martinimade

I have a college freshman. We are a two income, upper middle class family. We've been saving since birth, and my son had a 33 ACT score, 4.5 GPA and was awarded 36 hours of AP credit. Still, there was sticker shock for us. He got an academic scholarship that covered all of his out of state tuition except for a small gap he is taking out loans for, and we are paying room and board and fees. Our chunk is over $15k per year. $5.5k per year for dining plan, $7k for door room and then there are a myriad of other fees, and this is at a public university and with a top notch student. I feel for those families who aren't coming from the advantaged position we are. We are able to cover it without extra loans and can throw it on a credit card at the last minute if we need to. So many students have neither the scholarship nor the family resources to fall back on. We as a nation are really setting this generation up to fail with the amount of loans some of these kids are taking on if they can even get them. They are taking on the loans my friends did for medical school or law school with little guarantee of a high paying job at the end.