Family photo courtesy of Sabrina Malone
Editor’s Note: This originally appeared as a post in our private Facebook group, Paying For College 101.
Can anyone relate to the feeling of “We might be able to swing one or two — but definitely not six?”
(Yeah. Me, too.) Yet, somehow, we have been able to swing the cost of college for the first five out of our six kids.
Our Strategy
It’s largely been to support academic excellence to the best of our ability. Our kids stay for after-school help, take SAT prep, sign up for EC’s that demonstrate leadership and commitment, and they get help with their essays. Furthermore, their college lists consist primarily of safety schools. Specifically, colleges that offer competitive full tuition scholarships (or more) based on academic merit to their top applicants, which we aim for our kids to be among.
Our Results
- Firstborn got a full-tuition scholarship to a state school, then sophomore year became an RA (free room) and was awarded enough small private scholarships that the last three years were essentially free. (Yay!)
- Second-born went to a generous “meets full need with no loans” college. We could afford it because the entire time she was enrolled, she would have multiple siblings also in college, plus two siblings still at home. Even on paper (and much more so in real life), our need was significant, and the school policy was to meet it. Because of that, we paid less than 10% of their sticker price.🥲
- Third-born applied almost exclusively to safety colleges offering academic merit, full scholarships. We officially had no more college savings money left at that point. She was aware we would have to cash flow her college choice, and there wasn’t going to be a lot of cash available to flow. Thankfully, she was offered four full-rides and four full-tuition scholarships. 👍 (She chose one of the full rides.)
- Fourth-born applied to just three local colleges. Chose one offering a full tuition scholarship and commuted from home. We paid for books and the commuter meal plan.👍
- Fifth-born applied last year primarily to safeties. The landscape for affordability in higher education had changed. Applied to 16 schools: three “meets full need” reach schools (deferred, denied and waitlisted at those); three target schools, one which offered full tuition plus a bit of need aid on top; and 10 safety schools. (Got into all of those and was offered one full ride, but chose the target that we could afford.)
So, take heart if you’ve got a fairly high SAI but nowhere near enough college savings and if (thanks to the cost of living) you can’t even claim to have enough discretionary income to be able to cash-flow a whole lot for college. All hope isn’t lost.
You’re simply going to need to be more strategic about this and more intentional about stretching your dollars to maximize options.
In full disclosure, we ran out of college savings by the time our third and fourth kids were applying to college. We knew we would. We also knew we could only cash-flow about $1,000 a month out of our budget. A proverbial drop in the bucket when split between four kids in college.
We also projected that going into parental student loan debt (times six kids, for a total of 48 semesters) would be absurd. We knew we couldn’t afford even small amounts of student loan debt in our names. Especially since my husband will be 67 years old when our youngest graduates from college…😳 No guarantees he or I would still even be able to work enough to afford college payments by then, much less try to do that while paying back any loan debt.
We. Have. Been. There.
So here’s my best advice for people in situations where they’re doing the math, running net price calculators, and discovering they’ll need a minor miracle to afford college:
- (Controversially) Don’t be afraid to encourage (and facilitate) high stats in high school and make sure they’re turning in well-done college applications and essays. If you’re positive your kid is going to need the options that being a top applicant provides, do everything in your power to make sure that they are.
- Be humble. Let your kid know as early as 9th grade that you’re anticipating not having enough money to fully pay for college. At least not doing it “like everyone else does.” They need to know that their own academic excellence can be leveraged for merit scholarships at some colleges. And make sure your kid applies to several colleges that do offer pretty significant scholarships, even if they’ll have to compete to be offered a top one.
- Cast a wide net. Apply to as many colleges that show potential for being affordable with a decent chance of admission as you possibly can. Get your act together and apply early. (Generally speaking, there are better chances of admission early.) And if housing is guaranteed, try to enroll in the eleventh hour, in late April. Why? Because colleges that aren’t meeting their enrollment goals typically offer even more scholarships to “accepted-but-not-yet-enrolled” students when the May 1st decision deadline looms closer. (Three of my kids got offered thousands of dollars more in renewable scholarships from colleges in the last week before the enrollment deadline.) 👍
- If your kid can get into a “meets full need without loans” college, be encouraged. In situations like this, running out of savings won’t be the worst thing in the world. Check with your own financial advisor, but in our situation, running out of college savings meant our need for aid in the final years went way up. In the end, neither we nor our child had to take loans to afford a college with a sticker price of nearly $90k a year! Generous need-based aid comes into play at schools that offer it. Be forewarned, most colleges don’t offer generous need aid. But some do, even for families making as much as $300k a year. Caveat? Those schools wind up inundated with qualified applicants, and they deny the overwhelming majority of students who apply … hence, the importance of option 3.
Hope this helps!
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Use R2C Insights to help find merit aid and schools that fit the criteria most important to your student. You’ll not only save precious time, but your student will avoid the heartache of applying to schools they aren’t likely to get into or can’t afford to attend.
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