Reply to My son applied to college without any assistance whatsoever. AMA

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are things really that more complicated these days?

I did college admissions completely on my own 20 years ago - and ended up at a solid SLAC with minimal debt. (Also admitted to Ivies but realized I couldn't afford it.) I literally had no discussion about it with my parents except for to tell them when I had narrowed my acceptance down to two choices that would cost the same. Even then the choice was entirely my own.

I do want to take a more active role with my child but I can't imagine the intense over-involvement of other parents here. If my child can't figure out how to evaluate the options, understand the finances, and meet the application deadlines, mostly of his own accord, then I will have failed in parenting in many ways. [/quote]I can appreciate doing school research and application deadlines but we part ways about finances (other than tuition cost and some expenses).  If any kid here is that astute with finances, including yours, then I assume they are 100% knowledgeable about your investments, cost of your home, mortgage payments, etc.  After all, these are merely a few questions on college financial aid forms.[/quote]

I knew exactly how much support I was going to get from my family, and they did give me their tax returns so I could do the FAFSA myself. Obviously I agree that parents have to make the financial information to fill out the forms available. But other than that I did all the financial calculations myself, including deliberately chosing schools that would provide the most aid. [/quote]That is wonderful that your parents gave you their tax returns to do the FAFSA.  You are in a league of your own, and I guarantee that the majority of parents are NOT going to rely on the capabilities of an 17-18 year old to handle forms entailing the possibility of obtaining (or not) thousands and thousands of dollars and adding additional personal comments regarding their finances.

I personally would never have given my kids that type of responsibility whether anyone else did nor not.  Most people do not run their lives or question their abilities based on anonymous boards.[/quote]

Do you mean the responsibility to fill out the forms correctly? If you don't think your child can accurately fill out the FAFSA if given all the source documents you might want to consider community college ... I agree that making sure your kid understands the reality of student loans is important, but if they don't have the basic ability to fill out a form then you have bigger problems. And making them responsible for their own college finances is an important way to help them be good financial planners. [/quote]

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