@am9799 re your post:
I obviously can’t guarantee this, but schools in that tier of selectivity are more likely to be ‘100%-need-met’ schools. It is highly likely they will be consistent in their formulas year after year and not utilize ‘bait and switch’. if your situation stays the same, the aid should stay the same.
If you are wiling to share the name of the school we can shed more light.
I disagree. You gave an example of WHEN, not WHY, merit might be better for a given family.
Families who qualify for needs based aid, which is sufficient to make a desired school more affordable, or at least as affordable, as other schools with merit aid, will know if their family situation will change during the 4 years. @CourtneyThurston could reasonably expect that her mom’s income would increase materially after her high school graduation. Most families would not expect something like that.
Generally, for the oldest child, the needs based aid will not change, unless perhaps there is a younger sibling who will graduate from high school and not go to college, not stay a dependent, or go to college, in which case the aid for the older child usually increases.
Needs based aid is better for most families. Most families are easily able to predict what their demographics and family income will be over the next few years. Most families need more aid than they would qualify for in merit aid.
Schools that have a reputation for being generous with needs based aid do not generally want to risk harming their reputation by being stingy in later years, playing games like bait and switch. By calling the schools FA dept, and explaining to them in general terms about your family situation - you can do this anonymously if you like - you can (and should) get a reasonable estimate of the 4 year cost for your child. Run the NPC with a family of 5, and then with a family of 4, etc. Or run it with a family of 5, with one in college, then with a family of 5, and 2 in college.
Needs based aid can be better for many families, especially when the aid becomes significantly more than merit - which rarely covers close to full COA. And not just because the child does not have to meet the minimum GPA.
Merit aid that covers half-tuition or even full tuition is not better than needs based aid that covers full COA, or needs based aid that covers tuition, fees, and a significant portion of room/board. My pups turned down full tuition merit aid at Flagship State because we could easily tell our need based aid would mean they would qualify for a portion of their room/board to be covered.
A family can estimate the needs based aid by running the NPC’s. Often, merit aid is unknown at the time of application, and much more competitive. Needy families who apply to schools, seeking merit aid that ends up being insufficient, have wasted an application fee, and perhaps needlessly gotten their hopes up.
Because all schools that can offer it have a responsibility to be sure they are offering their need based aid fairly, they all want to be sure they review each student’s aid every year.
Here in the world of CC - which clearly skews toward families with much higher net household income/assets, it seems many more families find merit aid much more practical. There seem to be far more full-pay eligible families here (and I do not mean to begrudge them for chasing merit - it only makes sense for them) than needs-aid eligible families…
There are without a doubt some families where the 4 year COA after merit aid approaches the projected COA after needs based aid, after considering anticipated changes due to the demographics, etc. Some of these families might find they do better with needs based aid for the oldest child, and merit aid for the youngest.
“Needs based aid is better for most families.”
Not when most families are going to schools with not enough aid to give.
"Not when most families are going to schools with not enough aid to give. "
You are proving my point. Since most families are not getting sufficient merit either, the fact that most schools don’t/can’t offer enough does not matter to most families.
For the families where the need vs. merit aid is close, they should look at their own situation, get the information about future years, and decide what’s best for their situation. Most, but not all, families will find they will be better off with the needs based aid packages.
Just as it would be foolish to ignore merit aid offers if they are available and close, it is also foolish to completely discount the needs based aid offers without examining the 4 year impact.
@lz57c4
Schools like Tufts and Northeastern
@am9799 , Tufts has a good rep for meeting need. Northeastern only recently (maybe 1 or 2 years) made the swtich to meeting 100%, so there’s less track record for them. You can have high confidence with Tufts. For Northeastern, I’ll let others chime in, you need to judge for yourself.
Also not all ‘100%-need-met’ schools are created equal, some are much more generous than others because they calculate need differently (formula % of home value - student and parent assets - etc). But you can ask specific questions to find out what their formula is.
You can also use tools like collegedata . com and tuitiontracker . org to look at current situation and historical trends (though tracker info is old only through 2013 I think). Tracker reveals that historically NE is less friendly than Tufts, but it doesn’t include the most recent years.
“Since most families are not getting sufficient merit either, the fact that most schools don’t/can’t offer enough does not matter to most families.”
Except for the part where a lot of schools budget a lot of what they DO have to give towards merit, to drag their stat profiles up.
@CourtneyThurston
I thought you won a huge amount of outside scholarships so all your tuition would be paid anyway independently of your family’s contribution.
Yes (+ a ton of institutional merit which is the bigger point here). Commenting here so no one accidentally follows bad advice.
@MassDaD68 I still think you should call the school and ask them directly. You should ask- in what scenario would your aid be reduced? Also if you could find current parents of students at the school they may be able to give some insight. I feel like I’ve not read after a lot of reading on College Confidential) or heard of people getting screwed in future years by college aid. Especially if the grant is small like you said I don’t think that they would risk their reputation by taking it away for no good reason in future years.
This is a really interesting conversation. On cc, we often advise students who can’t pay their EFC to hunt for large merit awards. It’s good advice. Going to a 100% meets need school won’t help if you can’t afford your EFC. In that case merit is better.
What’s tricky, and what I think the OP is understandably worried about, is a change in the formula that calculates need. I’ll use my own case as an example. Oldest starts school. I fill out the FAFSA and get an EFC that I can pay. Formula changes. The one thing I remember is that the amount of protected assets decrease considerably. My EFC rises. Fast forward to my last FAFSA (pun intended–it’s the one I just did and the last one I’ll ever have to fill out). and my EFC is more than 10K higher than the first and no longer affordable. What am I to do? FWIW, my AGI is within 5K of what it was for that very first FAFSA, but I do have one fewer person in the household. What you need to know is, IF the school changes its formula for determining need, will it change for enrolled students or just for new? And you have to look ahead to see how your own situation will change. You will probably get some form of salary increase over the next 4 years. Your household size may change. You may have a second student enter college, which would mean more aid at some schools, or your household size my decrease.
Tough call.
What is tricky is the OP cannot reliably predict his income for future years.
He should be fine for 2018-2019 as he should know by now what his income is for 2016. He can give that info to the financial aid office.
2019-2020 will use 2017 tax year info. Does the OP have a good sense of what full year income willl be based on the first quarter of the year?
And 2020-2021 will use 2018 info.
Yes…policies and formulas for awarding heed based aid DO change. Sometimes this is not for students currently enrolled, but for incoming students only. You need to ask.
They are NOT going to guarantee need based aid for four years because you need to apply anew EACH year for need based aid.
@MassDaD68 I don’t think reputable colleges bait & switch. However, as many posters have mentioned, formulas may change, financial circumstances may change, funds may dry up, and there are in fact awards designated for one year only.
I second the motion to call the FinAid Dept. They are not snake oil dealers & will not lie or deliberately mislead you. They may shed light to help you make your decision. They are unlikely to use the word “guaranteed.” Here are 2 examples from my D’s very recent experiences:
At one school she did receive a scholarship good for one year only. It was plainly marked on the award letter but I’m sure that important detail could be missed if people didn’t read with an eagle eye.
At her current school she receives an SEOG (federal grant) but it is not on her next year’s award online, which is based on the same 2015 income data. I have asked her to ask the FinAid Dept about this but haven’t heard back yet. I believe it is because SEOG funds are not in the President’s proposed budget.
Work study and Pell grant funds are possibly on future chopping blocks. So I thought we were home free with her original combination of merit & need based aid but now I’m back to worrying and scrambling. And none of it is due to college misrepresentation.
Another change at her current school is that all dorm rooms used to be priced the same. Now the price varies depending on room type.
When planning based on finances, I suggest being prepared for at least $5,000 differential between freshman & senior year.
@CourtneyThurston “Commenting here so no one accidentally follows bad advice.”
With all due respect, it sounds like your advice is bad, or at least misleading. You seem to be implying that a needy student who can qualify for both merit and need based aid, should generally choose the merit over the need based aid. While this may work out for a few families, most of the time it will not.
Of course, some people will find merit works best for them - usually these are people who could afford to pay more, but of course they don’t want to when they can find a way to have someone else pay for them.
Thankfully, students who are eligible for merit aid tend to be smart enough to be able to figure out what will work best for themselves.
@ordinarylives - I appreciate your example, but it makes me wonder how much of the 10K increase in EFC was attributed to the $5K increase in AGI, and how much was attributed to the smaller household size. If there is still anything left, it may not necessarily be part of the formula change, but it might be a result of your asset mix changing, or your age, etc. The formulae generally presumes that you will need to spend down a chunk of your assets every year, yet for some people the assets increase - and they wonder why the EFC changes. This is particularly rough for schools that include home equity as available asset. This is why I suggest that people considering needs based aid run the EFC and change a lot of the variables - to get an idea as to how it might work. Then, if and when something changes in your family financial situation, you may be prepared to handle it.
After my father-in-law passed away, we inherited a modest sum. Since we are getting needs based aid, and we understood how the formula works, we found we were much better off paying off some of the mortgage and paying some medical bills instead of holding onto the cash - since our pups’ schools did not assess home equity but they do assess cash.
For some families, getting the information about how the need based FA should work in future years will be enough to dissuade them. But needy families in particular should get the information they need to make informed decisions.
this is a very interesting discussion for me as for over a year we have been focusing on merit-based aid, knowing that it would be locked in for 4 years as long as S maintains GPA. as a result we entered March thinking it would come down to Alabama (full tuition + $2.5K /yr), UAH (full tuition + housing), and NC State depending on what their FA package would be.
then to our surprise he got accepted to Northwestern and Duke, with great FA packages for Year 1. now we have to shift gears and estimate what year 2-4 might be b/c our $ situation will change each year. Year 2 will have income increase due to wife’s first full year re-entering workforce, and Year 3-4 we will have only 1 in college rather than 2.
this year’s COA is very favorable for us, and the NPCs for Year 3-4, with revised estimated figures, produce a COA that is about $5000-$6000 higher than this year. but, what if they change their FA calculation formula? what if they use a different formula than what the College Board NPC uses? what if he makes $ with summer job, co-op, paid internship, that causes COA to spike for NU or Duke?
chasing merit fit well with my approach to life which is cautious and risk-averse – perhaps too much so. i have to fight my instinct that the “safe” thing is to take UAH’s guaranteed $ and graduate sooner with the college credit he’s earned. but the smart and wise thing to do is almost certainly accept the calculated risk / potential reward that comes with choosing NU or Duke.
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not sure how that happened - but I think I cleared it 
looks good, and thanks for your input on this thread. the back and forth with Courtney is giving lots of interesting food for thought.
Thanks everyone. I will be contacting the school but I am well aware that they might be very non-committal. So what is the take away if they cannot give me a solid answer. Just take a risk? Have him settle in and then yank him if the package changes? Only to find out that transfer student aid is not quite as good as freshman year packages?
This thread has not attracted horror stories so that is good. Maybe the risk is lower than I thought.
The best I can hope for is that the school does have a policy in place that any FIN AID formula changes are not applied to current students and only the future incoming classes.
My income has been very stable over the past few years. Only changing with slight cost of living raises. Nothing major at all. This is my first child entering college so no changes to number of kids enrolled or household changes.I am not looking to any inheritance; that would all go to nursing homes.
@3puppies Assets decreased as 529 for oldest was completely depleted and we started withdrawing from 529 for next kid. BUT, the amount of protected assets also decreased, so I had less money, but more of it counted. Household size decreased, which is a factor. Number in college would have remained constant as my first fafsa had but 1 (the oldest) and the last fafsa just had the youngest. Parental income is, very sadly, pretty stagnant.
I could probably fill out the paper versions and see exactly where the extra EFC is coming from, but I don’t have much incentive to do so. Even though that very first EFC was affordable, we chose to take advantage of tuition exchange. I have to fill out a fafsa every year as the importing institution applies any state and federal funds first before their benefit kicks in, covering the rest of tuition. Youngest currently has a Gear Up grant, which the institution gets, but I’m not complaining. I’ve got a heckuva deal and am more than happy they get a few thousand to offset the tuition benefit. Outside scholarships stack (each importing institution can make its own policies about that; we lucked out).
I expected my EFC to be higher by the time kid 2 finished, but not as much higher as it is. I agree with everyone who says look at future situations. Even if your income remains pretty consistent, changes in household size and number in school are changes you can see coming, and you should plan for those.