And who should have paid for your schooling?
Over in this thread, a number of posters are surprised that parents are fully-funding their son’s first year in college.
My parents let me live at home for free while I held down a part-time job for my undergraduate degree. I paid for ordinary expenses (parking, books, clothes and food). But now I’m curious about the experiences of others. Did you pay for it all yourself? Loans/Gants/Scholarships? Parents? Grandparents? SugarDaddy/Momma?
My parents paid all of my school fees. When I went to university and did my first degree, there were no tuition fees. I had a part-time job and a scholarship, so I paid for other costs like textbooks. I lived at home and paid board.
My employer paid all of the fees for my second degree.
undergrad: combination of different types of scholarships
law school: 54K in federal student loans, remainder almost evenly split between my parents and me. They put in just under 40K of their cash and I put in just under 30K. These loans are no biggie-I have 7 years left on them (I opted for a 10 year repayment for something like 1.6% interest). So between taking out loans & paying my own cash, I paid about 66% of it.
I’ll be paying for my own mba with federal/private loans, though my family is encouraging me to go in the area they live in so I can reduce my loans as much as possible by living with them. I went away to school both times, though going away for law school was a big mistake. My family lives within a stone’s throw of several very nice universities.
I pay my own way for everything. I have my own flat and car and have got by working every hour that Im not at uni as well as taking out student loans every year. This is my second degree so Ive racked up some pretty serious debt but hopefully I’ll have a successful career as a solicitor and will get it paid off without hassle… a girl can dream!
I am an adult student, so I’m paying for it all myself. My daughter has just started college, and she will have to pay for it herself also. We did help by taking out a PLUS loan that will go into repayment before she graduates. We also bought her car and her computer; she is responsible for spending money, car insurance, and her cell phone. She will also have to work and save as much as she can during the school year and all summer to put more toward tuition/room and board than she was able to this year.
We would have let her live at home rent-free but after reviewing commuting costs (120 mi round trip daily) versus the cost of living in a dorm, plus traveling in winter weather, we agreed with her that the dorm was a better choice this year. Next year, she won’t have a choice; she’s transferring to the main campus and will be too far away to live at home.
My mom let me live at her place, room and board. Helped me with gasoline and books. I went to college on a NDEA (National Defense Education Act) which is (was?) a low-interest loan for people who’ve been in the service.
When the loan came due and I wasn’t in a position to pay it, she made the payments until it was paid off. God bless her.
I’m living on social security now and I think the loan would have been deducted from my monthly payments if it hadn’t been paid off in the past.
The British government paid my fees, back in the day when they did that sort of thing. My parents paid my rent and gave me an allowance. They asked me not to work during term time as it would interfere with my studies. I worked during the summer vacation and paid most of my own living costs for that period.
I paid all my own everything. I was told my whole life that after I was eighteen, my parents had no interest in helping me. So I graduated from HS, got married 2 weeks later, moved about 400 miles away, and stopped speaking to the lot of them for about 4 years (they really made sure I understood I would be on my own). I’m now in a huge amount of debt I’ll never pay off, but whatever. I have a BA and an MA, and I never received a penny of support (or emotional support) from either of them.
I paid for my undergrad, although it stretched out over a total of nine years before I finished. Worked full-time and lived in a hovel but would often skip a semester or two to travel. I had a full scholarship for graduate school.
My wife’s parents paid for her until we got married (the summer before her senior and my junior year) at which point they stopped and we took over.
My parents took out a loan in their name for 2 years and I took out a loan in my name for 2 years. They were for about equal amounts but I pay both of them. My parents signed the paper and that was it, they never made any payments. I had a good bit of federal money in the form of grants and work study. I had 2 part time jobs on top of that and commuted 100 miles total a day. I wish I would have lived on campus, but that would have tacked another $20,000 easily onto my loans.:eek: I have been out of college for 3 years and have actually paid them down quite a bit.
My folks let me live at home for free - all else was paid by me.
My first year of school was paid for by scholarship for tuition and fees, parents for room, board and books. I probably would have gotten a full ride but my parents were behind in their taxes and so I couldn’t do any of the paperwork. After the first year I dropped out for a couple of years, then when I went back at age 21 I paid for everything, though I did get a small Pell grant, and took out student loans and worked to cover the rest. Personally I appreciated it a lot more when I was footing most of the bill myself.
My time at junior college was paid for in a variety of ways. I qualified for a board of governor’s fee waiver, so I didn’t have to pay tuition. For books, my now-husband paid for them out of his scholarships at UCLA. When I transferred to UCLA, the bulk of it was covered by a few scholarships and taxpayer help (thanks, guys! :D) in the form of Pell grants and university grants made up the rest.
I’ll going to whichever law school offers me the most money (if any do, but I have a feeling I’ll get anywhere from a few thou to most of it paid for at one place I’m applying to). I’m aiming for LA county district attorney’s office, rather than partner at OMM, so I’m more concerned with kicking ass at trial ad than I am with a big name school. I still expect to finance it to at least some degree, but at least my husband will have graduated by then so it won’t be nearly as bad as his post-grad financing situation.
My husband’s (private) law school has been entirely financed, and his undergrad was financed with federal loans for less than 5K. We’ve both been extremely lucky. Neither of our families are in a position to help us finance our respective educations, although they all do what they can. The only reason I was able to get this far is because my in-laws rent a finished outbuilding to us for dirt cheap. We pay half the mortgage + a share of groceries, and I’m head cook and bottlewasher for the household.
My parents refused to pay for anything. But, their incomes still counted against me when it came time to determine financial aid. I almost had to drop out my senior year because my mom had gotten a new job making a lot more than she did previously, and when they calculated my aid, they determined that all of that extra money was to go to my schooling. I was very lucky, my small, private school pulled out an $11,000 grant to keep me there.
How did I pay for school? Lots of student loans–federal and private, school grants, pell grants, the student work program and several mostly small scholarships.
I am a student right now. My father pays my tuition and a portion of my rent, I pay for the rest of the rent plus food, clothes, books, entertainment, etc. I don’t own a car and couldn’t dream of affording one right now. I’m in Canada so I believe my tuition is well below my US counterparts, but it is an amount that is gargantuan to me but reasonably affordable for my parents, ie. I’m sure they could use the money for something, but I’m not putting them in the poorhouse or anything.
My mom taught university classes for many years and always said that she could tell the kids who had to work long hours at a McJob or two, and she felt that they were not getting as much out of their education as the kids who could put the time in. I’m not sure how I personally feel about that, seeing as I’ve seen both good students with jobs and slackers with tons of free time, but that experience cemented her feelings on the matter. She strongly encouraged my brothers and I not to work long hours during term if at all possible and is, according to her, happy to invest the money into our education.
I appreciate everything they do for me, and I consider it my end of the bargain to do well and keep my grades up. It’s probably worth noting that I lived totally independent of them for about 4 years, so I know the value of what they’re giving me.
I paid for everything.
As seen in the other thread, my parents paid for my college tuition, room and board, and living expenses for my undergraduate degree (understanding that it would be no more than four years).
My husband’s parents started to pay for his, but when he dropped out he was on his own. He ended up getting a full time job and went back to school the next year, slowly working his way through over six or seven years. He never got any assistance or loans, just paid his way as best he could.
College: my parents did (tuition and fees, campus housing, $1,000 a semester for books and incidentals). I worked during the breaks, but mostly for fun money.
Grad school: my department paid for my tuition, since I was teaching; I paid for books, student fees, and pretty much everything else out of my teaching stipend, although my parents sent me money now and again.
If I have children, I hope to be able to pay their way through school, although realistically, I may not be able to afford it (unless they want to go to the same school where I teach, which may well be the last thing they want!) In general, I think it’s best if students don’t have to work during the semester; going to college is a full-time job in itself if you’re doing it properly, and it should be the student’s primary responsibility.
I teach at a public university that serves mostly first-generation, working-class students; most of them work long hours because they have to. It’s not ideal. It means that many of them can’t benefit from professors’ office hours, academic support services, or the many cultural opportunities the university offers because they’re always working when they’re not in class, and they often can’t spend an appropriate amount of time on their coursework (a three-hour-a-week class should translate to six to nine hours of work time outside of the classroom, but you can’t do that if you’re working thirty hours a week). But still, the juggling act is better than not being able to go to college at all.
Scholarships, working teaching assistanceships and a pre-doctoral non-working fellowship.
Many of my students benefit from the Georgia HOPE program - I refuse to call it a scholarship, since it is not at all competitive. It’s basically state lottery funds going into student entitlements for public undergraduate programs.
I had several merit based scholarships that paid for most of my college, which totaled about $4000/year. My parents helped out with about $1000/year. I took out a few thousand in loans. I worked a part time job during the school year, and full time in the summer. In the end, it was more than enough to pay for my state university and live in the dorms.