School Project Help?

Now double that for being out of state

UM offered no scholarships for my son BUT he quickly found a great campus job which he has had since the first week of freshman year. They even managed to keep him employed all through the shutdown. They worked well with his schedule and he, overall, just really enjoys his job (the Tech Shop, formerly known as the Computer Showcase).

My other word of advice is to look closely at the loans you are offered in the financial aid package. We were offered a small loan in our financial aid package and my husband thought my son should do it in order to have "some skin in the game"... turns out it was one of the loans that immediately started adding interest from day one instead of those that start post graduation.

 

Done! But I just realized I made a mistake. I said no debt and no financial aid, but I did have a $2000/year merit scholarship.

I went to college in the mid-90's and we've started researching for my son, who is a HS junior. My husband and I have an income roughly comparable to my parents'. But as of when I went to college, I could look at private or public, in state or out of state. My kids are basically going to have to choose between graduating debt free from one of our in-state public universities or taking out loans. My junior is a great student with very good test scores, and we still expect him to get no scholarship offers (at least not from schools he'd seriously consider). Thankfully we have a very good state college system here in Virginia, since I'm pretty sure that both of my college-bound kids will end up there.

 

I filled it out twice - once for myself and once for my twin girls who graduated a year ago. Things have changed so much in a generation, and not in a good way.

I didn't think to save what I wrote for myself before submitting, but here is the gist of what I said about me.
I had financial help for both my undergrad and grad degrees, and was able to graduate without any financial debt for both degrees I earned.
For undergrad, BS 1994, I had several small scholarships from the university and my major department that helped, but did not cover all costs. My parents paid for the rest with money from my grandmother's estate that they had saved for that purpose. I worked on campus part time during the school year and full time during the summer to earn money as well.
For my grad degree, MS 1998, I was supported by a departmental graduate fellowship that covered tuition and gave some money for living expenses. I was a TA to earn the living expense dollars. The last 2 years of my grad degree I was supported by a National Science Foundation Fellowship that I applied for and was lucky enough to receive. It replaced the university fellowship that I had been receiving and was roughly equivalent in award.

Here is what I wrote for my daughters:
Answering for my twin daughter's who just graduated with the BS degrees from University of Alabama a year ago (May 2020). They were supported during their years of university by full tuition (out of state) scholarships they earned based on their high school GPA and ACT test scores. We helped them pay any school fees and housing costs. They graduated with about $20K in debt each, which was basically housing and food costs for those years. They both worked part time during school as well. They were able to find jobs right out of school and are working to pay them off now. As part of building your credit score is based off of showing you can pay on loans consistently, there is not a huge rush to do pay them off. They had a mix of subsidized (interest doesn't accrue until after you graduate) and non-subsidized (interest starts accruing the minute you take the money and is typically higher) loans over the years. They have paid off the non-subsidized loans already I believe.
Note: UAH was looking to increase/better their student population when my daughters were finishing high school and was offering really nice scholarships to large numbers of students. They have adjusted their score tables now that they have expanded enrollment enough there and my girls wouldn't qualify for that level of scholarship there anymore.

Now, for example number 3 in our family, which I didn't fill out the form for since she is graduating from high school next month:
She will attend a state university, which with tuition, fees and housing costs will amount to about $25K per year. She is a very good student, but not outstanding in science or math, so that makes it extremely difficult to compete for scholarship money. She has not received any scholarships of the ones she has applied for. Her school of choice did not offer her any scholarship money at all. She will take the loans for the housing costs like her sisters did, and I guess we are figuring out how to pay the rest as her parents. I'm not really sure how my husband is going to work that, but I'm sure he has a plan. We do have some money we have been putting away in education accounts because we were pretty sure this is what was going to happen when we got to her since the older kids are not in college anymore, but that won't be near enough. The amount of debt she knows she is going to be in when she gets done makes her nervous, but wanting to go into elementary education you have to get the degree to get the job.

 

filled it out based on my son. He doesn't have to start paying back his loan until November. He has to return in September for 2 classes (don't get me started) so he will be able to ask for a 6 month deferral. Based on the calculations it will take him 9 years to pay off his debt! I think he will be living in my basement for a while.......

 

Have you checked if your state has any incentives for prospective teachers? Our state (NC) will pay for college for teachers as long as they end up teaching in the state. Kind of a loan that is then forgiven when they start teaching. Not sure how long they have to teach within the state.

 

I haven’t answered the survey only because I’m not “local” but I’ll add my two cents in incase it helps.

Yes, I attended college or the equivalent

Still got a big student loan (a full time course costs about $6-7000 so I was roughly accruing $8-9k a year for several years while I was studying). We only start paying it off through our taxes at 12% I think after a certain income threshold and unless I end up with some short term contract work I don’t have to legally pay anything yet.
Paying it off won’t be too bad as it’s automatically done through our tax system. For the few times where I’ve worked even though over all I’m under the income threshold annually I earned too much that week, I’ve just left the payments as is since ultimately it reduces how much I owe plus it’s got to be paid off eventually anyway - basically I didn’t want to have to sit on the phone and talk to the tax department!

Financial aid outside of scholarships aren’t available here and as my grades were fair to good I wasn’t eligible really. It’s also super hard to get any help in that way if you aren’t straight out of high school or meet other cultural criteria. I bet if I was 18 with A’s & A+ grades, going to the closest college and of the dominant culture, scholarships might have been an option. I applied for my degree at the age of 25 with 5 weeks to go before the degree started so I had no chance.

 

She is aware things like that exist out there, but we have not looked into it much at this point. I think that is typically something you sign up for when you are graduating and looking for a job. Just trying to finish this crap-tastic school year at this point and get her graduated from high school.

 

the out of state costs are the worst!

 

sorry I missed this Karen, just seeing it now, good luck to your son on his project!

 

At one point, NC was offering this to college freshman for 4 years of college. You could sign up when you started. Not sure if NC still has this program or not.

Sorry her senior year is going so bad. I do understand that feeling. I hope things work out for her.

 

One surprise we had when college hunting was this: We were looking at colleges that had an ice rink nearby or on campus that also had my DD's program of study, which narrowed the search from the start. One was SUNY Oswego, way upstate NY and in a smaller town than she wanted to be in. The Admissions staff was so impressed that someone from Virginia came all that distance for a tour that they offered her a grant for out of state students who had made that trip, basically bringing her tuition to within $1,000 of in-state. She ended up not going there because she opted for an in-state city-based university, but we were amazed of their generosity! The lesson is that it doesn't hurt to show interest and ask if there were any un-advertised options out there.

 

It's not going badly, just not like we had hoped - even with adjusting expectations for changes due to the pandemic. Still lots of things that just didn't happen because of the way this has all dragged out.