Reply to How do you grapple with the cost of expensive colleges?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "How do you grapple with the cost of expensive colleges?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We have prepaid VA 529s for our kids.  Before DS started high school, we sat him down and explained that we could pay for 4 years of in state college, including room and board (most of which we would pay for out of our annual income).  And that if he wanted to go to OOS or private, he would need merit aid that made up the gap, or came close. (Kid is at TJ, so this is a legitimate possibility for some non-Ivy STEM heavy private and OOS schools).  We also told him that he could not take out undergraduate loans, and we would not either.  He will likely continue to grad school, and we don't want him in debt before get gets there.

[b]I think this is where a lot of parents in the DMV are[/b].  Too much money for need based aid. Not enough to fund 4 years at a private school.  I also think it would be unfair for DS to go through HS without knowing that the parameters for us paying for college are.  He now knows that if he has his heart set on an OOS or private school, he will need to work hard to make himself an attractive candidate for merit aid.

This also means the we are putting his college list together carefully.  He is lucky in that UVA/WM/VT engineering are probably safety schools, given his GPA/SATs.  For OOS and private, we are looking at school that traditionally give significant merit aid to TJ kids, that have strong merit aid in general, and/or where his GPA/SATs are on the upper end.  He will probably also apply to a couple of schools that are long shots for merit aid, or reaches in general.  Butwe are being very clear that even if he gets in, it is not likely he can attend.

I think the important thing is to make sure your kid has realistic expectations.  I have known people who have been in our financial situation, not been upfront with their kids about what they can spend, encouraged them to apply to Ivys or  super expensive private reach schools without a real possibility of aid. And waited until the kid got in to tell them they couldn't afford the school, and the kid needed to go in state.  That seems wrong to me. [/quote]

Our HHI is ~$170k, so we're in that situation.

We are finding that some of the OOS schools our DS has interest in really aren't any more expensive than in state. As far as more expensive schools I don't know how one knows about the end cost (after merit aid and/or scholarship) unless you apply.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics