Financial Aid for College

I don't have detailed answers to all your questions, but I do know from personal experience that even if the student is not eligible for need-based financial aid, some private schools will still give you an "atta-boy" (or girl) scholarship, just as an incentive to attend, I guess. For example, a private school with $26K annual tuition+room/board gave one of my children a "President's Scholarship" each year that was good for $6K off the bill, and I think the FAFSA application was a prerequisite to get it even though it wasn't really need-based, along with maybe a certain grade point average (don't recall all the details).

While I found the FAFSA application annoyingly and unnecessarily nosy about various areas of finance, I don't think there is really much downside to filling it out, after all these days much of your financial life isn't really "private" any more what with bank mergers, credit bureaus, direct deposit and electronic bill pay, Patriot Act reporting, and so on. Your data is lumped in with thousands if not millions of other peoples, so I don't think you're likely to attract any special attention. At least they don't ask for specific account numbers and such, just total dollar amounts by category.

Usually it's just friends, relatives, neighbors and co-workers who we don't want to have knowledge of our finances -- strangers are fine! ;-)

-Mark Bole

My child was also given such an offer. It came recently with the letter of acceptance, without FAFSA involved.

Our kids went to college a dozen yrs ago, and our FAFSA applications didn't amount to anything for us. Bottom line is that, if you successfully save and invest money for the future, your kids will probably not qualify for college financial aid. The best you can do is hope they get academic scholarships and maybe loans that THEY can pay off in the future. Now, at least, there are grants based on passing state standarized tests and other tax perks for college tuition payments. These have come into existence SINCE our kids went to college, so we didn't even have those benefits. Also, we compounded the problem by saving the kids' college money in their SS#'s (to lessen the tax bite). Ha! That was even worse with regards to qualifying for FAFSA. Furthermore, any child over 18 can get their "college funds" out and spend it on whatever they have a whim to, no matter what parents have saved it for. Fortunately, our kids didn't, but we had a couple scares along the way. Never think that YOUR kids will not go crazy and wipe out their college accounts. My advice is to bite the bullet & pay what you want to. Make your kids work during summers/weekends & plunk some money down themselves so they appreciate it all. They can take out a few loans too. College costs have gone up much faster than inflation. It is my opinion that state universities are much cheaper and it is not worth the money to go to an Ivy League school for an undergrad degree. If your kid can commute from home to a community college for a year or two, you can even save more. It all depends on the attitude of your child and how much confidence you have that they are ready. One more thing--check out their career choice before you spend lots of money putting them thru school--don't give them money to major in business or psychology, etc. It's hell when your kid comes back home with degree in hand & can't get a job. If they have flaky academic skills, a trade or vocational program is best. SandyBeth

Some Ivies give much more aid than FAFSA suggests. See article about Harvard and Princeton.