As you all know, college decisions will be released soon. If accepted, the envelope will likely carry a sheet of paper discussing financial aid over the next four years. This leads me to my blog topic of the week: is the current system of awarding financial aid to students flawed?
I come from a relatively well-off family. I am not spoiled and my parents are still quite miserly (except when it comes to vacations), but I do not need to worry about paying for my college education. My parents have saved money over the years to pay for it. After reading up about how financial aid is awarded, however, I have wondered whether or not my parents did the correct thing by saving up. Currently, the system works so that students who come from families who do not have significant savings or from a family making less than 250K will get some sort of financial aid. If, however, either of these requirements are invalidated, then the college gives little to no aid. My father and I were having a discussion about this and he gave me one piece of advice: if I think that I will be worth 250K (the sum of 4 years of tuition, room, and board), then I can attend (insert name of private school) over the University of Kentucky where I will not be paying anything to attend. This was really interesting because I believe that these private universities have a lot to offer in terms of cultural enrichment, research opportunities, and connections that public universities do not.
I have wanted to attend a private university (because of the abundant opportunities) for a long time, but now I am seriously considering otherwise. I do not want my parents to bear the consequences for saving money. Does anyone else agree with me that this system is broken? My family may be able to pay, but that does not mean 60K is a negligible sum of money.
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