What are the financial aid options for a not-so-rich kid?

February 23, 2006 2:10 PM

Give me some insight into College Admissions and Financial Aid.

My parents divorced 6 years ago, and since that time my life has been extremely unstable. I have been through numerous court proceedings, custody shifts, and interstate relocations.

During the period in which she had custody of me, my mother was abusive to say the least. Most of her rage was centered around my senior year in high school, which made applying for colleges quite difficult.

My father, a physician, brings in around 200k a year. Of that around 60 goes towards paying alimony to my mother.

I am currently at a state school, but am hoping to transfer into the ivy-league. My chances of admission are good. I was wondering if there is any possible chance that I could receive financial aid, especially in light of the alimony.

I was also wondering about student loans, and that possibility of getting one, considering my parents' credit ratings were destroyed in their divorce.

Any recommenation in regards to paying for college would be appreciated.

questions can be asked and answered through: [e-mail]

posted by anonymous to education (27 comments total)

Ask the financial aid offices in the schools you are applying to? That would be the first place to start. You don't have to use specifics if you want, but your family finances are going to be layed bare in front of them soon enough anyway.

Also, if I were you, I'd look outside the Ivy League. You can get a great education at a number of Non-Ivy schools. You don't get is a national brand that everyone will recognize, you also have fewer applicants which can mean they are less likely to use financial aid to shape the incoming classes than they do at Ivy's.
posted by Good Brain at 2:41 PM on February 23, 2006

I was wondering if there is any possible chance that I could receive financial aid, especially in light of the alimony.

Every school has a financial aid office. If you have specific schools in mind, you should talk to someone at the relevant financial aid office, if the information you're looking for isn't already on the school's website. (And it isn't clear what alimony, per se, has to do with anything, unless you're saying it reduces your father's income - but $140K per year is still quite high.)

I was also wondering about student loans, and that possibility of getting one, considering my parents' credit ratings were destroyed in their divorce.

Many if not most student loans are based solely on your being a student (and most students have no credit history). In any case, since parents normally do NOT co-sign for student loans, their credit rating is irrelevant. [Warning: you can lose eligibility for student loans if convicted of a crime involving drug use.]

Any recommenation in regards to paying for college would be appreciated.

Again, one of the major functions of financial aid offices is to answer questions like this. The general answer is that students pay for college with a mix of parental support, part-time jobs (work-study usually pays best), financial aid (scholarships, grants, reduced tuition), and student loans.
posted by WestCoaster at 2:42 PM on February 23, 2006

This is pretty simple; you're not going to get need-based financial aid, but if you're a good enough student that the schools actually want you, they will find the money to bring you. Contact their admissions/financial aid office and find what competitive scholarships are offered and what, if any, special application procedures are needed to ensure you're considered for that sort of support.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:53 PM on February 23, 2006

You may have two issues that will make getting financial aid difficult:

1) Your father's income and its effect on the expected family contribution. $140K is still a lot, and even though he was not the custodial parent he will be expected to contribute to your education. In the aggregate, your family income level is sufficiently high that you might not qualify for need-based aid; under Princeton's calculus, for example, you might not be considered to have need at all.
2) Your relationships with both parents. To apply for need-based financial aid in the first place, you will need tax returns and other financial data from both parents. They are not obligated to give this information to you.

It is my understanding that Ivies do not typically have a lot of merit based financial aid available, and private scholarships often are used to reduce any need based grant monies you do get, leaving you with the same bill on net.

On a personal note, I attended an Ivy for law school and my interactions with the huge, faceless university financial aid bureaucracy were uniformly negative. There are, however, other private colleges that provide a very good education which are generous with financial aid. My alma mater is one of them. E-mail me if you have questions about it.
posted by amber_dale at 2:55 PM on February 23, 2006

Seconding the idea to look outside the Ivy League, and also to consider staying and excelling at your state school and using that success to go to a fantastic graduate or professional program. Attending the "right" undergrad isn't as important as it used to be, or as important as it might seem to you as a 20-year-old.
posted by BackwardsCity at 3:10 PM on February 23, 2006

Watch out, I'm a transfer student at Brown and this is the first year that they have been awarding ANY financial aid to transfer students. And the amount they have allocated for transfers is much less per student than for the entering freshman class.

I'm under the impression that no Ivy League schools give money for merit, and Brown definitely doesn't:

Brown, as a member of the Ivy League, does not offer aid based on academic achievement, athletic ability, or any other form of merit aid.

So if you are counting on merit aid, apply to some other schools.
posted by puffin at 3:11 PM on February 23, 2006

Chances of being admitted into the Ivies by transfer are never good. I thought going to NYU for a year or two before transferring into Yale would be a swell plan, and then I discovered that Yale accepts about 25 transfer students per year. I have to figure other Ivies' stats will be pretty similar, so you may want to bear that in mind. Also, even if you think you have a chance, you don't really unless you're nationally known, blah blah blah; I'm sure you've heard that speech before.

Merit through schools is not going to happen. The Ivies say they don't give merit scholarships, but I've heard that it does happen sneakily -- and not just for athletes, but if they need a first-chair tuba player or something. That would definitely not be anything to count on, though. Applying for outside scholarships (run by charitable foundations) would be a much better shot; that's my number-one tip.

Need-based aid will be determined by the FAFSA. I don't know off the top of my head what the expected contribution would be for a $140,000 income (it's never exactly been relevant for me). You should be able to work it out on the forms, though. Most (all?) Ivy Leagues will fill 100% of your need according to the FAFSA, although I can't imagine that would be a lot in your case.

Student loans should still be possible. I'm not sure, but you may want to look into different co-signers -- do you have an aunt or grandfather or someone who might be able to fill that role?

In my experience, you really need to take these questions to the relevant schools' financial aid departments. They've seen all kinds of situations and will be able to explain what your chances are. They may not want to spend much of their time on you until/unless you've been admitted, though.
posted by booksandlibretti at 3:27 PM on February 23, 2006

With your father's income as it is, you can count out any Federal grants or subsidized Federal Stafford Loans. You will probably be able to take out unsubsidized Stafford Loans (someone correct me on this if I'm wrong), but they aren't nearly as nice. In any case, neither is reliant on any sort of credit rating for approval, because they are granted to you, as a student, regardless of your credit rating or that of anyone around you.

That said, it won't be enough to cover your bills, and the above posters are right in saying you won't get any merit-based aid. At this point, you should ask yourself if an Ivy League education is worth the financial outlay if your parents aren't willing to foot the bill. I'm sure many MeFites would disagree, but I would say "no." An Ivy League degree looks nice, but it's not a magic ticket to some fantasy world. Many top-tier schools (both universities and liberal arts colleges) offer equivalent or superior undergraduate educations to the Ivies, cost less in general, and are less stingy with financial aid (I say this as a current matriculate of one of these Ivy-covered institutions, with my undergrad alma mater as one of these other top-tier universities). Explore your options, because taking on >$100k in debt, if you can even get it, is potentially crippling later in life.
posted by The Michael The at 3:28 PM on February 23, 2006

Seconding the idea to look outside the Ivy League

Look outside the Ive League too, sure. But there's precious little reason not to send an application to any school you might want to attend -- the only thing you have to lose is the application fee.

Your chances: no one can know. Financial aid is a deep and mysterious thing, and depends on income and assets / debts.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:29 PM on February 23, 2006

On the subject of what the Ivy's will do to get "the right kind of student" check out the Nov05 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. There are a number of higher ed articles in the issue, I think the one I have in mind is called "Does Meritocracy Work?"
posted by Good Brain at 3:31 PM on February 23, 2006

Speaking from my experience: you're likely to get minimal aid. At least at top schools, where admissions depts. don't have to fight over good students, financial aid departments really don't care how hard your life is, whether there was divorce involved, etc. I came to college in a somewhat similar situation - my father, who makes a fair amount of money, wouldn't pay for college, and my mother, who makes very little, couldn't contribute much. The financial aid folks didn't care - on paper, my dad was good for a significant chunk of my tuition, and the fact that he wouldn't contribute was my problem. Similarly, my father occasionally balked at filling out the non-custodial financial aid forms, and almost caused me to lose the meagre aid i had - financial aid depts. don't make exceptions for family troubles.

Alimony's unlikely to change things much - after all, the money's just being transferred over to your mother, and so they'll increase her required contribution. Your father - even with the alimony - still makes a good deal of money, and he'll be expected to contribute. Ivies [and some of their peers] don't offer merit scholarships, so you'll be forced to fill any gaps with loans, a job, external scholarships, etc.

But really: this question should be directed towards the admissions and financial aid depts. of the colleges you're considering applying to. If money's that big an issue, you may want to aim for someplace where the brand name is a little less important - there are schools of equal quality like U. Chicago or Hopkins that offer merit scholarships, and if you're willing to consider other smaller places, you might even get a fair amount of merit-related aid.
posted by ubersturm at 3:43 PM on February 23, 2006

In the past, at least, Harvard was known for giving reasonably generous financial aid (in the form of need-based scholarships) to incoming freshmen and then drastically cutting that down (mostly switching it to loans) for the sophomore year. So also keep in mind that whatever package you get for your first year may not hold through your entire time there.
posted by occhiblu at 3:48 PM on February 23, 2006

Another thing to consider is deferring your admission for a year, moving out, and working to support yourself. Back when I was a student, a year off supporting yourself was often enough to get financial aid offices to evaluate need based on your own small income, rather than your parents income.
posted by Good Brain at 3:59 PM on February 23, 2006

Good Brain, for purposes of the FAFSA that is not sufficient to establish independent student status. If the mother was abusive, that might help with respect to her income. Institutional aid policies may be more or less flexible than the feds in this regard. I heard a nasty story about a single man who went back to school late in life and was asked for his parents' tax returns by Stanford. (He had to explain that they were dead.)
posted by amber_dale at 4:11 PM on February 23, 2006

If you can wait until you're 24 or older before going to school, you can declare independent status on your FAFSA which makes you eligible for all sorts of aid. That's what I'm doing and it works well enough that I attend a $40k liberal arts school for about $3k a year.
posted by youcancallmeal at 5:33 PM on February 23, 2006

Another vote for a state school, preferably in an area with a low cost of living. I had to pay my own way through college because my dad lost his job my senior year of high school. Financial aid didn't take his job loss and unemployment into account, and this was in California in the years where there was basically no merit aid available for white students, so my only hope was to go to a school with dirt-cheap cost of living and work two jobs to pay for it. It would have been nice to go to school in the city, but I got a respectable education and a great job following school. I could have gone to just about any grad school I wanted, too.

If your parents aren't able to support you through college, then declare financial independence as soon as you can. The ridiculous student aid system won't recognize it until you are 24 but it will help you in other ways. I was able to get health insurance for a pretty low cost through my school once I was officially independent. Also, you can take a deduction for yourself on your tax return only if neither of your parents are claiming you as a dependent.
posted by rhiannon at 5:46 PM on February 23, 2006

Other posters are right, the I

Some of the Ivies do take transfers. Penn, for example, takes around 20-25% of transfers, Cornell takes about 30% (that's where i had transferred into as an undergrad and am finishing up my masters)

It also depends somewhat on who your custodial parent is. Is it your father, who makes 200k? Then i don't think you'll get any need-based aid - you don't need any. (I'm not trying to be insensitive here, but my mother made less annually than the cost of a year at Cornell, and the only way I was coming here was through lots of finaid (and I have a lot of loans too)

Again, dont come somewhere like here just for the name. it's a great school but definetly not worth tons and tons of debt. There are lots of other great schools that will give you better financial aid packages - and i'm sure you'll get some good merit aid packages at some other good schools. Save your cash for grdauate school.
posted by jare2003 at 5:52 PM on February 23, 2006

Crap, i posted before i was ready. But I meant to say "Other posters are right, the Ivies aren't worth it"
posted by jare2003 at 5:52 PM on February 23, 2006

My father, a physician, brings in around 200k a year. Of that around 60 goes towards paying alimony to my mother.

It doesn't matter whether your father pays 60k in alimony or nothing. FAFSA calculates your ability to pay based on both of your parents income/wealth. With at least 200k (even if your mom isn't working), you're not going to get any aid.

That being said, you'll still be able to get access to subsidized Stafford loans. I'd advise to take out as much as you can from those (how much you can take is dependent on what year you are. When you're a junior, you can take out somewhere around $5000 subsidized) since you won't pay interest on them while you're in school and the interest will be really low when you get out of school. The only reason not to apply for them is you're going to try to hardball your dad into paying everything, including living expenses.

I went to a fancy pants liberal arts school, so of course I'll say that you should look outside of the Ivies. That being said, any place that offers merit scholarships is going to be at most a step sideways instead of a step up from where you are currently.
posted by alidarbac at 6:35 PM on February 23, 2006

I have two things to offer:

1) Not all schools count the financial information of the non-custodial parent. Schools that only take FAFSA (such as the school I went to, Renssealer Polytechnic Institute) generally only ask for an estimate of non-custodial parental contribution. Schools (like most ivy leagues) that use more comprehensive financial profiles will count your dad's income against you.

2) You may want to look into declaring independence from your parents. If you detach yourselves from your parents, their financial information won't matter in any way whatsoever. Also, you mentioned abuse, which is a pretty good reason to detach yourself, anyway.
posted by JZig at 6:55 PM on February 23, 2006

Make sure you are "claimed" by the parent who earns less. My parents are divorced and the richer one claimed me. While my 2 brothers where claimed by the other. So, on paper, I was a only child --- so, no aid.
posted by Blandanomics at 8:45 PM on February 23, 2006

Be aware that not much financial aid is left over after general admissions some years at many schools--they're going to spend what they need to spend to get the freshman they want, and whatever's left will go to fund transfers. This is not a very "need-blind" pool to be in. Many (though certainly not all) transfer students at Ivy League schools who are admitted do not need very much scholarship aid (*cough* rich parents *cough*). So by all means, apply, but know what you're up against. The best thing to do is to find schools that advertise offering scholarships for transfers. Note: these will NOT be Ivy League schools, though they may be more challenging than where you are now.
posted by availablelight at 4:18 AM on February 24, 2006

Chances of being admitted into the Ivies by transfer are never good.
Slightly off topic, but I want to jump in and say that this is not true at all. I've found it's much easier to transfer into an Ivy than to get in the first time around. I was rejected from Brown originally but I got in as a transfer, as did a bunch of other people (~130 first semester, ~50 second semester). My friend also applied to Columbia as a transfer and was accepted, but came here instead. I've heard the acceptance rate for transfers at Brown is about 27% while the freshman acceptance rate is 16%.
posted by puffin at 4:50 AM on February 24, 2006

I've heard the acceptance rate for transfers at Brown is about 27% while the freshman acceptance rate is 16%.

That's surely a self-selecting pool. It's not like Brown is reducing standards to pick up transfers.
posted by commander_cool at 5:06 AM on February 24, 2006

Random but related thoughts:

Yes, student loans generally have relatively low interest rates and a lot of flexibility to pay them off. Nevertheless, an amount like $80k for an undergraduate education is nothing to sneeze at. Once upon a time, Penn State sent me a little brochure explaining what my future loan payments would look like. It had a chart, which explained something like, "If you borrow $20k, when you graduate you will pay $280/mo for 10 years. If you borrow $40k, when you graduate.....etc etc." It delivered a serious shock to my 18 year old heart, to see that borrowing $80k would result in payments of something like $800/mo for a gazillion years.

Before you take on a ton of school debt, make sure you know exactly what you're getting into and do a cost-benefit analysis. Speaking as someone who got an excellent education in English literature from a state university (thank you mom & dad!), I would not have gone $80k into debt for my education. The earning power of a humanities degree is, unfortunately, just not that high these days. (And art degrees usually pull in $2.13/hr plus tips.) On the other hand, a good friend of mine opted for a $60k engineering degree over a $40k degree (better university) and went on to get a great job at a well-known microchip developer. More debt can be good for your future, as long as you're getting real value for your money. As for whether or not an Ivy League name on your diploma counts as "extra value," that's a separate debate entirely.
posted by junkbox at 6:13 AM on February 24, 2006

Chances of being admitted into the Ivies by transfer are never good. (me)
Slightly off topic, but I want to jump in and say that this is not true at all. (puffin)

Like I said in my original comment, I was basing it on Yale's stats and assuming other Ivy League schools would be similar. Yale's past acceptance rate, for students entering as freshmen, has been around 10%; the class of 2009, unsurprisingly, had the lowest acceptance rate yet: 9.7%. Yale accepts between 24 and 36 transfer students out of over 800 applicants, which makes the transfer acceptance rate between 3% and 4.5%. I'd say that's a significant drop, especially since transfer applicants are likely to be at least as self-selecting as freshman applicants.

So, anonymous, I guess it all depends on which Ivy League school you want.
posted by booksandlibretti at 10:49 AM on February 24, 2006

Lots of good advice already. Just want to add: talk to financial aid officers both at your current school and planned destination schools. They can be surprisingly understanding about a range of personal circumstances, and can help you locate solutions from both public and private sources. My non-custodial father just has to submit a short letter each year confirming that he still had no intention of contributing to my education or upkeep; the financial aid officer always calculated my aid accordingly. I've also had friends whose aid was totally restructured mid-year because they told their financial aid officer about the divorce/death/illness/whatever that had abruptly changed family circumstances. So the system has some adaptablility. Use it.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 10:51 AM on February 24, 2006