true but when the NPC is wrong, people usually mention that upfront. This poster didn't which makes me wonder if they didn't run it, or ran it but expected more anyways. Or just applied to see what happens and now they are in this bind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are full pay, but when we toured schools, every single one of them insisted that they met 100% of financial need, and some specified that it would not be with loans, but with work-study or grants. I didn't do any research, since we were not the target audience, but... now it seems like they were lying all along???

This is one of the things I hate about American college admissions: the system is so opaque and colleges have the upper hand and can bamboozle families so easily without repercussions. I don't think any other country has such a murky, subjective system prone to misuse.

Agree. Every single school boasts about financial aid, and kids walk away bamboozled. Parents hopeful. I think it’s okay to try. No harm. But you have to be very clear & honest with your children: “hey, if you get in but don’t get FA, you’re not going.” We did this and it was fine. DC is going to their #2 school.

[Anonymous]

Just remember. Israel gets free socialized healthcare and education as we send them our tax dollars.

[Anonymous]

$200K is a good income. She needs to be realistic and should have set expectations before applying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't believe you

This is an odd post.

Under the circumstances OP has described, I don't believe an Ivy would require the parents to pay 75k. I just don't.

I’m actually with this person. All of the Ivies either exclude home equity or cap it at a low multiple of income when considering how much the parents have in assets. Most (all?) also take into account medical expenses not covered by insurance.

I ran the Columbia (who I think uses the highest multiple of income for home equity) NPC calculator quickly with the limited info OP provided and some generous assumptions and it only had a family contribution of $19k, with Columbia picking up $78k. There are some major assets missing from this story.

I ran it again with even more generous (and probably unrealistic) assumptions and it spit out a family contribution of $29k with Columbia covering $68k. Something is missing here.

Did op kid get into ivy or columbia? Why are you mentioning Columbia?

Because, as stated before, Columbia is the harshest Ivy with regard to home equity. So if home equity is truly the problem, Columbia should spit out the least favorable number. Everywhere else would be better for a high home equity case. And yet the expected contribution from Columbia is still quite low.

Hence, there are missing assets from this story.

harshest how? yale doesn't exclude any real estate, even primary.

Yale is more opaque about how they calculate EFC. In any event, I ran the Yale NPC with $1.2 million in home equity and a handful of other assets and it still spit out a family contribution of $31k, with Yale covering $60k. Still something missing.

on what income? I asked Yale about this and it's 1x income. also what did you put in as a "handful" of other assets. like what about the 529s for 3 kids.

See, I believe Columbia is 2x income which I why I used that originally.

Assumptions for Yale were $200k income, $5k in interest/dividend income, $70k in checking/savings, $50k in investments, $50k additional in sibling assets, $5k in income and assets each for the student. $1.2 million in home equity as previously indicated. Seem like fairly generous assumptions.

Did the same for Cornell and it spit out $42k in contribution with the school covering $51k. Getting closer but still not that close.

this doesnt seem generous at all. my kids each 75-90k in 529s. we've been saving for 15 years. and we can't put money in Roths on our salary so we're limited by the 8k in tradition IRAs. we have about 200k in investments.

And are you a teacher with a teacher spouse with three kids making $200k now and less before? No, no you are not. What you have is irrelevant to this discussion and your retirement assets are irrelevant too (the above are non-retirement assets).

No dual teacher, three kid household just now hitting $200k has $75-90k per kid in 529s and an additional $200k of non-retirement assets on top of seven figure home equity. But there are other assets in OP’s scenario not being accounted for.

Meh, that’s not necessarily true, especially if grandparents were making 529 contributions. Given that average S&P returns over the last 18 years were over 13%, $250 a month from birth would result in 188k. Lots of dual teacher households are investing more than that.

Bolded would be an example of something not in OP’s original post that isn’t being accounted for.

$250 a month is assuming they aren’t saving for other things, and the family in OP’s scenario has three kids. Not likely they were saving that much that long ago in addition to retirement contributions, emergency funds, etc.