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Comment by drewg123 | Hacker News Reader

The system is seems designed to screw the middle / upper middle class. My son is going to college next year. I make enough that my son will not qualify for aid, but I'm not a billionaire, so the sticker price that I'll have to pay will be enough to be painful for me.

Using the calculator at https://www.savingforcollege.com/calculators/financial-aid-c..., and setting no savings and no 529, it appears you're expected to pay about 1/4 to 1/3 of your AGI (checked at $50k and $500k and several points in between). Which basically means no relief from the sticker price at private schools if your AGI is over ~$250k, and no relief from the sticker price at even the least expensive public schools if your AGI is over ~$80K.

Or am I missing something?

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Have him claim he's homeless. At least when I was in college they didn't and couldn't really check, and allows him to claim $0 parental income.

Do not go into debt for college if at all humanly possible. Fuck the system, it's designed to fuck you.

I'd say the middle has it the worst. By the time you get to those much beyond 80k (you're going to have to regionally adjust that, remembering the median US household income is 70k) 1/3 your AGI still leaves you with more remaining income than those in the middle started with and by the time you hit 250k I think you should be hard pressed to try to find a reason to complain about lack of financial relief beyond it not being a fully subsidized system for all or similar (in which case you're still paying anyways, just differently).

The middle class has it the worst because their kids will have a lot of trouble getting accepted to prestigious universities due to the quality of their education + "non-academic factors" that heavily bias towards the upper classes ( see https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/C... ).

The financials are almost secondary to that, although there's also a lot of bad targeting by kids in those (where you'd go out of state / private instead of going to your flagship public and save a lot of tuition $$$).

Can you disown your son so that he shows up as an adult whose family does not make any money . That way he would be eligible for aid and grants ?

LMAO no. Everyone has this idea, and if it were allowed, who wouldn't do it? The way that financial aid works (albeit this is based on a few years ago), it's very very hard to get out from under your parents. It's so extreme that it hurts people.

It's not that unusual to find wealthy parents that refuse to help their children at all, even though they didn't do anything, and are fine people. I'm a bit unsympathetic to OP, but the young adults that have literally nothing thanks to the whim of some asshole... that's really tough, and a flaw in the system.

Anyway, there are rare cases, I believe, but the government makes this very difficult. If you grew up in a normal household, live an ordinary life, but your parents refuse to pay, you're out of luck. You will struggle to get this even if you're estranged from extremely abusive parents.

It hurt me while I was in school in the late 80s. I applied early decision to CMU, and was accepted. My parents were older, and very financially conservative, and were not high income. When I got the aid package, I found out that I qualified for basically 0 aid, and my parents were expected to re-mortgage their modest house to pay for my education (which I would not have asked them to do). I withdrew and attended a state school where I got a merit scholarship (but had to start 1 semester late, due to early decision).

It seems like home equity does not count these days, which is an improvement I guess.

I don't think "disown" is the word you want to use here. In English, "disown" means that you refuse to acknowledge that he is your son at all, not in a legal sense, but in a social sense, i.e. "I hate you so much I no longer consider you my son". I think you probably mean, "Can you declare your son as not a dependent", not "Can you disown your son" :)

The more precise word would be "emancipate"

Yes you can. Marriage, military service, or being over age 23 are sufficient in the USA for this purpose

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