NYU is an excellent example of why the net price calculator’s are not reliable, because NYU does not promise to meet full need. NYU has small print language before you use the calculator that says that it represents “potential” aid – not actual. I just did a quick run through choosing family income in the $50-$59K range (1 kid in college, 3 person household) – and the NPC returned an estimated total for grant aid of $39,775 - but I happen to know how NYU structures its aid, and that the vast majority of applicants with need will either get no grant aid at all, or university grants in the ~$10-$15K range (at best - when my d. was admitted a decade ago it was $8-$10K range). NYU only meets full need for students in the top 5% of their admit pool. Then they leverage aid using a tiered system, with a maximum grant within each tier.
So their NPC is completely meaningless because it is based on a premise – “will meet need” – that doesn’t apply for the vast majority of colleges. (Almost all of the colleges that do promise to meet 100% need for all candidates are highly selective colleges,which are reaches for most students)
At the same time, a small fraction of high end candidates do get very generous aid, and because NYU awards merit aid, it can be aid that exceeds need. So it is perfectly rationale for a knowledgeable, high stat student to apply.
And while NYU is notorious for its stingy aid policies, it is not an anomaly among colleges that do not promise to meet full need – MOST colleges are like that. They pick and choose which students will get the full need packages and which won’t. And for those fortunate students who are deemed worthy of 100% need packages, the aid package is often stronger than it would be at a comparable college that meets need for all students, precisely because the college is offering the full need packages to its most desirable candidates and can afford to sweeten the pot.
I really think it’s intentional though, they want you to apply even though it won’t be affordable, because some families will take on staggering debt for the NYU name. If the net price calculator told you you’d get $10,000-15,000 as opposed to $39,000, you probably wouldn’t apply.
The NPCs for D’s top 5 schools all gave us the same result, within about $2000/yr. The actual financial aid offers vary by more than $15K a year. In some cases there is merit aid that changes the picture, but in others it is quite mysterious. Regardless of the cause, I think $60K over 4 years is more than enough to influence the choice for a lot of students.
There are some colleges that do not promise to “meet need”, but their NPCs honestly show that they do not. For example, try an out-of-state public university’s NPC – it will likely show list price (or merit only if it does that) with no need-based financial aid. Lots of private colleges’ NPCs will show how bad their financial aid is.
Of course, if you see the low quality NPC template like on NYU’s NPC, it is probably just a rough guess. Also, that NYU NPC estimate of $39k grants for family income of $50-59k still leaves a net price of $32k, which is almost certainly too expensive anyway (and not likely to “meet need” for any reasonable definition of “need”).
“I really think it’s intentional though, they want you to apply even though it won’t be affordable.”
Of course it is intentional, since most colleges like to say that for admissions they are “need-blind.”
Being “need-blind” for admissions is a pretty useless policy unless it is backed up by a policy of fully meeting a realistic definition of need (which is something that very very few schools can really do).
If you really don’t meet full need (which is most schools), then you could/should be need-aware for admissions (which sounds bad but is just being realistic).
More common is that the school targets its aid to the accepted kids they want the most. Less targeted kids get “gapped” and will typically be unable to enroll. None of this is particularly nefarious – everyone has seats to fill and a budget they need to hit. But the market could certainly be more transparent.
So no surprise the top choice/dream school often gets nixed over money. Because the dream-iest school is often the reach-iest. So the aid (merit or need-based) will tend to be thinner at the reach/dream school than it will be for the match/safety school.
To reach its conclusions, Royall & Co. analyzed 54,810 students at 92 institutions it works with who were admitted to enter college in 2016. It found that more than 6,000 of those students – 11 percent – declined to attend their institution of first choice, further examining their reasons for doing so.
^quote from the article.
I am tired and may be misreading this, but doesn’t this mean that 89% did attend their first choice? And that of the 11% who didn’t, 40% of those didn’t because of financial reasons? I’m confused.
Edit: sorry - I don’t know how to make the quote be in a gray box.
Take a school like U of Florida. When they are doing admissions in December, they have no idea if the student will get Bright Futures, if the family has a prepaid tuition account, has a rich grandmother, if the student had been working at Publix for 2 years saving every dime. There isn’t a requirement to file a FAFSA, especially in previous years when it couldn’t even be filed until Jan and the bulk of decisions came out in Dec. How “could/should (they) be need-aware for admissions?” If UF has Billy’s app and Susie’s app, how could they possibly know which one can afford the school?
I’m not sure I’d want a school to deny my kids if the school judged that we couldn’t afford it. I may be a parent willing to take a Plus loan. I may be planning to marry Mr. Big Bucks. We may have a lot of outside scholarships in the pipeline. I want schools to be need blind.
That doesn’t sound realistic at all. Most college students attend public institutions, and most of those institutions don’t have substantial endowments or other sources of funds to provide enough institutional need-based aid to meet full need. Yet most students at those institutions find a way to pay for college. If all those schools were to reject every applicant whose need they couldn’t meet, their enrollments would plummet and the schools would need to shrink dramatically or close their doors entirely. And the number of people attending college and earning college degrees would also fall dramatically. That’s not good for would-be students, for the colleges, for the nation’s workforce, or for society generally. Terrible idea.
Example::
Michigan State has about 35,000 full-time undergraduates. In its 2016 entering freshman class of 8,005 students, 3,779 (47.2%) were determined to have financial need. MSU met full need for only 646 of them (17.1% of those with need). If MSU had denied admission to the other 87.1% of those with need, its entering class would have been only 4,713. The school would need to shrink by over 40%.
And where would those students go? Well, perhaps to one of Michigan’s directionals. But they don’t meet full need either; most appear to meet full need for anywhere between 25% to 50% of their students, so they’d need to shrink, too.
My comment was really directed at the high sticker price private schools. Need-blind for admissions but don’t meet full need. If those kind of schools stay need-blind for admissions, then they have to “gap” kids on aid so they won’t enroll in most cases.
That practice (otherwise known as “admit-deny”) is not pretty. Pick your poison. A lot of those schools (Colby, Smith, Reed, Gettysburg, Oberlin, Tufts, etc.) have decided admit-deny is the greater evil.
Amherst just notified my son of their financial aid package offer to him this morning. WAY too high. Surprised and disappointing. We’re turning it down with no hesitation.
Seems you are correct that 40% of those NOT ATTENDING THEIR FIRST CHOICE did so for financial reasons. The other 89% who did attend their first choice *of the schools they were accepted to/i, either found a way to pay for it, got the necessary aid or didn’t need any financial help.
Amherst is one of the few that meets so-called “full need.” So what does that look like exactly? What % of your annual income does Amherst want you to kick in for each year?
@OHMomof2@northwesty - Without going into specifics, let me just say that the Amherst FEC is about $20,000 more than what its nearest competitor is offering for 2017-18.
@TiggerDad Ah gotcha. Must be a difference in how they calculate need with regard to assets or whatever. Still if you have interest and the nearest competitor (assume that’s W) has a $20K better offer, you can run that by Amherst and see if they will match it.
Yes, “meet full need” can be an empty promise if the college’s definition of “need” is unfavorable. A comparison of net price calculator results between different “meet full need” colleges can make this quite apparent.
For one family, meeting full need equals a net price of $4400 at Yale vs. $16k at USC. For another family, $12k at Yale vs. $51.5k at USC. Obviously two totally different universes.
On the other hand, the merit aid at USC crushes the non-existent merit aid at Yale…
That’s really interesting. Amherst (and Princeton) usually provide the largest financial aid package of any school for equivalent applicants. Did you get a merit award from the other school, or something like that?