College-financing advice wanted!

Here’s the reality:  my son is a junior in high school.  He’s got good grades, but so do plenty of other kids.  He doesn’t have anything that gains him any diversity points, and he’s not going to catch anyone’s eye for leadership or community service or just plain being a good communicator, because, let’s face it, he’s not.  He had to write a practice application-style essay and it was a very painful exercise to help him through.

And here’s the further reality:  we have a pretty good chunk of assets, and make a decent some of money, and when you go onto the college financial aid calculators, well, they basically report that we can afford to pay any sum of money we want.  Yet we hear constantly about people getting good aid packages from private colleges, and from out-of-state public colleges, even when it comes to families that we have every reason to believe are as well-situated financially as we are.  Maybe they’re really paying full price, and they just are more willing to write these tuition checks than we are.

So here’s my request:  if you’re upper middle class, and you have a sky-high Expected Family Contribution, and you’re sending one or more kids to college, are you actually getting a financial aid package or some kind of “discount” or are you paying full price?

And, yes, this is a question I’d love to ask some of our acquaintances, but for the fact that it really is asking about family finances.  But, hey, Disqus is anonymous!

Image:  own photograph