<p>We qualified for the simplified needs test one year, but it still was close to 1/4 of before tax income.
However that was close to what instate tuition costs would be.</p>
<p>This is all so helpful. We have a ways to go–my daughter doesn’t have any test scores or a definite path of study in mind, so at this point we’re just trying to find schools to research. She has her work cut out for her and of course we do too. What can we afford? Half of every penny in our 529 and precious little more. I’m thrilled to hear that the EFC is not a hard-and-fast number that dictates the way schools will calculate their aid. That’s what I was worried about. </p>
<p>^
Most schools won’t give you enough aid. Most schools could care less what your EFC is…they’ll still give little aid.</p>
<p>I think you need to look at schools where your child will get a LOT of merit scholarship money. </p>
<p>Did she take the PSAT? When will she take the ACT and/or SAT?</p>
<p>I don’t think you understand what we are saying. Many of us ARE paying close to the EFC or even more because we don’t qualify for need based financial aid, and we pay that EFC with savings, loans, work. When middle class families aren’t paying the EFC, it is because of merit aid or other scholarships (talent, sports). If the school costs $50k and the EFC is $20k, you are still going to pay $50k. If the EFC is $15k, you are still going to pay $50k unless you get merit aid. Your need based financial aid package will be the same from Big State U if the EFC is $13K or $40k - basically loans. </p>
<p>Right now your daughter can be steered in the direction you can afford. Look at the schools in your area. Run the net price calculators on a few (you know her gpa, and just guess at her scores). If she’s good at her sport and wants to play in college (it is a HUGE commitment; my daughter practices 20 hours a week and she’s off season right now), make contact with a few coaches (there should be a recruitment questionnaire on the athletic page of the website) and figure out how much a typical freshman might get for that sport (gymnastics? 100% for a D1 school; track? maybe 10%) Some sports have most of the team committed by start of Junior year in high school, especially the good, competitive ones. Girls soccer has 8th graders committed, which is insane.</p>
<p>If she tests off the charts, everything changes and she might get big merit awards from some schools. It won’t be too late to change course at that time and all you’ll have done is learned about a lot of other schools.</p>
<p>^^ agreed, Our EFC was $35k (our budget was $25k), and one school where D didn’t qualify for merit thought we could manage to somehow pay $50k. Thankfully we’d had many long conversations about costs and D understood $200,000 just wasn’t going to happen. And since she had numerous merit offers it wasn’t an issue. </p>
<p>Just want to remind OP that there are not many need met schools that you end up paying only EFC. In addition, they are usually very competitive. Most likely you would need a lot of merit aid or a school with low CoA to get it below EFC. Otherwise, your actual out of pocket cost would be EFC + loan + work study + gap.</p>
<p>My daughter just took the PSAT last week and will be taking the SAT in December. I hope I’m surprised at her scores–her practice PSAT in sophomore year was pretty dismal. She has a 4.0+ GPA and is talking with some coaches and aggressively pursuing her sport, so there are a lot of possibilities. </p>
<p>What I don’t get is how to decide what we can afford when this is still two full years away. I have family who may or may not help out when the time comes, and our income will likely rise somewhat between now and then. Our expenses may too, since they always do. </p>
<p>Others have said that at this point the thing to do is help our daughter figure out what sort of school she wants, and try to create a list with sufficient options that she can live with. The money will dictate the ultimate decision most likely but we’re a long way from there. </p>
<p>You build a budget based on today’s income. In two years, the amount you’ve got to work with really won’t change much if your income remains fairly consistent. And family who may or may not help out? Well, define help out. Unless you’re talking about relatives who will give you a firm commitment to kick in thousands every year for four years, the “help” may also have negligible impact, and it’s not safe to count on money that may dry up half way through. </p>
<p>I’d say divide her 529 by 4 and then figure out what you can take out current income each year. Add the two together and that is your baseline. The annual direct billable cost of the school, after aid, has to be that number or less. </p>
<p>Of course, you won’t know your aid until much later, so your d can continue to look at schools. She just has to know that when the offers are in, she can afford those with billable costs of “X” or less. By the way, give yourself a pat on the back for starting so early. When a kid knows the bottom line in advance, she’s a lot more realistic in the search and selection process. </p>
<p><<<
I have family who may or may not help out when the time comes,
<<<</p>
<p>You can’t depend on that. What if they help for YEAR ONE, but then can’t or won’t sometime after that? Is your D supposed to just come home and go to a CC? People change their minds for all kinds of reasons. They may decide that they don’t like the major she chooses or something else.</p>
<p>unless family puts 4 years of help into an account for you to use, assume that any money they give you is gravy and will make it easier to pay for Child #2.</p>
<p>As for your own income/expenses…paying for college is a 4 year deal. ASSUME that your family will have 4-6 HICCUPS per year…dental expense, car repair, roof repair, appliance replacement…you name it, it will likely happen within the 4 years your child will be in college.</p>
<p>What was her soph PSAT?</p>
<p>Having an unaffordable EFC and modest test scores can be a serious problem. She may need to seek the athletic scholarship money.</p>
<p>Run the Net Price Calculators, and see what some of the places on the current list would want you to pay, then pretend that your child has enrolled in one of them, and instead of paying that amount of money to the college, pay it into your savings instead. Can you really cut your family budget down to a size where you can meet at least part of your EFC? Then good, try paring your family budget a little further until you hit your limit. If you get used to that tight budget now, it won’t be so horrible when the kid does go to college, and you will have more sitting in savings when you get there.</p>
<p>If, on the contrary, you find that you can’t pare your budget much at all, then you and your child have to face that fact, and concentrate your energy on finding colleges that you can afford.</p>
<p>We thought our budget was pared down when Happykid went to college. We were wrong. It took a 16 month layoff for the breadwinner for us to find just how cheaply we could live. </p>
<p>How do you plan? Run the net price calculators on several schools including your state school. Do it now. </p>
<p>Atanavarne, the FAFSA EFC is the minimum you will pay before becoming eligible for federal grants, subsidized loans and work study. Unless your student finds a school with a sticker price that is lower than that EFC or gets merit money that brings the cost down below it, that EFC is the lowest you will be paying for college.</p>
<p>No blinders here–we completely understand that money is not going to fall out of the sky. I’m not depending on family or anything else. But every school we look at talks about the financial aid they offer, whether merit, athletic, legacy or whatnot. </p>
<p>I’m assuming that our (very) low-six-figure income would disqualify us from need-based aid, no matter what other expenses our family may have at the time. (DD2 won’t be in college until DD1 is a senior.) What I’m hearing is that we need to look elsewhere for the resources to make her dream come true. </p>
<p>Tempemom, is it really helpful to run a net price calculator now without knowing what possible merit, athletic, or other aid may be given? What is the point? It’s just very very discouraging. :(</p>
<p>Yes. Why not? One of the most important things you can do is give your daughter a realistic view of the finances. Don’t let her go down the “dream school” route. And it gives you a real world snapshot. Better to know than to count on a lottery. Some of the merit money will highly depend on your daughter’s willingness to attend a school where she is in the top of the admitting class rather than at some reach school. Her willingness to do that may be impacted on how you frame the situation…the kid who thinks they can go to the best school they can get into versus the best school they can afford. </p>
<p>Obviously, hope and pray for athletic scholarships etc but don’t count on it. </p>
<p>Some of the NPC will include the merit and state awards guaranteed in the NPC calculations. My daughter’s school did, and it showed me what we’d be looking at. Pretty accurately too. It showed the merit aid that school gives to people with her gpa and scores (put in a few different scores and you can tell if an ACT of 25 or 27 makes a difference), it showed the state grant given to state residents who go to a private school in the state (that was $3000 I didn’t know about), a weird little grant the school gives for visiting before attending ($1000). There are also little awards for things we didn’t qualify for like having a parent who was an alum or a sibling attending at the same time.</p>
<p>The best thing for me was seeing the merit aid estimate. Months later, when the actual award came out (after she’d been accepted), it was a lower level award. I didn’t understand why and called the financial aid office, which sent me to the admissions office. Turns out the admissions office had never updated her ACT scores and was using her original scores from Jr. year; her Sr. year scores qualified her for the higher award. Had I not run the NPC several different ways, I wouldn’t have caught that - $5000 difference per year, or $20000 over four. Real money.</p>
<p>It also helped me know how much we needed to get from the athletic scholarship because I knew how big a gap there was.</p>
<p>So it isn’t the EFC you are trying to lower, but the COA. Start with that number, and start deducting - merit aid, state aid, the little scholarships from your school or town. At my daughter’s school she could have picked cheaper housing, one of her teammates has work study (I don’t know how - my daughter is so busy), some are RA’s. You have to just keep picking away at the COA.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t make that assumption, and neither should you. RUN THE NUMBERS. Try the NPC with various scenarios. It appears to me that you’re getting all worked up with way too little information.</p>