Middle-Class Families, Students Find Ways to Cope : Education: Some sacrifice vacations and entertainment. Others stay near home and limit their choices of colleges.

The experiences of middle-income families with college costs and financial aid vary widely. Here are some examples of how students and parents cope:

There is no use sugarcoating the cost of a private college education, Beverly Blake says. Even with substantial financial aid, she figures her daughter Robin’s recent diploma from Occidental College in Los Angeles cost the family about $70,000, including $10,000 in loans they will have to start paying back in a few months.

“It is a sacrifice. But you can do it, depending on what you want to give up,” said Blake, who is an assistant principal at a Chicago elementary school and whose husband, Milton, is a telemarketing manager for an encyclopedia company.

“You don’t eat in restaurants except for special occasions. You rent videos rather than go to the movies. You drive old cars held together with spit and glue. You don’t go out and buy new clothes or go on big vacations.”

The Blakes’ $68,000-a-year-income and other financial circumstances made Robin eligible last year for $7,500 in grants, loans and pay from a campus job at Occidental, where annual tuition and other costs were $21,600. The Blakes are grateful to the college, but wish extra aid had been available from the government. Their middle-income status qualified them for only one $3,000 federally subsidized loan over four years and no federal grants.

“You get caught between not having enough to pay, but having enough not to get all the financial aid you need,” said Robin, who is considering a career in education.

Victor Caruso Jr. will save a lot of money when he enrolls next month as a freshman at Loyola Marymount University because he will continue to live at home in Westchester, a few blocks from the campus.

But, as the oldest of four children in a family whose parents earn about $40,000 a year, Caruso still needs financial aid toward the $11,411 in tuition and fees and the $4,400 in additional estimated costs. Indeed, he received substantial help: a $7,800 grant from the school, a $2,600 Stafford loan and $2,200 in work-study money from a campus job.

His father, Victor Sr., is a self-employed repairman and his mother is a rate specialist for a mailing company. They figure they have about $180,000 in equity in the Westchester house where they have lived for 19 years. They also pay parochial school fees for two younger children--a factor that helps them in receiving financial aid at Loyola Marymount, a Roman Catholic school.

Victor Jr., who hopes to be a music and communications major, said he did not apply to out-of-town schools because “there’s too many things I have to uphold here.” Those include family responsibilities and his membership in a rock band.

His father said he thinks the aid package will get the family by if they cut back on some other expenses, such as eating in restaurants. “I would like to have more, but I appreciate what they are giving Victor,” the father said.

Irene Takushi did not even apply for financial aid. Her older sister was turned down for grants and loans a few years ago when she was a student at Cal State Los Angeles. So Irene, soon to be a freshman at UC Irvine, figured she would be turned down, too.

That may or may not be true with a family income of $50,000 and a paid-off Los Angeles house worth about $200,000. But it is a moot point because her father, Kazu, saved enough money for Irene’s UC education and is willing to spend it.

Kazu Takushi, a Japanese-American born in Hawaii and raised in Okinawa, Japan, emigrated to the mainland United States after World War II and worked as a gardener. Now he owns a martial arts supply store. “He saved a lot while he saw other people going on trips and spending money on luxuries,” said Irene, who translated for her father during an interview. “Now my education won’t be a problem for him, not something he has to worry about day in and day out.”

“ ‘It’s always nice if you can get the extra scholarship money on the side,’ ” Irene quoted her father as saying. “But he knows we can afford it and that there are families who can’t.”

Jerry Mollenkramer, a UC Irvine senior from Long Beach, says he has been financially independent of his parents for three years. But this is the first year that he could apply for financial aid based on his own income. Federal rules declare that a student is not independent until his parents do not declare him on tax forms as a dependent for at least two years.

So Mollenkramer got into the habit of working a lot as a waiter. He figures he earns about $1,200 a month and this year also will receive $400 a month for being executive vice president of the student government. The UC system is giving him a $1,300 grant this year toward the estimated $2,400 in school fees. Books, transportation and living expenses total another $7,000, UC officials estimate.

“I’m living paycheck to paycheck, but I’m making it happen,” he said.

Working off campus has hurt his grades, Mollenkramer, a social ecology major, contends. “It slows you down from getting the A versus the B. For someone aspiring to law school, that’s not so good.”