<p>For a net price calculator experiment, I used an in-state family of 3 with 1 student going to college and living on campus. Parent income $50,000 (split $30,000 / $20,000 in wage and salary, no other income), income tax $5000, cash assets of $10,000, no other assets (do not own a house either). Student with no income or assets, majoring in math (if asked) and with grades and scores not eligible for automatic merit scholarships. Student born in 1994, parents born in 1964.</p>
<p>The resulting in-state net prices (deducting grants from in-state cost of attendance) for the flagship state universities of various states are listed below. Where an EFC was explicitly given, it is also listed. ESC is the expected student contribution of student loans and work earnings. EFC + ESC < net price indicates a gap (but many of the more expensive ones do not list one or the other, hiding the gap).</p>
<p>Did you use Penn State (which I told you yesterday is NOT a true PA State school - it, Pitt, and Temple are mostly privately funded and some scuttlebutt has them going totally private sometime in the next few years) or one of our state schools (of which there are 14, choose IUP or perhaps West Chester for the “best”)?</p>
<p>I ask because your PA price seems awfully high when the total annual cost including room and board averages 17K (no discounts applied).</p>
<p>Or was your total for all 4 years?</p>
<p>If I get time at work I can put your data into a NPC for a PA state school. One should compare apples to apples if looking at state school costs.</p>
<p>I ran the NPC at Dickinson for a similar “family”-$60K income split 40/20, family of 4, owned a house but no equity and no real assets, net price for that family, $150/year–yes one hundred and fifty dollars…</p>
<p>I couldn’t find the NPC on IUP (so much for making them easy to find - or maybe I’m blind…), so I put the numbers in for West Chester:</p>
<p>Estimated Net Cost after Grant Aid is $18,280</p>
<p>Estimated Net Cost after loans and work study is $12,806.</p>
<p>It’s definitely better if truly needy students get into colleges like Dickinson, but it’s not as bad as the OP listed if the students choose a state school.</p>
<p>Putting the same numbers in for Shippensburg (Adjusted Gross Income of 50K, 5 K in taxes, family of 3, no student income) one gets $13,380 after grants and $7,880 after loans + works study.</p>
<p>It varies even within our state. It pays to shop around.</p>
<p>NPCs are not going to be accurate for most state schools as they DO NOT meet financial need and many have their own ways of distributing it. They also tend to have merit money, again, distributed without an easy formula to use.</p>
<p>My cousins’s son got some free tuition awards at some of the smaller state schools in his state, but that does not come up on the NPCs, not a one of them.</p>
<p>@Creekland - the problem with PA state-owned schools is that they don’t have the full complement of programs one would expect from a state flagship. Engineering is one example. OP was comparing the cost of state flagships. Our state-owned schools ought to be compared with another state’s “directional universities”.</p>
<p>Sad to say, PA’s ranking in this list is “fair”.</p>
<p>I agree that PA doesn’t really have a flagship, so state that and lament it. One shouldn’t compare the costs of an essentially privately funded school to a true state school just because the word “state” is in the name IMO.</p>
<p>I fully agree that for majors like Engineering, a low cost option is difficult to find for an “average” (meaning not likely to get merit aid) student in PA. For other majors, there are state schools.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse–I’ve found the state NPC to be very accurate when it comes to final packages. No, they don’t meet need and FA is pretty much a joke at state schools but the numbers work out pretty close to what the NPC says. It is never the same as what the EFC is, however, but it shows how much (or not) you should get along with what your final out of pocket cost will be. Just because that doesn’t agree with your EFC doesn’t mean it’s not accurate.</p>
<p>It’s not accurate by my definition because the actual packages do not match up. I’ve plugged some real life cases in the formulas from last year , and they are way off from the actual packages. I help a number of people fill out FAFSA/PROFILE routinely and have done so for years, so I am looking at real life situations. These things have not been around that long.</p>
<p>My cousin’s son did very well with merit/aid, much better than NPCs indicated. He was a “hot” enough student that the schools gave him better than their averages and even better than his averages. But I know folks who got less, far less. When a school will gap you, trying to predict the amount of the gap is very difficult. Sometimes things like when you get your application and fin aid stuff processed can make a big difference as funds can run out. You apply when the money is gone, and the school doesn’t guarantee 100% of need, well, too bad. You get gapped and but good.</p>
<p>I don’t see what agreeing with an EFC has anything to do with this. I don’t know a single school that guarantees to meet EFC, It’s highly unusual for a FAFSA only school to do so, and will do so for the students they most want, usually the high stat kids.</p>
<p>The Covenant Financial Aid Award
"Covenant Scholars receive a combination of grants, scholarships, and/or Work-Study that meets 100 percent of their financial need. “Financial need” is the difference between the amount it costs to attend Carolina for an academic year and the amount the family is expected to pay, based on its financial circumstances.</p>
<p>•When it estimates the cost of attendance, Carolina includes not only tuition and mandatory fees, but also allowances for housing, food, books and supplies, transportation, and personal expenses.
•The amount the family is expected to contribute is based on information reported on the financial aid application. The amount is determined by a formula that considers the family’s income, other resources, and factors that impact its ability to pay for college costs. For many Covenant Scholars, the expected family contribution is $0; however some families are expected to pay a modest amount.
•Carolina awards Covenant Scholars a combination of grants, scholarships, and/or Work-Study totaling 100 percent of the difference between the recognized cost of attendance and the expected family contribution – without student loans.
Work-Study is an important part of the Carolina Covenant financial aid award. Besides helping students earn a part of their educational expenses, research shows that students who work a reasonable number of hours do better in school and are more likely to graduate than those who do not work or those who work too many hours.</p>
<p>Unless their financial need is met with grants and outside scholarships, Covenant Scholars are awarded the amount of Federal Work-Study they can earn by working 10-12 hours per week during the academic year."</p>
<p>UNC-Chapel Hill, NC’s flagship offers the Carolina Covenant to ALL low-income students. meets 100% need with no loans. They do require 10-12 hours of workstudy per week per year to pay for extras. They do have a generous and elastic COA. The program is not just financial aid but academic and financial education.</p>
<p>So the above number might not be accurate if the net price indicator did not include UNC’s policy.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse-I guess I was just trying to understand what you meant by “not accurate”. With the kids we have helped, the NPC were very accurate–didn’t give much and never came close to what their EFC from FAFSA said but the end result-the package they got in the mail was very close to what the NPC showed–which wasn’t much but it was still similar end result. I think what throws some of them off is when kids get merit aid but the NPC doesn’t account for that. Some NPC are just better than other’s. Also the one’s where you enter your own EFC vs entering your own numbers into their system do not seem to be as accurate.</p>
<p>Many NPCs do consider that. I’ve run Fordham’s a number of times and it does take the substantial merit aid that it gives out, very much into account. It’s also pretty much dead on as it does require GPA and test scores, at least on that part. But…if you have financial need, Fordham does not guarantee to meet it and there is not much transparency as to how much you will get. It’s a combination of how much they want you, grades/merit, geographics, how much aid you need relative to how much they want you and how much they have left,when you have your fin aid files complete, etc, etc. Very difficult to guess. Also, there are some kids that they want more than other in the merit end, and though the results I have personally seen have been close in the merit area, doesn’t mean that they always are. There is a holistic element that can come heavily in play in the process.</p>
<p>You look at schools that on average meet 30-40% of need by their Common Data info. How the heck do you know if you are going to get anything, full need met or that average 30-40%? Alot of these schools will cherry pick those that have low need and meet 100% or close to it to those candidates as that will make their numbers look better—X% of kids have full need met, and then shaft the ones who have huge need, unless that is one hot prospect. </p>
<p>You are highly likely to get a financial aid package that is different from the numbers generated from the NPC at schools that give a lot of merit and do not meet 100% of need, because there is a lot of leeway there for the school to use, and they do tend to do so. Enrollment management is what it is called.</p>
<p>Yes, PA was Penn State, because it is what most people think of as the “state flagship” (and otherwise has the characteristics of such, unlike the PA’s “state owned” schools), even though it is only “state related”.</p>
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<p>Actually, the point of the experiment was to see which of the state flagships meet need and which do not (and how far away they are from meeting need), assuming worst case merit scholarship results (i.e. none). Why would the net price calculator necessarily be inaccurate if the school does not meet need – it will show the student up front that the school does not meet need?</p>
<p>As far as meeting need or not, it appears from this list we have several categories:</p>
<p>Meets need, student needs Stafford loan or work earnings: NC, FL, WA
Meets need, student needs Stafford loan and work earnings: CA, MI
Several thousand dollars short of meeting need: MN, NJ, NY, OH
Far short of meeting need: TX, IL, PA</p>
<p>Whatever terminology you use, Penn State and Pitt are still PA. flagship state universities. They play games of calling themselves public when it serves their purpose, and non-public in other cases when it serves their purpose. They both receive large amounts of state money per year (although not as much per student as many other flagships).</p>
<p>The original post’s analysis makes sense to me. It shows that more PA. residents pay list price than residents of other states. </p>
<p>Many PA. residents (including my own two kids) found they could attend private universities and out of state flagships for less money than it would cost for Penn State. </p>
<p>Also, these numbers do not take into account that Penn State and Pitt increase their tuition and fees for many academic programs. The in-state tuition and academic fees this year for the last 2 years of Penn State’s and Pitt’s nursing programs for example are $20,000.</p>
<p>So PSU is technically State-Related, interesting. UVa receives less then 10% of it’s operating budget from the state, but it most definitely is a public school. The difference per student received from the state as compared to some other schools, while still being need blind and meeting 100% of demonstrated need for both in-state and OOS students, is pretty stark (UVa $8,566; UNC $22,105; University of Maryland, $17,494; University of Michigan, $13,024).</p>
<p>On running your scenario through UVa’s NPC: $3,677
Total COA $25,354*
pell/grant $12,787
student loan $7,000
Remaining cost $3,667</p>
<p>*This included everything and the kitchen sink…books, travel, personal expenses, etc.</p>
<p>Does anyone besides me think the numbers for NY and CA seem off? Both have state aid programs. Doesn’t 50K of income mean kid will get Pell grant, and in NY, the state TAP aid?</p>
<p>Kayf, Max Pell is $5600 for next year, and TAP is also graduated. The SUNYs are not big on giving a lot of financial aid. Their advantage is that they are fairlyy inexpensive and many are in areas where one can reduce costs living off campus after freshman year which many of the kids do.</p>
<p>^^ Illinois does the same thing. Business and Engineering, for example, have in-state tuition and required fees in excess of $20,000 for in-state students. That doesn’t include room, board, books or other expenses.</p>
<p>Somewhat off topic (sorry), but you gave a figure of $50K as being “middle class.” In our area, any household making less than $59K is considered to be below the level to be self-sufficient. They are considered to be the “working poor.”</p>