<p>The median household income in the US is about $50,000, so that is what I used for “middle income”. Of course, there is some variation by state and locality (and most posters on these forums seem to be living in high income, high cost areas where $50,000 per year seems “poor”).</p>
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<p>That would be listed as:</p>
<p>VA: 10667 (EFC = 3667, ESC = 7000)</p>
<p>in the original chart, right? (I counted ESC = student loans + student work earnings as part of the net price)</p>
<p>Whoops! Sorry I was out of format. My apologies for the oversight.</p>
<p>Cpt, I ran throught the SUNY Albany NPC and came up with out of pocket 7,832 and student loans and w/s of 9,589. Also, the SUNY NPC would only allow input of income ranges of 50-60, unless I had already done FAFSA, so the kid might get more grants. This doesnt seem to be what OP had. SUNY Albany said totlal COA for in-state kid living in dorm was 19,728. So I do not see where OP gets numbers.</p>
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<p>7832 + 9589 = 17421, which is pretty close to the 16845 (including 8500 for student loans and work earnings) that I got from a different SUNY (Stony Brook).</p>
<p>In case it is not clear, the net price in post #1 includes the EFC and ESC (= student loan and work earnings). Basically, it is the total cost of attendance minus grants only (not packaged in loans).</p>
<p>This calculation is interesting. I read it as an example of how the "high tuition high aid’ model ends up working in practice rather than in the political spin. A lot of state flagships want to raise their tuition on the grounds that they can then take the money from higher income students and still offer aid to the lower income students (as they loose the state support that used to pay some of the cost of attendance for all the students). I’ve always been suspicious that in practice, the tuition increases will be fixed once they come, but that aid will fluctuate, trending lower with time as people forget the promise and the model. </p>
<p>I agree with not including merit aid in this calculation, because the high tuition/high aid model isn’t supposed to be about attracting the best students, but about donors (and paying students, of course, when donor money isn’t enough) subsidizing poor students. </p>
<p>In advising specific students, though, the merit money might matter.</p>
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<p>True.</p>
<p>The calculation also points out that, in some states (e.g. PA, TX, IL), a student from a middle income family who can get admitted to the state flagship but not get merit scholarships may not be able to attend because it is just too expensive even after financial aid (effectively, this requires students from middle income families to attain a higher (merit scholarship) standard than those from wealthy families in order to be able to go to the state flagship).</p>
<p>But other states (e.g. NC, FL, WA) seem to go pretty far in making their state flagships financially feasable to students from middle income families who can get admitted.</p>
<p>While opinions on which model is more desirable seem to have obvious political alignments, the states implementing each model do not seem to line up consistently by general political leanings.</p>
<p>Here is the table with the percentage of students with Pell grants added:</p>
<p>NC: 8272 (ESC = 4605), 21%
FL: 9287 (ESC = 5370), 34%
WA: 9384 (EFC = 4482, ESC = 4902), 36%
VA: 10667 (EFC = 3667, ESC = 7000), 13%
CA: 11506 (EFC = 3006, ESC = 8500), 38%
MI: 9578-12778 (EFC = 2980-3778, ESC = 6598-9000), 13%
MN: 15718 (ESC = 8200), 26%
NJ: 16490 (EFC = 2637, ESC = 6500), 28%
NY: 16845 (ESC = 8500), 38%
OH: 18616 (ESC = 8500), 17%?
TX: 22526 (ESC = 3500), 29%
IL: 23223 (ESC = 10500), 21%
PA: 24176 (EFC = 3077), 15%?</p>
<p>Median income for family of 4 in 2008 was $67,019.
In CA it was $70,712, in NJ it was $90,261 .</p>
<p>[Median</a> Income for 4-Person Families, by State - U.S Census Bureau](<a href=“http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statistics/4person.html]Median”>http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statistics/4person.html)</p>
<p>The net price calculators are off when a school does not guarantee to meet need because what you get is an average. A very good student with nice test scores is likely to get full need met at some of these schools whereas one who barely made it into the school gets no grant,or a paltry one from the school and only gets federal and state monies that they are guaranteed to get if COA supports the amounts. There is even federal money such as HEOG and Perkins that are given out in various ways, with the methodology differing from school to school. Some will save them for their best students, some for their neediest, and almost all have a time component to this limited aid, in that when it runs out, that’s it so that the earliest applicants have the best chances of getting it. </p>
<p>It’s great info, Ubalumnus, and I want to share it with some teachers I know, especially the NY data. </p>
<p>As for PSU and Pitt, they can quibble all they want about not really being state schools; they are so treated. There are some other schools that do not get much state aid; UVA at 10% is one of them and W&Mary as well, and there has been talk for the last 20 years and maybe more, as to how they will break away and become private. I thought 7% was the figure for Pitt in terms of what they get from the state, but state school it is and it has in and out of state tuition differentials as well as other things that make them operate as state flagships.</p>
<p>Florida has the complication of Bright Futures which pays most (used to be all ) tuition amounts for those kids who are “good” students by certain parameters. Qualifiying for that is not guaranteed but is considered part of the aid the student gets, plus, it is not need driven but is merit. </p>
<p>I am surprised that WA state schools are down there as meeting most need for instaters. Chapel Hill does, in NC but the rest of the NC schools…um. I don’t think so. VA with UVA as the flagship would meet full need most of the time but uses PROFILE to define it.</p>
<p>PSU is miserable in terms of meeting need. I’ve harped on this a number of times as I know a number of families dumfounded that not only did they get nothing or a smidgeon of anything from the university itself when they were high need and only the federal entitlements, plus are told they have to attend for the summer and pay for it if they are to be permitted to matriculate there. All the kids I know who applied there with heavy duty need were gapped badly to the point that it was simply not an option for them. They are not that great with the merit money either.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse–can you give exact figures for what you are saying. I know we’ve discussed this before but I’m still not seeing what you see. I find the NPC to be very accurate with the exception when someone is awarded a large merit award that is not at all tied to need that is a competitive award. I’m seeing that the numbers work out very closely to what students are actually awarded, or not. It isn’t about meeting need, it’s about what the school will give. Say, as an example, a school’s COA is $40,000. The NPC for a student say with an income of $70,000 comes up with a net cost to attend of $35,000. When they get their actual award, they were given $5500 in loans. That would be “accurate” the that NPC said they would get about $5000 in “aid”. Let’s assume the EFC, however, is $15,000, there is still a large gap, but that was shown in the NPC to start. Let say this same student got a full tuition scholarship based only on merit–for $30,000. It would appear that the NPC is wrong, but I have never seen one indicate a competitive award. I guess I see them as “worst case” for a school. What are you seeing that is different?</p>
<p>Regarding the whole Penn State “state related” thing, the closest analog in other states are the “statutory colleges” at Cornell: New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Human Ecology, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and College of Veterinary Medicine. But then the comparison looks even worse for Penn State, because the same financial aid parameters put into Cornell (for a student in one of these divisions) gives:</p>
<p>NY (Cornell “statutory colleges”): 5100 (ESC = 2500 work study)</p>
<p>Very simply put, SteveMA, two families with the exact same numbers will get the same results from the NPC. Their actual packages can vary. Maybe family A has s kid who was accepted with a higher SATs, maybe the kid got the application in earlier. In fact one family can get full need met at a school that will not show that on the NPC and the other famly with the same numbers get none of it met other than the Federal guarantees. I see this all of the time. </p>
<p>Two cousins, with very similar financial profiles applied to Penn State. Neither got merit money. The one with the lower EFC got less aid. A lot less aid. </p>
<p>Same here in NY. A little more complicated because we have TAP which is a guarantee kick in for those families making under $80K. But my friend whose son is not eligible for TAP got a big fat nothing though his Dad makes about $50K, really less, from Binghamton other than federal loans that could be subsidized. Binghamton does not give much if any merit money but does give out grants in financial aid packages, but gives them out on a preferred basis, not flat out on your income. But the NPC would come out on the average so that young man should have gotten something. HIs SATs are on the edge of getting accepted there and they are thrilled he got in. Now, another kid with the same need could get a full need met package and some do at our school–the ones with the high stats. </p>
<p>Take a school like Colgate that guarantees to meet full need, and has no merit or very little, and you will pretty much get the same need met as the NPC regardless of whether your kid has a perfect SAT and is val or if your kid was making novena requests that he make the cut. Now the difference might be that the first kid will have no loans in there. Maybe the Staffords are not even used, whereas the second kid could have the full staffords, the Perkins, a school loan and work study with a small grant from the school. Both kids have 100% need met, say they both have the same amount of need, but how it is met is quite different. That can be an issue too, since the kid whose Stafford loans are not in the package can borrow from their to pay towards the EFC, or get a job to help ease the expenses to the family. The other kid has to no leeway. Family has to come up with the EFC since the Staffords are already used to meet need, and the kid has only so many hours he can work in his schedule and the school is asking for some of that, again to go towards need, not EFC.</p>
<p>The NPCs are useful, but you have to also be very aware where your kid is in terms of stats and being “love” from that applicant pool. It’s not just merit that is given out by how much a school want a student. There is merit within need and what they call enrollment management.</p>
<p>My alma mater is not need blind but does tend to meet need, very close to it, some years 100%. I’ve kept tabs on this and have a pretty good idea how they operate in terms of need.</p>
<p>They are very aggressive about giving the best packages, the grants to the students they want the most. If you are accepted, Admissions codes you as a 1, 2 or 3 pick. The 1s get all kinds of goodies like a special accepted students invite, lunch with the president, and most importantly a full grant need package. All money. You can use your Stafford loans to pay your EFC, you can get a job on campus to pay for our miscellaneous costs. You are unlikely to get any scholarship money over what your expected contribution as they calculate it is, since there are very few of them and only to the very top kids, but all of your need is met by grants. </p>
<p>If you fall into the 3 category, in a bad year you would get gapped, but most of the time, you get all loans and work study and maybe a smidgeon of grants. The school gives out its own loans as well as Perkins and Staffords, so it is possible for the student to get a ridiculous amount in loans and a big fat work study allotment. And you could be in the exact same income/financial category as the student in Category 1 that got all grants. The NPC would calculate you both exactly the same, but the awards are distributed differently for the highly desired kid as opposed to the one who is a Category 3. Why not reject him? They want to say they are need blind or virtually so on admissions. The years that they can’t say they are 100% need blind, I suspect, though they’ve not admitted, that they reject those that are very high need and on the very edge of being admitted, and really most C candidates don’t have a whole lot of need anyways, so just giving them all self help rarely adds up to huge numbers. Enrollment management at its best.</p>
<p>Not to argue over details, but I think most financial aid formulas use IRS’s adjusted gross income, which is typically less than total household income. For example, it is after any asset sale losses, after flexible spending account deductions, and after cafeteria benefits plan expenditures.</p>
<p>Yes, preferential packaging and enrollment managers are always going to be involved.
Make it difficult for that outstanding student to say no, make him an offer he can’t refuse.</p>
<p>For the less desirable applicant, give him an “admit-deny”, he is admitted but his FA package is loaded with loans and very little grant money. An NPC is not going to calculate the politics of preferential packaging.</p>
<p>Thanks, SLUMOM. That is pretty much what I wanted to get through. The NPC will be accurate when all of the packages are averaged that go through the calculator. But within that framework, there can be a lot of variance from one student to another even with the exact same financial. Run them through the calculator, and they will come out the same, but if one has a 2380 SAT1 score and is the val, and the other edges on the lower quarter of the test scores with a just acceptable GPA for admissions, they are NOT going to get the same package.</p>
<p>CPT–ok, I get the “I want you” factor but in those cases the NPC is most likely showing worst case, correct? Do you see a lot of mismatched numbers the other way though-where the NPC said your net cost would be $10,000 but with the aid package comes in it’s really $20,000 net cost to you? I don’t mean that they are exact, maybe differ by $1000 or so even. I’ve seen them say your net price to you off the NPC is $20,000 but they come up with another “scholarship” so your net price is really $10,000–or the “I want you factor” showing up. The net price from college to college varies hugely though too-even if they are the same list price. I do see that a lot.</p>
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<p>A financial aid package of mostly loans is not what I would call “meeting need” if the loan amount is more than Staffords, or the loan + work amount is more than Staffords plus realistic summer and school year student work earnings (it looks like a a common value is $8,500 for the expected student contribution which is this).</p>
<p>So if your alma mater regularly offers financial aid packages such that $list_price - $grants > $EFC + $8,500, then it is not really “meeting need” in most cases.</p>
<p>charlieschm may I ask what state schools did you find cheaper then Penn State after all was said and done?</p>
<p>Being from PA this is going to be a big factor when we start applying soon</p>