Paid College Tuition Just Now

[Tom Bri]

I just paid, like 2 minutes ago, my daughter's Fall university tuition. Speaking of badassity, give her a round of applause. At a major huge university with a yearly tuition of $35K, she paid for it all except $480. I just chipped in that last little bit.
She worked hard, got great grades, did well on the ACT, and then spent all last year hunting up and applying for scholarships, which covered everything except the above-mentioned $480.
Proud Dad.

[College Stash]

Sounds similar to my story. Congrats!

[Tom Bri]

The last $500 scholarship came in yesterday.
Good job, College Stash. People whine about how expensive it is, but if the kid is willing to bust her butt, it isn't bad. What are you taking/

[mxt0133]

So the Fall semester cost you a whopping $480?

Would you mind elaborating when you say, "she paid for it all" of the 35K?  Did she do it all on scholarships?  Did she work?  Doing work study?  Are the scholarships all for the 4 years or are some one time scholarships?

[Tom Bri]

Elaborate. Okay, a lot of the scholarships are not automatic. Some were one time only, others depend on grade point so to keep it she will have to get excellent grades, others are freshman only. To keep up this rate of income she will have to continue to hustle. Right now it looks like Spring semester we will be paying quite a bit more, maybe as much as $5k, since one of the bigger ones is for the entire school year, but all of it is applied in the first semester.
And, sophomore year no idea what she will get. She has been offered work by her department, but nothing has come of that yet. There are other scholarships available that are only for sophomores, and later others that are only for juniors and seniors. I hope she doesn't burn out on the effort of applying for all this stuff, along with her coursework.
Reading my original post, it implies that I am paying $480 for the whole year, but obviously that is only for the first semester. I was pretty excited when I wrote that post.

[mxt0133]

That's still pretty impressive.  If you calculate the amount of time she is spending on researching and finding scholarships, I can guarantee you that it is more than any job she could get currently on a per hour basis.

I mean even if she spent 4 weeks at 40 hours per week to earn the 17k for the fall semester, that works out to $106.25/hr post tax which would work out to something like $135/hr.

I say have her spend her time finding scholarships vs a retail job.  This just teaches her about efficient use of her time.

[Gerard]

Scholarships are often cumulative (like, you get #20 because the committee says, "Wow! She's got 19 scholarships!"), so yeah, congratulations to you and your daughter, and keep going for them!

I'm assuming people with your level of fecal concatenation don't need much advice, but the one thing I would watch if I was your daughter is time management and the appropriate amount of time devoted to each class. Four As and an F can really screw up that scholarship gravy train.

[Kimchi Bleu]

Nice!  Told my daughter she needs to start applying for scholarships soon.

[goatmom]

Wow!  That is so awesome!  We are looking for outside scholarships but it gets somewhat frustrating.  Many are tied to financial need and we don't meet that criteria.  Kid #1 had the amount of his financial aid lowered by the total amount of all outside scholarships so all that work for nothing.  Kid #2 had forfeited fifty percent of any outside scholarship taken off the merit scholarship she received from the school.  Discouraging.  Where did you find any good merit-based scholarships?  We are trying to help out Kid # 3 who is now a junior.  Again - congrats to your daughter! 

[Tom Bri]

Goatmom, a lot of the suggestions came from the school academic counselor. Others she googled for. Initially I did a lot of googling too, and would forward her emails full of links. I soon discovered that I was finding little that she hadn't already seen, but maybe a few of them were original. Also, friends who knew we were looking would email me links or even scans of newspaper articles mentioning different local scholarships.
I suspect that a big part of her success was her major, a stem field with few aggressive females in an environment where money for women is flooding in, and lot of local business interest in that field.
There are free websites that accumulate lists of scholarships, and the schools do too.

[goatmom]

Thanks!  I guess we get frustrated when so many scholarships have fine print about financial need and we are both working and don't qualify.  I can't complain as Child 2 is going to school almost for free on a merit based scholarship from her university. But she did have to forfeit some of her outside scholarships which I thought was frustrating. I guess the lesson is just keep looking and applying.  And child number 3 is  a girl looking to do engineering.  So, maybe she should start making a list of all the scholarships.

[Gerard]

I guess we get frustrated when so many scholarships have fine print about financial need and we are both working and don't qualify.

But kudos to you on this, anyway. By having your financial act together, you and your kids have freed up those scholarships for some young person you don't even know, and their adult life will start off better without the burden of  debt! That's a significant contribution to society.

[Cwadda]

Wishing I had applied for more scholarships and did better on the AP exams when I was in high school. I only got 1/4 of my total cost covered, and that's just for a state university with $23k/yr.

[goatmom]

Thank you Gerard.  This is true.  Many parents are not willing to help their kids so the fact that parents are both working hurts a hardworking kid whose parents believe that parents should not contribute.  These are the kids stuck in the middle that often graduate with mountains of debt.  The poorer kids usually get pretty good financial aid packages.

[Tom Bri]

One thing kids can do is move out of their parent's home and work for a year. This establishes them as independent, and their own income is the deciding factor, not their parent's. Plus, being a year older and wiser is a huge advantage in college. Professors are VERY appreciative of these more mature students.
My daughter originally planned to go out of state, and I suggested she live with relatives in that state for a year to establish residency.
Another option is ROTC.

[Left]

And get a returning student scholarship too? I got a full 6 year ride because I spent most of my time applying for every one I could get. I even applied to a minority and women one and got $500 for being an inner city male... who knew that counted as a minority lol, not based on race just location and gender

Don't let the six years fool you, I didn't flunk or anything, I came out with multiple degrees two of which are biology degrees...

[Bajadoc]

College is just a formality for your daughter. She is already smart and resourceful. You are a lucky man.

[Gin1984]

One thing kids can do is move out of their parent's home and work for a year. This establishes them as independent, and their own income is the deciding factor, not their parent's. Plus, being a year older and wiser is a huge advantage in college. Professors are VERY appreciative of these more mature students.
My daughter originally planned to go out of state, and I suggested she live with relatives in that state for a year to establish residency.
Another option is ROTC.

That is no longer true.

[Left]

One thing kids can do is move out of their parent's home and work for a year. This establishes them as independent, and their own income is the deciding factor, not their parent's. Plus, being a year older and wiser is a huge advantage in college. Professors are VERY appreciative of these more mature students.
My daughter originally planned to go out of state, and I suggested she live with relatives in that state for a year to establish residency.
Another option is ROTC.

That is no longer true.

why not? Because they can't afford a vacation,car,pet,sex toys on their own?

[mxt0133]

One thing kids can do is move out of their parent's home and work for a year. This establishes them as independent, and their own income is the deciding factor, not their parent's. Plus, being a year older and wiser is a huge advantage in college. Professors are VERY appreciative of these more mature students.
My daughter originally planned to go out of state, and I suggested she live with relatives in that state for a year to establish residency.
Another option is ROTC.

That is no longer true.

why not? Because they can't afford a vacation,car,pet,sex toys on their own?

To be considered independent for FAFSA reasons, you either have to be married, have a dependent that is not your child or spouse, or are in the military/veteran, ect... 

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/dependency

[Left]

To be considered independent for FAFSA reasons, you either have to be married, have a dependent that is not your child or spouse, or are in the military/veteran, ect... 

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/dependency

sorry I'm still not following your train of thought... yes I get the FAFSA thing...
what I don't understand is why you can't move out, work a year and establish residency, and THEN get IN-STATE tuition...

There are more ways of getting scholarships/grants than through FAFSA... This is my complaint about students these days, they only "lookup" things that are handed too them. They are told FAFSA and think, oh I'll just look it up and apply, and don't even look up scholarships outside of it. FAFSA is only a federal needs based program. There are private need based, private merit based, and just scholarships to promote diversity... Students can't "think outside the box" in that unless they are given the forms on a silver plate, they don't go looking for them on their own. If they did, they would realize FAFSA isn't even all that big of a deal

of my scholarships, I think FASFA only got me 10% of the money, because as I got more money else where, my "need" basis dropped. Hell you can even do bright flight scholarship if you score well on the ACT in Missouri. This is a full ride, no regard to anything except ACT score... I'm sure other states has a similar program but I'd be guessing if I said they did.

[mxt0133]

In reference to the statement:

One thing kids can do is move out of their parent's home and work for a year. This establishes them as independent, and their own income is the deciding factor, not their parent's.

This is not true.  Your parents income will be calculated when deciding what the expected contribution is for the student, even if you have moved out of the house.  The statement says nothing about private scholarships.

[Gin1984]

To be considered independent for FAFSA reasons, you either have to be married, have a dependent that is not your child or spouse, or are in the military/veteran, ect... 

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/dependency

sorry I'm still not following your train of thought... yes I get the FAFSA thing...
what I don't understand is why you can't move out, work a year and establish residency, and THEN get IN-STATE tuition...

There are more ways of getting scholarships/grants than through FAFSA... This is my complaint about students these days, they only "lookup" things that are handed too them. They are told FAFSA and think, oh I'll just look it up and apply, and don't even look up scholarships outside of it. FAFSA is only a federal needs based program. There are private need based, private merit based, and just scholarships to promote diversity... Students can't "think outside the box" in that unless they are given the forms on a silver plate, they don't go looking for them on their own. If they did, they would realize FAFSA isn't even all that big of a deal

of my scholarships, I think FASFA only got me 10% of the money, because as I got more money else where, my "need" basis dropped. Hell you can even do bright flight scholarship if you score well on the ACT in Missouri. This is a full ride, no regard to anything except ACT score... I'm sure other states has a similar program but I'd be guessing if I said they did.

Well for one, that was not what you originally said, you said "establishes them as independent" which means independent per the FASFA in college terms.  However, in regard to in-state tuition, that is state dependent if you can follow your advice.  Some states go by your parent's residence to determine in state or out of state as long as you are a dependent (as defined by the FAFSA).

[Left]

hm I didn't bring up the dependent thing though :D

Didn't know other states did it differently, for me it was just moving out and living on own for a year and having my name on the rent for a year and paying taxes for that year

pretty much like this http://www.ucop.edu/residency/establishing-residency.html but I didn't go to california it was just on top of google search

[KCM5]

hm I didn't bring up the dependent thing though :D

Didn't know other states did it differently, for me it was just moving out and living on own for a year and having my name on the rent for a year and paying taxes for that year

Good thing everyone else is around to point out how it's not anywhere near that simple :)

But kudos to Tom Bri's daughter! Keep her grades up, keep applying for scholarships and she'll be good to go!

Curious, Tom, do you plan on paying your daughter's living expenses (rent, food, etc)? Or is that included in your calculations?