Do families with $250K in income get financial aid? If not, how do they afford college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your kids get into selective colleges with needs-blind admissions, FA - even for families with $250k and no 529 savings - can be good. If you have multiple kids in college simultaneously, it’s even better. Yes, FAFSA removed the automatic multiple-kid-in-school discount, but our experience this year is that private, well-endowed schools still take it into account. The experience of the earlier poster with kids at Northwestern and ND is what we’ve also experienced.

Same, regarding multiple kids at top schools. Awesome FA this year with 2!

Also, I served as college advisor to 2 families in the 250k range who both got excellent aid from Ivy and top LACs. I helped them with CSS and appeal. Worked out very well for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So let me get this straight , the kids at top privates are there primarily because mom and dad can pony up, not because they are particularly more intelligent than anyone else?

BINGO! And mom has typically directed the ECs and college app process. Then these “hothouse flowers” (look it up) get to college and can’t make a move without checking in with parents, get extreme anxiety, depression, etc., and ten years later wonder why they are working for state u grads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are at 250k with twins entering this year and got no FA. We have about 85k per kid saved which limited them instate options. We will take loans/bank roll the rest (total will be about 120k per kid for all 4 years.)

Which schools?
We are well over 300K with twins and got aid/scholarship from ND and Northeastern.
Paying little less than 40K for ND and little over 40K for Northeastern.
They are are juniors.

I imagine you have few assets?

[Anonymous]

They get credits in high school through Dual Enrollment or AP.

They get academic or athletic scholarships.

They get jobs in college to pay for extras.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are at 250k with twins entering this year and got no FA. We have about 85k per kid saved which limited them instate options. We will take loans/bank roll the rest (total will be about 120k per kid for all 4 years.)

Which schools?
We are well over 300K with twins and got aid/scholarship from ND and Northeastern.
Paying little less than 40K for ND and little over 40K for Northeastern.
They are are juniors.

I imagine you have few assets?

Normal middle class assets with a mortgaged house and three not so expensive cars and 401Ks close to 1mil.
Household member is 7 though, that probably made some difference? I don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I went to an Ivy league school and my network here is largely people who went there and are very very advantaged. But many chose not-the-highest-paying careers b/c they were passionate about health, the environment, etc. So I am just trying to see how people make it work....(cue the Ivy haters)....and to get opinions outside of my biased privileged circle. I have been surprised that so many of my friends are sending their kids to top name schools and don't know how they afford it, particularly since all have at least two kids. My husband has always said MC-->UMD is what the path should be or perhaps his home country which has a decent university system.

It’s probably very hard if you have multiple kids.

A strategy for others:

- Be generous with what you have and can do. Don’t favor having a Porsche or extra cash over tuition if your kid gets a chance to major in Classical at Princeton and you’re too rich to get any aid.

- Be honest with your kid about finances from the time they have a piggy bank. Don’t tell your kid money for college is no object if it will be an object.

- You figure, modest saving every year (say, 18 years times $3,000) can pay for half a year of private college.

- Loans for the kid and you can pay half a year.

- The kid’s work can pay half a year. If the kid can’t earn and safe that much during high school and college, maybe spending a lot of money on college for that kid isn’t that smart.

- Shifting what you spend on your kid now to college can probably pay for most of a year.

- Tightening your belt can probably pay for about half a year of college.

This probably adds up to close to three years of college.

For the rest:

- Look for schools where your kid could graduate half a semester early.

- Take out some home equity loans.

- ROTC.

- Aim for private schools that love your kid and provide at least $50,000 in grant or discount aid over four years. Aid is a sign they love your kid. Complete lack of grant aid for a kid with $250K in annual income is a sign the school isn’t that rich or doesn’t especially like your kid.

- Focus on public universities and non-U.S. schools that have a full net cost under $75,000.

On what Earth can kid earn enough to pay 1/2 per year at a $90k or even a $70 or $60k school???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:also, my real question is what type of income level is eligible for financial aid? I have been googling this and can't get a clear answer....

That’s because there is no clear answer to the question of how much college costs or what type of aid you may get for all four years.

I know someone who went their kid to Syracuse University for @ $4k on a $40k income, family of five. For sophomore year, Syracuse magically expects them to come up with $9k.

That’s work-study plus a student loan.

Ummm…no…that’s after student loan already factored in. Work study pays minimum wage and jobs are hard to come by. Not easy. Kid lives in flyover country where you can’t make several hundred as a weekend server in Georgetown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are at 250k with twins entering this year and got no FA. We have about 85k per kid saved which limited them instate options. We will take loans/bank roll the rest (total will be about 120k per kid for all 4 years.)

Which schools?
We are well over 300K with twins and got aid/scholarship from ND and Northeastern.
Paying little less than 40K for ND and little over 40K for Northeastern.
They are are juniors.

I imagine you have few assets?

Normal middle class assets with a mortgaged house and three not so expensive cars and 401Ks close to 1mil.
Household member is 7 though, that probably made some difference? I don't know.

Absolutely that made a difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. So, for all of the haters that say that I am 'stupid', have you considered that I am possibly just busy? Sandwich generation with kid and aging parents with problems. So.....perhaps that I haven't had time to think about this much yet and also wanted to hear thoughts from a wide range of people?

I really appreciate all of the honest answers here on what people are doing to make this work. A couple of insights have been particularly helpful. One, my friends who are doing this sometimes have $400K salaries because they are both Feds and we are actually one Fed+one non profit. Two, they have been saving since birth. As have we. We have $136K in the 529 and kid is a rising 7th grader. Three, we are actually doing the 15 year mortgage thing and mortgage will be done by the time that kid is 19. I wasn't thinking of that in terms of college but of course it will help. Four, number of kids matters. We actually have just one and cost has been a huge factor in that decision all along the way. Five, you at least get to stop shelling out costs for tutoring, activities, etc when they go to school. So that's good. Maybe we can move to a less expensive place to live?

I went to an Ivy league school and my network here is largely people who went there and are very very advantaged. But many chose not-the-highest-paying careers b/c they were passionate about health, the environment, etc. So I am just trying to see how people make it work....(cue the Ivy haters)....and to get opinions outside of my biased privileged circle. I have been surprised that so many of my friends are sending their kids to top name schools and don't know how they afford it, particularly since all have at least two kids. My husband has always said MC-->UMD is what the path should be or perhaps his home country which has a decent university system.

Keep saving as you are, add a little more if you can, and you are on track for having enough for the ivy. People always think there is “no way” we could be paying for the ivy and yet here we are. The key is to live low budgetish now then drop it more when the kid goes off! Also remember your food and Sports/music fees will go way down when they leave so count that as money that can swing into the “cash flow” portion of funding it. Not an ivy hater at all—have one there and it is worth every cent . Good luck to you and yours.

Disagree. Invest that $$ in a 100% stock market fund this year and let the interest work for you. OP is in a fine position if she dies this. Shocking the number of people who 529s poorly invested. Transfer it to Vanguard ASAP if you don’t have 500 or total stock market index funds. The market is growing rn! Make it work for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's actually closer to $100,000 per year at some privates. Times two kids in most families. So, $800,000.

It's ridiculous.

What we told our kids is you have duel citizenship with Canada. So there's that option. You are a resident of this state and we can swing the cost of the flagship. And if you don't like those options, here's a list of the schools that meet all financial need. Go for it.

The catch is that all the schools that will meet all financial need are the extremely selective high endowment schools like Princeton, Rice, Yale, Amherst, Duke, Bowdoin, Stanford etc. Most of these schools are offering aid to families even with $250k in annual income. You just need to get in.

Otherwise, it's merit at lower ranked schools. Or hello State U.

You’re missing something big. Those selective schools determine your need. Not you. It’s not a given that you get aid just because you live in a HCoL area.

True. But almost no one is saying no to Princeton or MIT because it's too expensive. There are a few high endowment schools that will make it work for pretty much every student that is accepted. And those that are accepted to such schools typically also get full rides to their state's flagships or get great merit at slightly lower ranked schools - in addition to the financial aid.

Bright middle class kids are going to have options. It worked for us. Have 2 unhooked kids at top 20 private universities. We can't do $800,000. And don't want the kids to be burdened by loans. But with the aid, it's significantly cheaper than full pay at the state flagship.

[Anonymous]

For my kids: one is at WM (in state— and we did 8 semesters of pre-paid 529 per kid when that was an option, so our cost for WM tuition is about $7k a year less than the sticker price— we got lucky on that).

One kid to a Midwestern SLAC with about $25k a year in merit. Some of the decent Midwestern SLACs that offer that level of merit to kids who don’t qualify for need based aid include:

Kenyon
Oberlin
Wooster
Denison (maybe? My kid didn’t as far as applying there, so I’m less sure about the aid landscape)
Grinnell
Macalaster
St. Olaf

My kid applied to all but Denison and got into all. Merit that got the price down to about $50k (including room and board) at all but Macalaster— they expected full pay for my kid, but the do offer merit to a decent number. It was actually freaky. Our net cost for the 4 of the 5 schools that offered merit aid was within $5/year. Wooster offered much more merit than the others, but wasn’t a good fit for our particular kid.

But also, why do you think UVA, WM and VT get harder and harder to get into every year? Because more and more UMC parents with high performing kids are priced out of $70k$100k a year all in. It creates a “barbell” at some private schools, esp SLACs w/o merit— really rich kids and poorer kids- very few UMC. IMO, that’s not a great environment — but no one asked me.

My kids came out of a wealthier (but not wealthiest) FCPS district (housing cost wise, just below Langley and McLean). And my SLAC kid was one of the only ones in his peer group to go private. SLACs just weren’t on most parents/kids radars. Besides my kid, one went to Wooster with a ton of merit. One kid with SNs (HF anutism and ADHD) went to Elon. Over the last three years, I’ve seen peers from their school go to:

The full range of VA publics, with an emphasis on JMU, GMU and VT (not CS or engineering) for strong but not superstar students- for VT, I know a couple education majors, pre-med, a couple humanities/ undecided kids, a business major…

Some UVA/WM/VT CS/Engineering for the high end of the class high and CNU, UMW, VCU, etc on the lower end
Penn State
Ohio State
a range of SEC schools, including places like U South Carolina for Business and Clemson, Alabama, Georgia Tech for CS/ Engineering. Plus, Auburn, Alabama, Florida and several other for not engineering
UNC (very strong student)
Michigan (2 kids— one a recruited athlete and one not, which is $$$— IDK if they got aid)
U Montana
Purdue for Engineering
Colorado
Minnesota
Indiana for business
UI-CU for engineering
A couple UCs (again $$$, but IDK their aid situation)
Pitt for STEM and not STEM

So basically, UMC in our areas usually goes public— either in VA or to OOS colleges with lower tuition.

We started saving in K when FT childcare expenses disappeared and seriously saving in late ES/ MS when as we lost more of the childcare expenses and income increased.

We were alsolucky that both sets of grandparents set up 529s for our kid— one is paying out $10k/ year per kid and one about $5k a year per kid. We could have made it work without that. But, it gave us some breathing room.

It can be done. But, maybe not at Emory, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Duke , etc unless your kid is a recruited athlete or a 1 in 500 or 1 in 1000 rockstar who gets the very small number of merit scholarships.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. So, for all of the haters that say that I am 'stupid', have you considered that I am possibly just busy? Sandwich generation with kid and aging parents with problems. So.....perhaps that I haven't had time to think about this much yet and also wanted to hear thoughts from a wide range of people?

I really appreciate all of the honest answers here on what people are doing to make this work. A couple of insights have been particularly helpful. One, my friends who are doing this sometimes have $400K salaries because they are both Feds and we are actually one Fed+one non profit. Two, they have been saving since birth. As have we. We have $136K in the 529 and kid is a rising 7th grader. Three, we are actually doing the 15 year mortgage thing and mortgage will be done by the time that kid is 19. I wasn't thinking of that in terms of college but of course it will help. Four, number of kids matters. We actually have just one and cost has been a huge factor in that decision all along the way. Five, you at least get to stop shelling out costs for tutoring, activities, etc when they go to school. So that's good. Maybe we can move to a less expensive place to live?

I went to an Ivy league school and my network here is largely people who went there and are very very advantaged. But many chose not-the-highest-paying careers b/c they were passionate about health, the environment, etc. So I am just trying to see how people make it work....(cue the Ivy haters)....and to get opinions outside of my biased privileged circle. I have been surprised that so many of my friends are sending their kids to top name schools and don't know how they afford it, particularly since all have at least two kids. My husband has always said MC-->UMD is what the path should be or perhaps his home country which has a decent university system.

Keep saving as you are, add a little more if you can, and you are on track for having enough for the ivy. People always think there is “no way” we could be paying for the ivy and yet here we are. The key is to live low budgetish now then drop it more when the kid goes off! Also remember your food and Sports/music fees will go way down when they leave so count that as money that can swing into the “cash flow” portion of funding it. Not an ivy hater at all—have one there and it is worth every cent . Good luck to you and yours.

Disagree. Invest that $$ in a 100% stock market fund this year and let the interest work for you. OP is in a fine position if she dies this. Shocking the number of people who 529s poorly invested. Transfer it to Vanguard ASAP if you don’t have 500 or total stock market index funds. The market is growing rn! Make it work for you.

This may work in 2023-2024, or if your kid is in ES. I would not do this for a HS kid. The stock market goes down, as well as up. And heading into the 2024 election, the economy is uncertain I would not want to have a HS junior and have the market tank. Sure, it will recover. In time for college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me get this straight , the kids at top privates are there primarily because mom and dad can pony up, not because they are particularly more intelligent than anyone else?

No, not the top ones. They are need blind and offer the best financial aid. We're truly middle class and under 150k and have 2 at T10s.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question says it all. I have been hearing all of my friends who are federal government workers saying their kids are not eligible for financial aid. But I don't think this is enough $ in income to afford $70K in college costs per kid per year. And it's not as though these families had extra income before their kids went to college - in this area, a mortgage, saving for retirement, and cost of raising kids will eat up all of that income. Where does the extra $ come from if they don't get financial aid?

My kid is going to a college that is 30k a year including room and board. 150k salaries and we saves year after year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. So, for all of the haters that say that I am 'stupid', have you considered that I am possibly just busy? Sandwich generation with kid and aging parents with problems. So.....perhaps that I haven't had time to think about this much yet and also wanted to hear thoughts from a wide range of people?

I really appreciate all of the honest answers here on what people are doing to make this work. A couple of insights have been particularly helpful. One, my friends who are doing this sometimes have $400K salaries because they are both Feds and we are actually one Fed+one non profit. Two, they have been saving since birth. As have we. We have $136K in the 529 and kid is a rising 7th grader. Three, we are actually doing the 15 year mortgage thing and mortgage will be done by the time that kid is 19. I wasn't thinking of that in terms of college but of course it will help. Four, number of kids matters. We actually have just one and cost has been a huge factor in that decision all along the way. Five, you at least get to stop shelling out costs for tutoring, activities, etc when they go to school. So that's good. Maybe we can move to a less expensive place to live?

I went to an Ivy league school and my network here is largely people who went there and are very very advantaged. But many chose not-the-highest-paying careers b/c they were passionate about health, the environment, etc. So I am just trying to see how people make it work....(cue the Ivy haters)....and to get opinions outside of my biased privileged circle. I have been surprised that so many of my friends are sending their kids to top name schools and don't know how they afford it, particularly since all have at least two kids. My husband has always said MC-->UMD is what the path should be or perhaps his home country which has a decent university system.

Keep saving as you are, add a little more if you can, and you are on track for having enough for the ivy. People always think there is “no way” we could be paying for the ivy and yet here we are. The key is to live low budgetish now then drop it more when the kid goes off! Also remember your food and Sports/music fees will go way down when they leave so count that as money that can swing into the “cash flow” portion of funding it. Not an ivy hater at all—have one there and it is worth every cent . Good luck to you and yours.

Disagree. Invest that $$ in a 100% stock market fund this year and let the interest work for you. OP is in a fine position if she dies this. Shocking the number of people who 529s poorly invested. Transfer it to Vanguard ASAP if you don’t have 500 or total stock market index funds. The market is growing rn! Make it work for you.

NP, I agree however you can't chase returns. Up 16% YTD and 85% over last years. Really need to be invested for a minimum of 3 years. If you need the funds in August or next year running a huge risk. With a college freshman, we have the next 5 semesters in primarily in cash. Current contributions are being directed to market funds and rebalance annually.