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I still wear a watch and I bought a really good one (Tag) about a decade ago.

My daughter (18) never really wear a watch until she went to college. I guess when they’re taking their prelims or finals, they’re not allowed to bring out their phone and sometimes, there are no clocks in the room, so a watch is a necessity.

Now she’s into “boyfriend’s watches”.

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My daughter discovered hopscotch. It’s an Ipad app for kids that interested in learning how to program. It’s very basic though but it can be fun for a 8 to 10 years old kid.

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I just got my rental appraised for 40K more than I expected.

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[quote=cvmom][quote=bearishgurl]If you already know filing a FAFSA won’t do you or your student any good, then don’t file one.[/quote]

Does anyone else have a perspective on this? With our income in the junior/senior year >$400K there is zero chance for aid from Ivy or any other school, I would think. So why go through all the time/energy to fill it out? Any reason? Or can we skip it?[/quote]

For that income, you don’t need to apply for FA. There’s a checkmark on the Common App for that. It may or may not help your kid application depending on the school. IVies/MIT/S are “need blind” so not applying to any FA has no bearing to your kid application. Of course that’s what they say.

There are schools though that are “need aware”. WUSTL is an example of a need aware school. So in this respect, it helps your kid’s application.

The only reason that you may need to file FAFSA is when your kid is applying to any merit scholarship (not to Ivies though, they only award need based grants) and the school requires you to file in order to be qualified as an applicant to the scholarship.

Another reason to apply FA even if you know that you are not qualified for any need based aid is some schools would not let you apply to any FA after Freshman year if you didn’t apply Freshmen year. This is important because some families’ income/asset might change.

Bottomline, you need to research every school. Every school has their own unique rules regarding FA.

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[quote=bobby][quote=AN]Here’s data for CS major:
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/best-schools-by-major/computer-science

Look like best ROI would be CSU SLO and SJSU. UC are all over that list too. Not very many Ivy on there.[/quote]

I find it surprising that UCI (I studied computer engineering there) ranks higher than MIT, carnegie melon, Georgia tech, UCLA.[/quote]

Payscale is self reported. Keep that in mind.

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[quote=AN][quote=bearishgurl]Uhh, the only problem I see with this idea is that you would need to quit your job at least one tax year before you file your kid’s FAFSA by January of their senior year. Meaning, quit work during their sophomore year or first semester of their junior year of HS, at the latest. At that point, you have NO IDEA if they’ll be accepted to Stanford and likely won’t find out until Feb through April of their senior year of HS.

Since Stanford only admits ~5% of all freshman applicants, I think that’s quite a gamble to take with your OWN future, AN, considering you’ll likely still be “young” when your kid(s) apply for college![/quote]It’s not a gamble if I save enough to retire by then. If I don’t, I can always start working for start ups around town and take a low pay in exchange for a lot of equity.[/quote]

Ivy League schools and most private colleges (including Stanford) don’t just rely on FAFSA to calculate EFC (Expected Family Contribution). In addition to FAFSA, they use CSS Profile. FAFSA does not consider most assets and just consider AGI when calculating EFC. So most of the times FAFSA’s EFC is higher than the actual EFC from the college.

EFC calculation relies heavily on current income but also considers assets. Assets can be savings, money market, CDs, stocks, bonds, investment property equity, home equity, 529 or any other college savings, etc. The CSS profile even asks balances and current contribution to retirement accounts and current automobiles. Colleges uses these informations the way they want it to calculate your EFC.

So AN, even if you retire but your wife still works and makes about 90K a year and about 1.5 M in asset, you will still be full pay.

All colleges has an NPC calculator on their website. Here’s one for Harvard:

https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net-price-calculator

HYPS are the most generous schools. Even if your HH income exceeds 225K, you might still get some grants from these schools depending on income.

The other Ivies, if you reach about 200K you are full pay.

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Well said @joec!

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[quote=CA renter][quote=AN]Since, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg are all college drop outs…

A piece of paper can’t feed you but the millions/billions in the bank can… for a very long time.[/quote]

Just wanted to add Michael Dell and Larry Ellison.

Here’s an opinion piece that lists many others who never received a college degree, but succeeded, nonetheless:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/30/opinion/schmitz-college/%5B/quote%5D
But how many kids are the next Larry Ellison or Bill Gates?

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[quote=deadzone]If it is so important for you that your kid gets accepted to Ivy league, than surely you wouldn’t risk your kid being contaminated by the SD public schools.[/quote]
My daughter attended SD public schools. She was accepted to multiple elite schools and currently attending an Ivy. And yes, I could have sent her to a private school during K-12, but we couldn’t afford it.

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[quote=AN]Would you be will to sacrifice your retirement for your kid’s Ivy education? Would you be willing to drastically down size your living standard to pay for your kid’s education? [/quote]

IMO, if you are sacrificing your retirement and drastically change your lifestyle to send your kids to an Ivy, you really can’t afford it.

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[quote=UCGal]All I know is that my 529 savings accounts will NOT be enough to pay for Ivy. But I’m hoping it will be enough to pay for UC. They can go to grad school on my dime if there’s money left over.

If my kids get accepted to Ivy and don’t get financial aid – then it’s an issue…

Truthfully, I doubt my kids will be accepted to Ivy schools – I’m hoping for acceptance to UC schools – which is much harder now than when I was accepted to UCB several decades ago. FWIW – my engineering degree from SDSU was good enough for me to support myself, sock away some money, and retire at age 52. I was not going to keep working just in case my kids wanted to go to Harvard instead of UCSD, UCLA, UCI, etc…[/quote]

Since you are retired and if your household income is below 150K, an Ivy might be cheaper or comparable to a UC. Depending on your asset. Retirement accounts and to some schools, home equity, are not considered as “asset” in their calculation of financial aid determination.

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This topic is very close to my heart as a parent of a student currently attending as a Freshman in an Ivy paying full price. She turned down UCLA with Regents Scholarship, UC Berkeley and USC with Presidential Scholarship (1/2 tuition).

It was a hard decision for us, considering the cost differences. For the record, I am not in the camp of “Ivy or bust”. Heck, me and my wife have BS degrees from a third world country and we are doing just fine. Fine enough that the Ivies considered our income high enough that we don’t need any kind of Financial aid. But we also can’t deny that having an Ivy education has a “special” pedigree.

To be clear, we are sending her to an Ivy knowing that it won’t affect our retirement contributions and with very minimal student loan. We asked her to have some loan to make sure that she’s also vested on her education. It is/wasn’t easy, believe me, but we were saving since she was born so it’s not like the whole 60K per year is coming from our current income.

I didn’t read the whole thread but just want to clear out some incorrect assumptions that I noticed.

1. Somebody mentioned that the cost of attendance (COA) for a UC is about 14K and 60K for an Ivy. 14K, is just the tuition for a UC. Total COA for UC is about 35K. So approximately, the total COA difference for four years between UC and the Ivies is about 110K to 120K, depending on the school. That 120K is probably the difference of the cost of living in Scrrips Ranch vice living in Escondido. Or maybe by not driving a Range Rover/Porsche but just having a Honda Civic or a Kia. Maybe not going to Europe for vacation but instead just driving to Arizona or Las Vegas. Or maybe not paying for an expensive extra curricular (i.e. soccer, baseball, etc.). Or maybe a combination of these things and other. But who am I to judge? And I don’t. Different people put values on different things.

2. Somebody mentioned scholarships. The Ivies don’t give merit/academic scholarship or athletic scholarship. They give “grants” and “scholarships” based on needs (income/assets). There are colleges that are just below the Ivies that gives out academic scholarship (USC is one, which my daughter got). But those are very competitive, probably more competitive than getting to an Ivy. There are outside scholarships, but getting close to 60K for an outside scholarship is close to impossible, specially for an upper middle class.

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[quote=joec]I agree that if you had to pay your whole way to a private ivy or out of state school, then the choice to go is much lower. The hope is that your kid is desired by the school (the only reason for them to go I suppose) and they will offer some type of reduced cost or at least some lower cost aid based on income…With how much these schools cost, I’d assume most normal, non 1% will qualify for some decent aid. I think the percentages are very high for ivys as to who needs/gets aid.[/quote]

My daughter is a freshmen at an Ivy. Ivy League schools and most top schools (Stanford, Caltech, MIT) DOES NOT give any merit aid. (In fact all Ivy League schools does not give athletic scholarship.) Only need-based aid. If your HH income is about 200K+/year plus decent savings, you are full pay or near full pay. The most generous are HYPS wherein, they still give you a little bit of aid even if your income is more than 220K. At the other end of the spectrum: if your HH income is below 70K, you are free or almost free to attend. The trick though is to get in.

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[quote=bearishgurl]
FYI folks: SDSU rec’d ~78K freshman and transfer apps for fall 2014 and only admitted ~7700 (<10%).
[/quote]

SDSU’s acceptance rate is way higher than 10%. Not even UCLA/Berkeley has that acceptance rate.

The 7700 figure that you quoted are the total number of students that will enroll out of the admitted students. Not all admitted students will enroll. The yield rate (enrolled/admitted) for SDSU is pretty low. Last year there are 50K+ applied, 20K+ accepted but only 3.6K enrolled as freshmen. The figure for Fall 2014 s/b not be that far off from last year.

http://www.calstate.edu/as/stat_reports/2013-2014/apps_f2013_all.htm

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[quote=joec]Yeah, I believe UCs (the “tier 1/2” ones) are pretty hard to get in now…

I’ve read especially UC Berkeley and UCLA being the toughest…(probably depending on if you want to live in nor cal or so cal…)

Then, I think UC Davis and UC San Diego are just a step below those 2.

For the people with HS kids, maybe they can share if they applied/were able to get in. It seems much harder now though from all I’ve read.
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I have a daughter who just graduated from HS. She was accepted to all UCs that she applied to including UCLA and Berkeley. In fact she was admitted as a Regent scholar at UCLA but she’s heading to an Ivy League school. It’s getting harder now to get in to UCLA and UC Berkeley but for the most part, acceptance to a UC is pretty much predictable compared to the elite private schools. If you have perfect to near perfect GPA and a decent SAT/ACT plus respectable EC’s/awards, you’re pretty much a shoo-in to UCLA/Berkeley. You can’t really say that to elite private schools since they have other qualifications and categories to fill (Under represented minorities, Athletes, legacies, donors, international, etc.).

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