Stanford cost of tuition up but free for families making less than $100k

[Arcadia]

http://www.mercuryne...ore-than-56-000

 

"Under the plan the cost of tuition is rising from $41,250 to $42,690 compared to $2,400 in 1970. Room and board will rise from $12,751 to $13,166.

Combined, the new price tag is $56,411.

Stanford says it remains committed to enough financial aid to allow any admitted student to attend. The school has a financial-aid program that provides free undergraduate tuition to families making less than $100,000 a year. Families making less than $60,000 aren't expected to pay tuition, room or board."

 

Just thought those who's family income is below 100k might be interested.

 

ETA:

Just for fun I tried the net price calculator and came up with $18k. Don't know why the calculator need the zip code info as well as the state info.

[Freckles]

Wow! I will have to look into that. We make well below 100,000.

[Kathy in Richmond]

http://www.mercuryne...ore-than-56-000

 

"Under the plan the cost of tuition is rising from $41,250 to $42,690 compared to $2,400 in 1970. Room and board will rise from $12,751 to $13,166.

Combined, the new price tag is $56,411.

Stanford says it remains committed to enough financial aid to allow any admitted student to attend. The school has a financial-aid program that provides free undergraduate tuition to families making less than $100,000 a year. Families making less than $60,000 aren't expected to pay tuition, room or board."

 

Just thought those who's family income is below 100k might be interested.

Wow! I will have to look into that. We make well below 100,000.

 

It's true (ask me how I know :-) And they don't package loans into their aid packages, either. We would have paid much more to send dd to William and Mary, the state school she was accepted at, which offered her a ton of loans and no grants.

[Jane in NC]

Kathy,

 

I have a question for you. Tuition is one thing; room and board another. Do Stanford's aid packages include grants for room, board and transportation?

 

Palo Alto is a high COLA area which puts their R&B at a higher number than many colleges. One reason that I mention this is that one of my son's friends found free tuition did not translate to a lower overall cost.

 

 

[Kathy in Richmond]

Kathy,

 

I have a question for you. Tuition is one thing; room and board another. Do Stanford's aid packages include grants for room, board and transportation?

 

Palo Alto is a high COLA area which puts their R&B at a higher number than many colleges. One reason that I mention this is that one of my son's friends found free tuition did not translate to a lower overall cost.

 

Good question, Jane. Stanford's room & board fee comes in at $12,700 for the current academic year (yikes). Almost all students live on campus, because it's even more expensive to find off-campus housing in Palo Alto.

 

Fortunately, if family income is under $100,000, grants do cover a portion of the R&B charge, increasing to full coverage of tuition, room, & board if family income is $60,000 or less.

[jennynd]

Wow.. Stinks for me....I guess I will have to quit my job and divorce my husband if my kid get accepted

[Storm Bay]

If you have a child who can get in, this is fabulous--better than Harvard where the income level for this is substantially lower (I think $60k, but since dd didn't apply, I don't remember.)

[plansrme]

Wow.. Stinks for me....I guess I will have to quit my job and divorce my husband if my kid get accepted

 

Jennynd, some folks I know take retirement from their first job just in time for the child to go to college. Once the child begins senior year, they begin their second career. Others move savings into luxury goods that will keep the value and resell. So, maybe think of buying yourself a nice vehicle for those years, take some well deserved time off, and enjoy.

 

I"m only half joking.

 

It's really devil's choice for the professional mother who took time off during the childrens' early years. To get enough years in for retirement, or even for qualifying for SS disability, she has to give up on college financial aid if she wants to stay in her field.

 

 

Funny y'all should say this, as I just had a similar conversation with my husband after running our estimates through one of the Ivies' online financial aid calculator. I don't know how it differs from federal calculations, but we would apparently be better off quitting our jobs before my oldest's senior year of high school and going to work as greeters at Walmart. The what, $30K? we would make there, plus the $65,000 cost of attending Cornell, would be a pretty nice paycheck for a no-stress job. Oh, and instead of working really hard to pay off a modest house before we have one in college, we should have taken some great vacations. And funny, but those figures do not take into account that it wasn't that long ago that we paid off our own student loans. The colleges have no obligation to extend financial aid, of course, but they are going to end up with a bunch of kids from the two ends of the financial spectrum and no one in the middle. Their family contribution plus federal taxes would be over half of our income every year, for one child. Who does that?

 

Terri

[moki4]

Does the school look at gross income? If so, it wouldn't matter which type of debt one accrues. Does anyone know if the financial obligation is based on the prior yr W2?

We have a couple of yrs yet, but this does make me sad...we would be stuck with a very large bill.

[Kathy in Richmond]

They look at your W2 and 1040 tax info for the previous tax year. For kids starting in the fall of 2013, the first year financial aid is based on your 2012 income. I know because my husband lost his job on Jan 1st of my daughter's senior year of high school. I was frankly pretty scared about how it would affect us, since all the colleges she had applied to only looked at the previous tax year, when he was employed. However, it turned out that some of most expensive schools on paper were actually most generous to us in reality.

 

Besides looking at your income, Stanford also takes into consideration your and your child's assets, parental age, number of kids in college at once, home equity (Stanford caps equity at 1.2 times annual income), business ownership, etc.

 

The article OP referenced above only states that folks with less than 100,000 income usually (depending on assets) get enough grant aid to cover tuition and fees. That doesn't preclude families with over 100K income from receiving any help! Not at all. In fact, they're quite generous to the middle class compared to most privates.

 

The government's IPEDS/College Navigator data center shows that the average net price of Stanford is $21,421. You can see there that on average, the family earning above $110K receives a $20K grant. Of course, that's not broken down very well, because "above 110K" includes a hugely varying group of students. My dd has many classmates whose families are full pay. Princeton breaks their aid categories down further here. Talking to other parents of double admits a couple of years ago, I found informally that some kids got better aid from Princeton & others from Stanford, but they weren't wildly different offers. Stanford did seem to be less generous in the upper levels of income on that chart (anecdotal only).

 

If you have typical finances (ie, aren't a business owner, no noncustodial parent situation, etc) then you can get a rough estimate of your family's cost using the Stanford net price calculator.

 

Yes, it's difficult to get admitted to a place like Stanford, & it takes a bit of good luck on top of being qualified. I would never suggest otherwise, nor suggest that a kid pin his or her hopes on such a school. It's always wise to have safer alternatives (and we absolutely made sure that our children understood that). Everyone can certainly be happy and get what they need at a wide variety of schools. But, if you have a child who might be in the running, and if you're middle class, it would be a good idea not to rule these kinds of schools out immediately without further research.

 

ETA: We are also savers, not spenders. Our mortgage was fully paid up when we applied, but due to their capping home equity as a percent of income, it didn't hurt our aid package.

[moki4]

Thank you Kathy.

This weekend I'll look over the info you've posted. Our Dd is beginning to compile her college list (maybe 10 schools). Stanford is on her list along with CalTech. Complete reach-for-the-stars schools! But yes, there are other schools and even some of our UC's look interesting. Thanks for your help:)

 

[Arcadia]

Our Dd is beginning to compile her college list (maybe 10 schools). Stanford is on her list along with CalTech. Complete reach-for-the-stars schools! But yes, there are other schools and even some of our UC's look interesting. Thanks for your help:)

 

Hubby's colleague's daughter was offered a place in Stanford and UCB last year for medical school. She picked Stanford due to the California budget mess. Her parents income was slightly over $100k and the out of pocket ends up being almost the same for both universities. Their home in San Jose was already mortgage free/fully paid up.

[moki4]

My niece is an undergrad at UCSB and my sister is paying over 1500.00 per month.

Expensive!

 

[Dana]

My niece is an undergrad at UCSB and my sister is paying over 1500.00 per month.

Expensive!

 

I know fees have gone up quite a bit, but when I went to UCSB, it was housing that cost even more than fees & books. Our monthly mortgage when we bought our house cost less than we paid in rent there.

[Trilliums]

I played around a bit with Stanford's net price calculator, quickly making up a few numbers.

 

Scenario 1: Income 110 K, 50K savings, 200K house value, 150K on mortgage. Family of 4. Estimated Net cost to family: 18K

 

Scenario 2: Income 92 K, 50K savings, 200K house value, 150K on mortgage. Family of 4. Estimated Net cost to family: 15K.

 

It is not a sudden drop off in assistance with 100K income a critical number after which no aid is available. Families over 100k AGI still calculate up as eligible for significant aid.

[Storm Bay]

http://www.mercuryne...ore-than-56-000

 

compared to $2,400 in 1970.

Just thought those who's family income is below 100k might be interested.

 

Of course, $2,400 in 1970 wasn't cheap:), just not as much above people's incomes as the prices are now. (Bring out the violin music) In 1972 you could buy a chocolate bar that was larger than the standard size now for only 10 cents, etc, etc.

[TravelingChris]

OUr net price calculator came up with 19K plus another 5 K for our daughter. If we actually have the same income and our no longer needing to help our older dd, I think maybe we would be able to do this. But that is a big maybe. WIth this sequestration looming, who knows whether my dh will get a job after he retires and his retirement pay is not equal to his current pay at all.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

Any places on the east coast as good as Stanford that are generous with financial aid for those making over 100,000?

[Muttichen]

Harvard, Princeton, and Yale also offer generous aid to families making above 100K, and they don't consider the value of your house at all.

[In The Great White North]

never mind

[TravelingChris]

I tried their calculator and they are way to expensive for us. WIth minimal savings, no home equity, but this being our youngest- we would have a net price of 37K. I don;t think she will be applying. (Not that she was interested anyway at this point).

[Dana]

It'd be really cheap for us... apart from plane tickets... They would only want us to pay $400. I can swing that!

They'd want our son to contribute $2200.

 

Of course, it's a complete longshot to get accepted.... but boy...would that be affordable!

Now to keep my husband from getting any raises.... ;)

[TravelingChris]

OUrs was over 25% of our income. That just isn't possible nor do I think it is worth it.

[Arcadia]

Stanford accepted 2,210 for class of 2017. There was 38,828 applicants.

Harvard accepted 2,029 out of 35,023

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=29107