<p>That a separate email was sent to you is because the school is acknowledging that the PLUS is an option and not part of the financial aid award. There are sadly schools that throw in the PLUS option right along with the other financial aid awards as though they are actually awarding the student something when they are not. </p>
<p>Here is my take on the situation, just a guess, and you will have to talk directly to the financial aid office to get their explanation: You have an EFC from the FAFSA, which the school is acknowledging. However, being that this is a PROFILE school, they meet full need only according to their own formula and their institutional family contribution does not equal the FAFSA EFC. It rarely does. First of all, even the most generous schools start out with a flat amount student contribution required. That’s often even for zero EFC students. The school wants that money from the student each year. It could be as high as $6K from what I have seen. Then with PROFILE schools, a primary home is often considered an asset. So whatever equity you have in that home can get hit up. Also your son’ 529 plan gets hit with a contribution amount as well. For Fafsa. the home equity is not counted at all and the 529 plan gets assessed as a parental asset with the asset protection applied and then 5.6% applied to the excess. Not necessarily so with PROFILE schools. They do not have to use the same formulas that FAFSA uses, and often do not regarding assets. Some of them will even go after qualified plans, take the value of your cars as assets, and use any percentage they please. The school sees the discrepancy between their award and the EFC and is suggesting that you take out PLUS to meet the gap.</p>
<p>Again this is just my guess on what might have happened. Do call the financial aid office and get an explanation has to why you have this gap between your EFC and their contribution, and also why their own NPCs are so inaccurate. </p>
<p>It is a huge lacking in clarity that school financial aid data does not give percentage of aid given in terms of EFC. It’s ridiculous, IMO, to have percentages of need met when the school that use PROFILE and other information other than the FAFSA to give aid and then they report the percentage of need met based on their own parameters. So this school meets 100% of need as the school itself defines it, not as FAFSA does. I do not know a single school that guarantees to meet its COA as defined by FAFSA. Not a one. The NPCs are a huge help in showing how a school calculates in aid, but in this case there is a huge fail, and if the reason is simply the Home equity and 529, that is a huge fail on the part of the college. As Thumper points out in her post, there are things that often do not get reflected on the NPC, such as home business expenses and other unusual financial holdings and situations that are simply too cumbersome to put into an estimator. Some things are just individually assessed so they cannot be put into an estimator, but it is crucial IMO to include certain standard things that are assessed differently by a school, and home equity and 529s are as basic and standard as they come.</p>
<p>You are highly unlikely to get need fully met as defined by the EFC, but schools have their own formulas and hopefully the other schools’ packages will be closer to the FAFSA need and have more than self help in them. Though DIrect Student Loans and Perkins Loans and Workstudy are legitimately considered financial aid in the common data base, they really are not in that the loans do have to be repaid and it’s really just subsidy of the interest while the student is in school of the subsidized loans that is given to the student, as well as the consideration of getting a loan at such interest rates at such a young age without the credit history. The $5500 Direct Student loan is available at most any college as long as full COA is not covered by merit or other awards, though on a fuily unsubsidized basis if it isn’t included in teh aid package and can be used towards the EFC. The same goes for the hours one is awarded for work study. Very nice, but the student then has to use those work hours and the pay earned from them towards the aid, not towards the EFC. A kid who has zero financial need, Trump’s kids, could take out the $5500 Direct Loan and work a part time job to pay his costs. So on that perspective, they aren’t giving you much with those Direct Loans. </p>