Not shocking, to say the least.
Admit-deny. Been there, know the feeling.
I wonder if this has changed over the last few decades.
My parents told me that they could pay $X for school, and that dictated where I applied. I’m sure that is still happening (I see it at my “affordable” college), but has something shifted overall in terms of application numbers/expectations?
What has shifted is the rise in cost of the higher end colleges.
But if 60% still say yes, they don’t have any incentive to reduce prices.
Sure, but I was wondering if more people are applying to schools they know they can’t afford now vs. in the past and if so, why that would be.
just curious, does it really that much for colleges to educate a student, or do you think they have high prices because of other colleges putting out high prices?
small nit, but methinks that the headline is off by a factor of 2x
And, what this doesn’t say is not that the #1 college is unaffordable, just that the student chose not to attend. Perhaps #2 (or #3) is much more affordable due to big merit money. For example, turn down Georgetown at sticker for a big merit discount at George Washington.
@bgbg4us , lack of cost control (primarily because of federal loans) and financial aid are two of the major reasons for the increase in college sticker prices.
I think a lot of colleges have crappy net price calculators, students think they’ll get more money than they end up with. With schools that meet need, at least you know what you’ll get, with school’s that don’t meet need it’s a bit of a crapshoot. My daughter has always dreamed of going to NYU. If I run the NYU net price calculator it looks like they’d fall in the doable range for us, yet I know they have a crappy reputation for aide. If she gets in, which is a big if, she will likely have to decline because they won’t give her anywhere near what their NPC indicates. The overall skyrocketing cost of education and the caps on student loans are certainly a factor too.
@bluebayou - sometimes you have to read past the third paragraph to understand an article:
This isn’t true at all – there is tremendous variation in need based aid because colleges rely on different information and apply different policies in calculating need. NPC’s are at best a rough approximation.
We didn’t have any meet need schools on our list, we’re full pay at our publics, but if a school “meets need” they don’t give you up to your EFC?
Colleges do not meet FAFSA EFC.
They use their own formulas to determine need, usually requiring the submission of extra financial information not included or required by the FAFSA. This includes information about assets & income that is not counted with FAFSA. Most colleges use the CSS Profile, but some have their own financial aid forms use either instead of or in addition to CSS Profile. The CSS Profile is an information form, but does not yield an EFC calculation. Each college has their own policies as to how they consider and factor in additional information beyond the FAFSA.
The FAFSA EFC is only relevant to determine eligibility for federal aid: federal loans, Pell grants, and federal work study eligibility. Federal aid eligibility is the same no matter what college the student attends; students seeking need based aid are essentially applying for grant aid from their chosen colleges to supplement the very limited amount of federal aid available.
Huh, ok. We had many CSS schools and I thought CSS would be more favorable because it accounted for more of our expenses. At any rate, we’ve seen a wide variance in the accuracy of NPC’s now that we’re getting actual offers on the table.
The CSS doesn’t set an EFC – it just is a tool which gathers more information. Each college can do what it wants want with information. In rare cases the college could in fact determine a greater level of need than FAFSA, mostly because some colleges will consider tuition paid for private schools for siblings as an income-reducing expense. However, because most private colleges also consider home equity as resource, it is much more common to see that the college will expect the family to pay more than the FAFSA EFC.
In addition to home equity colleges will consider income from a noncustodial parent; and colleges will generally ask for detailed information about sources of other income and earnings from self-employment or businesses.
I’d add that the system is not at all transparent – so while families on the very upper or lower end of the economic spectrum may be able to generally predict need-based aid, that is not at all true for families in the middle.
And of course not all need-awarding colleges promise to meet full need for all students. Many colleges which offer need-based aid leverage the aid and simply award many students packages which include need-based grants but fall short of meeting 100% of even the level of need the college has determined.
We’re in that private school tuition camp.
But just because the CSS asks about that expense, doesn’t mean that any particular college is factoring it in – or give you information as to how the college factors it. (They might cap the amount that they will consider, for example).
Earlier today a student was asking whether his meets full needs school will pay for his health insurance. Some will, some won’t.
I thought the article missed a big point in that most students, even poor ones, can afford a university or college, but they can’t afford ANY college they want. I don’t have a problem with that and don’t think the system is a failure because everyone can’t afford NYU or Cal or Tulane. Some things in life cost more and sometimes one has to settle for what he can afford. Even a lot of states have a higher price for the flagship(s) and a lower price for the directional schools, and I think that is fine. People have to make decisions on how to live, on what they can afford, on what is important.
agree big time with @TooOld4School - there’s your culprit right there.
@PetraMC - when you factor in the ‘black box’ of FA, a low income applicant won’t really know whether a school will be affordable until the aid package arrives. you can look at NPCs, and websites that share historical averages for income ranges, etc. but the reality is that the aid varies greatly from school to school and year to year. Even for ‘100% need met’ schools, they modify their NPCs from year to year and you never know exactly what their formula is until after the package arrives and you call them to talk about it. And some schools that don’t meet 100% of need will sometimes give good packages, but it’s to select subsets of students … and as an applicant you have no idea if your part of the golden crowd or not until March and April when your package arrives.
And loans … the fact that these are considered ‘meeting your need’ … don’t even get me started on that.
I was going through some old college papers today and came across the tuition amounts back in the day. The CPI inflation calculator indicates that tuition is worth $16,400 in today’s dollars, while the current tuition is actually over $51,000 at my alma mater.