Anonymous wrote:I would pay if I had the income. Any school that my child wanted to go to, I would pay $60K. I don't think any school is worth that much, but my child has special needs, a learning disability, etc., and I would be so happy if I could afford to send her to a SLAC that meets her needs.

She's gifted, so one of the top schools might accept her, but no way can we pay. We are like you, OP. We have too much income/savings to qualify for financial aid, but we are not willing to spend our retirement savings and do not have the income to pay even $20K!!

DH almost lost his job last year and, I'm not sure how much longer my job will last. Without retirment savings to rely on, what would we do if DH lost his job? It's crazy to spend down your nest egg to send your child to college, so we won't do it.

But I truly wish I had the $60K to send her to Williams or Middlebury, where I know she'd fit in and be happy, despite her disabilities. Don't know what we're going to do. Hope for decent merit aid from somewhere, but am not hopeful, so she'll probably end up our state school, which won't be a good fit, but at least we can manage the tuition.

I don't think any school is worth spending $250K for four years! That is completely insane! Only a very small percentage of the population have the money to do this, especially for more than one child. But when a child struggles so much as ours has, we would be willing to spend the money if we had it. But $250K would gut our retirement savings, so no way would it be prudent for us to do so.

And we are not saddling ourselves or our child with debt either. The way college costs have spiraled out of control is the fault of our government, which has refused to stop them. Go on any college campus and look at the extravagant facilities they have, even the less-selective schools. They are pulling in loads of money, so they spend it on prestigious faculty, huge buildings, crazy, crazy.

If we refused to pay, they'd have to stop, but parents dutifully pull out their wallets, and dump their savings into colleges, which use the money to build up their campuses and their endowments, but are they worth the money? Half of college graduates aren't even employed!

Simple answer: No, not a single college is worth $60K per year.

Anonymous wrote:Harvard,Stanford,MIT ,Hopkins ,naval academy.


That's it.

Anonymous wrote:Any out-of-state public ranked higher than what my kid can get into in the state of Virginia.

Anonymous wrote:Rich grandparents : )

Anonymous wrote:What these prices have done is caused everyone to delay all the big milestones in life. A student graduates from an expensive college with loan. Needs to work to pay off loans. Delays marriage/kids. Has kids later. Maybe needs to pay for IVF and needs to buy an overpriced house. Works to save a giant mortgage. Delays saving for college. Now needs to come up with $$$$ for college. Delays saving for retirement. Health care prices now through the roof. Has to work a long time to pay for all this. Maybe until they are 80. Something needs to change or people will be having kids when they are 50 and will never retire.

Anonymous wrote:
I have a colleague who has saved very little and in recent years she remodeled her kitchen and a bathroom, then took her kids to Europe, in order to use some of the savings that would otherwise count against financial aid. I had to bite my tongue, listening to her talk about this strategy - we have scraped and saved in order to get our kids through. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.

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Anonymous wrote:Our expected financial contribution, per FAFSA, will be about $43k, leaving us about $20k per year short for HYP.

Actually, even $43k is too rich for my blood. We will have enough saved to pay about $33k per year for DC1, currently a junior. That would mean we would have to borrow $120k to make HYP a reality for one child.

Since there is no way on god's green earth we are borrowing that kind of money to send one child to college, we have pretty much eliminated HYP and any private or public OOS college that offers only financial aid. Regardless of their grades/scores/record, our children will go in-state public or second-tier private with merit aid.

I'm missing something here. HYP are committed to meeting full need which means that your child would pay $43K a year there. You'd cover $33K, your kid could presumably earn some money in the summer or part time, let's say $5K, that leaves $20K in loans max. Where are you getting the other $100K from?

You're right, I misspoke. We would need to borrow less per kid at a school that meets full need, but most schools that meet full need do so with a combo of grants, work study, and student loans. So if one of my DCs gets $20k in financial aid, it is likely to be, say, $5k in student loan, $2k in work study, and $13k in grant. We would still need to borrow $10k, for a combined $15k per year, $60k for 4 years, $120k for my two kids. Too rich for my blood.

List of schools that meet 100% need and whether they include loans in the financial aid package:

http://www.collegegreenlight.com/blog/colleges-that-meet-100-of-student-financial-need/

But again the specific schools you listed are all meets needs/no loans.

I was using the HYP term loosely to include all the colleges of this ilk. I personally don't draw distinction between Harvard and, say, Penn or Brown when considering the "value" of an undergraduate education. YMMV, of course. As shown by the link above, the number of colleges that meet full need without loans is small indeed. But even so, my point simply was that even at Harvard, we would need to borrow $40k for one kid to go to college, on top of having worked pretty hard to save more than $130k for that kid to go to college. We have much younger kid for whom we are saving $150k+ (because we are assuming inflation) as well, and if I agree to borrow $40k for the first, I have to be willing to do the same for my second. That is more debt than I comfortable taking on, especially given my and DH's ages. To meet our retirement savings goals, maintain our primary investment (our home), and continue to save for college for our younger child, we can't (IMO) take on education debt.

We are in the identical situation and I have the same views that you do.

Our HHI is about $200K and we have $250K (some of which will be taxed when we sell off mutual funds) saved towards college for our two kids, 16 and 13. We will not be able to pay full freight at the most expensive schools, and given our profile (HHI, home equity is high, good retirement savings) I don't think we will qualify for financial aid. So second-tier with merit aid, or state school are our realistic options.

I have a colleague who has saved very little and in recent years she remodeled her kitchen and a bathroom, then took her kids to Europe, in order to use some of the savings that would otherwise count against financial aid. I had to bite my tongue, listening to her talk about this strategy - we have scraped and saved in order to get our kids through. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.