That was pretty much what they did, but at the time, the NPC’s were generally not as good as they are now, so they made us feel comfortable in simply asking. Also, they knew that some of the schools on the list had different fees that would only apply to certain majors, and how hard of a time some kids have at some schools finding the time to earn the student contribution - work-study jobs are really not worth $2500 at $10/hour if you cannot get 250 hours due to sports or other activities. As you try to plan for the worst case, you don’t know everything so you have to make educated guesses. There are so many assumptions about the cost increases, and net cost for younger siblings, etc. so it is pretty much guaranteed that your estimates will likely be wrong.
I wanted to have an idea as to how bad it would get when my oldest started applying. With one in school, and a family of 5, vs two in school as a family of 5, then with 2 in school as a family of 4, and finally 1 in school as a family of 3. But to help us to understand how it would work, they pretended that ALL of the family would be going to Williams. The first 2 years was easy, then re-run the NPC with different family size etc. but 2 in school at the same time, then keep going.
We had comparably very minimal assets, but what we had was a lot to us. They were very sensitive to this process and made me feel that they totally understood where we were coming from, what we were trying to get a handle on, and while they clear that they weren’t able to completely predict future changes to their FA policy, they were very reassuring, to the point we realized that as long as the pups did well, then the schools in play that meet full need will be able to help until the youngest is done.
It also made it clear to us that the Flagship U’s full tuition scholarships would not have been the best financial choice for our son’s needs.