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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I”m seeing a lot of threads and responses within threads. Lots of people seeking information about private schools with tons of merit aid, “full ride” schools, people frustrated about the unfair advantage of ED because you want know the full amount of merit aid that might be available (and kudos to the patient people on that thread that keep trying to explain how the Net Price Calculator works).

The conclusion I’m getting from this is... there’s a whole bunch of UMC people here who didn’t save for kids’ college.
What the @#$%!

To be 100% clear, I’m not talking about lower income families, though these posters starting the posts above almost seem to resent all the aid, Pell grants, etc. these folks will be getting.

When my kids were 5 (as soon as we didn’t have to pay for preschool anymore, just public school before and aftercare) we started investing in 529s. We’ve been putting away money every month since then. 
Back then, after doing my research, my assumptions were
1. We will not qualify for financial aid (unless we are going to some really expensive private, but then we are still paying $$$)
2. While my kids are smart, I should not count on merit aid of any kind

As we get close to college age, we will have enough for them to attend an in-state school, and we are on track to take out very little—if any—in loans. Kids know they are welcome to apply to private schools, and if after all is said and done, it’s a comparable price tag, we can do that, but neither we nor our kids are going to rack up big undergraduate debt.

Yes, college costs are out of control, and there’s lots of frustrating aspects to the system, but this stuff didn’t crop up yesterday. Why didn’t you plan? Why didn’t you save?[/quote]
I sense some anger in OP's statement. She considers herself UMC (upper middle class?), but despite her best efforts, was unable to provide for her children to the degree she might have wanted to.  Instead, her children are left with one or two options (that's what "in-state school" translates to). If she lives in VA, her children may be [url=https://www.roanoke.com/news/education/some-incoming-virginia-tech-freshmen-offered-money-to-delay-start/article_6ed2a7b2-3b31-500a-a810-e3f968866c3b.html]offered money to not come.[/url]  She projects her anger onto other people who point out that despite what they considered higher incomes they're unable to provide for their children the way they wanted to. She imputes that others who point this out harbor social envy at those who have even less and receive financial aid (which often is loans).

With attitudes like these, it's difficult to see how we as a society can address the problem of spiraling college costs and how to distribute these costs across socioeconomic strata in a rational manner.
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