<p>In the last few weeks, I've been running net price calculators on a variety of school's websites and seeing many different numbers. I am hesitant to apply to schools where I know I would not get much aid.</p>
<p>For those who have had experience with this, how accurate have the net price calculators tended to be?</p>
<p>I talked to my GC about this and she said they were pretty accurate. Most of the time you’ll get 2-3 thousand more/less aid than the calculator tells you.</p>
<p>Every college calculates financial aid using their own institutional formula. When my son applied to college 4 years ago, he was accepted to 10 colleges – all of them giving him 100% of need with no merit aid. Even though every college was looking at the same numbers, there was a $32,000 difference per year ($126,000 over 4 years) between the colleges that gave the most aid (Yale, Princeton, Vanderbilt) and the colleges that gave him the least aid (Boston College, Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Northwestern). </p>
<p>So, assume the calculators are correct and the difference is due to different institutional formulas. </p>
<p>@gibby Out of curiousity, when you/your son ran the numbers through the NPC beforehand, did the numbers line up with the actuals +/- 3K? Did the NPC have a 32K divergence based on school? That’s a bit scary.</p>
<p>My son is now a rising senior. Four years ago, net price calculators didn’t exist.</p>
<p>When you have a typically family income and asset, those NPCs are very accurate as they are based on real statistics data. When you have a more complicated situation like self-employed, additional real estate assets, large gifts from family, etc, that may make the estimation far off.</p>
<p>@gibby NPC probably existed for many schools at that time but not federal mandated yet.
<a href=“http://www.thelawlorgroup.com/pov/review/v-xix-i-2/net-price-calculator-mandate-tough-act-follow”>http://www.thelawlorgroup.com/pov/review/v-xix-i-2/net-price-calculator-mandate-tough-act-follow</a></p>
<p>Out of curiosity, how do schools generally deal with divorced families? How does the FAFSA deal with divorced families (where one parent has custody), and I’d assume it varies from school to school.</p>
<p>FA & Scholarship forum…</p>
<p>Yeah I think that’s probably correct .Nonetheless, does anyone know anything else on this subject?</p>
<p>FAFSA only looks at the income of the parent where the student spent the most time. CSS Profile (used at most schools that try to meet need) looks at both. More details in the FA forum mentioned by entomom.</p>
<p>Alright. Thank you guys for your answers.</p>
<p>Slightly off-topic, but I’m struggling with this: should I enter weighted or unweighted GPA on the net price calculators?</p>
<p>Unweighted GPA.</p>