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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]And

Here’s a primer about how the expected family contribution works in the United States from the Wikipedia page so you can better understand what I’m talking about:

In the post-secondary education system of the United States, an expected family contribution (EFC) is an estimate of a student's, and for a dependent student, their parent(s)' or guardian(s)', ability to pay the costs of a year of post-secondary education. The EFC is used in the United States student financial aid process to determine an applicant's eligibility for need-based federal student aid. In most cases, the same estimate is also used for state and institutional (college-based) financial aid. The EFC is included on the Student Aid Report and Institutional Student Information Record, which are sent after filing a form called a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).[1]

A common misconception is that the EFC is a statement of what the family actually will pay. This is usually not the case, and many families pay more, sometimes much more, than the EFC.[citation needed] The college's costs, minus the EFC, gives the student's financial need. Most four-year colleges do not have enough financial aid to meet students' needs, and as a result, the unmet need must be paid by the parents, in addition to the EFC. The federal government offers unsubsidized Stafford Loans, which are available to any family regardless of need, as a source of funds to cover the unmet need.

In cases in which a student qualifies for merit-based (rather than need-based) financial aid, the student and their family may pay less than the EFC.

A well-to-do family's EFC may exceed the cost of attendance at a school, and in that case the student does not have financial need, as defined by the federal financial aid system.

In some cases, despite financial hardship for the student, the student's family will simply be unwilling to pay the full amount, leaving the student to find their own way to finance their college education, or forgo it.[6]

See that last bit? That is why I had to take out private loans. Public university was not cheaper due to my partial scholarship. Most students can get financial aid with grants or cover the rest with federal loans. I could not.[/quote]

I qualified for financial aid but my single parent still had an EFC that they couldn't pay, so I paid it.  I worked three jobs the summer before I started college.  I worked every semester of college.  I didn't have to give up dance because my parents could never afford dance lessons, or for me to join any school teams.  I applied only to inexpensive in state schools because debt scared me and I didn't know that I might qualify for significant financial aid elsewhere.    [/quote]

[b]You’re single parents expected financial contribution was likely a lot less than my parents. [b]You do not get it. It is based on parent income.[/b][/b] Some parents are expected to pay a lot and some parents are not expected to pay very much and some parents are expected to pay none at all… It is a flaw in the system that it assumes that wealthier parents and middle class parents will pay because of those parents don’t pay it puts the students in the position of having to pay it themselves and no going to a public college is not necessarily cheaper. [b]It is alarming that none of you understand financial aid at all and that there are situations where students are screwed.[/b] If your parents are poor or they don’t make a lot of money it’s easy to take out loans what you’re not understanding is that the amount I had to pay because that was their expected contribution exceeded the federal loan limits which meet meant I had to go to a bank and take out private loans. I had to pay my living expenses not just tuition. Tuition was mostly covered by my scholarship but I still had to pay for everything else housing food supplies, health insurance, books, etc. also at that time kids were not on their parents insurance in college and I had to get my own.

And it’s a shame that you didn’t know that the cost of college can be mostly covered by private institutions if you just apply and get a financial aid package. The cost of a private college is almost never the sticker price. Families are expected to pay a certain amount regardless of which institution you attend so public and private often end up being about the same if you get additional aid or a scholarship. My best friend went for a private college her parents didn’t make much money and her college was completely covered by financial aid and she didn’t even have to take out any loans whereas my parents refuse to pay and they were expected to pay a high amount and I ended up with $70,000 in debt whereas she walked away debt-free and we both attended private colleges. It is all dependent on your parents’ financial situation.[/quote]

I promise you I do get it.  I'm sorry you had $70K in debt, especially if your parents could have prevented that but chose not to.  You seem to be trying to convince someone who grew up LMC to feel sorry for you.  From what I can see you still had a MC/UMC life until college.  I had plenty of friends in college who had trouble adjusting to life "on their own."  "On their own" usually meant varying degrees of parental support, but all of them were living with fewer of the comforts of their parents homes.  I would feel bad for them and helped them out where I could.  Not financially of course, just being there and listening to how hard it was to not have whatever it was they had been accustomed to whether it was gadgets, or sports/dance classes, or whatever.  I genuinely felt sorry for them.  I thought I was empathizing because I had lived most of my life seeing what others had and I didn't (supportive and emotionally stable parents, food security, a life that wasn't one mistake away from complete financial disaster).  I'm trying to summon the same compassion for you but you really sound like someone who had some privileges growing up and can't seem to understand that life isn't fair and that systems fail people who need them.  I guess its harder to learn that later in life like you did.  That is a fact of life for many much earlier.
  
FWIW I had to pay for everything aside from tuition my first two years of college, and then part of tuition my 3rd and 4th year in addition to everything else.  I'm not seeing much of a difference here in terms of what you and I both had to cover aside from insurance (I stayed on my parent's).  Maybe I went to school in a LOCL area and you were in a HCOL area?

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