We have twin sons all go to college in 2019. The boys stats are pretty good, SAT 1560 and 1570. SAT subjects math/physics/chemistry all 800. They both took 6 AP tests and scored all 5s. They are taking 3~4 more APs in their senior year and expect to get 5s next spring. One math boy qualified AIME every year, the other engineering boy has 4 and W4.75 GPAs from a very competitive high school. Both boys are eyeing on top private colleges with ticket price 60K~70K. Our family income is about 170k. We have maxed 401K so our retirement account is loaded > 1m. Would our boys get any FA?
If not, which top schools they have chance to get merit scholarships?
I run some Net price calculator and got mixed figures. Many top schools’ NPC show our EFC is 20K~30K except couple odd ones show we need to pay full price. But when I entered FAFSA, I got numbers 041234. What does this mean?
That fafsa number (is it with two in college?) means you won’t get federal money (Pell) and most likely will not get a lot of need based money at public schools. Maybe a little at top private schools like Princeton or Harvard. $20-30k looks about right if you FAFSA is $41k (meaning you could pay about that much), so at a school that is $70k in tuition, you’d pay $40k and get $30k in aid
Your best bet might be at schools that give a lot of merit aid.
Please tell us your kids’ app lists and which schools you ran the Net Price Calculators.
AND tell us how much you can spend PER CHILD PER YEAR…
And, tell us each twin’s major and career goal
Tell us what is your home state?
In the meantime, my gut is telling me this…
Those “top schools” are Ivies or similar (like Vandy or Rice) who give very generous FA because they have generous calculations…because they can afford to be generous due to their endowments.
Your FAFSA EFC of $41k…did you indicate that you’ll have TWO in college? If so, then that means that according to the feds, you can afford (ha ha) to spend $82k per year in college costs. But maybe you didn’t put that there will be two in college. Check. And you did do two FAFSAs right?
How much do you have in assets that aren’t protected?
The schools that are showing you to be full pay may be OOS publics or maybe NYU? Or maybe lower cost instate publics?
And it’s often misleading when folks first run the Net Price Calculators of schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. They’ll often get great estimates…and then be shocked when everyone else gives them little to nothing.
You got “mixed figures” because different colleges give different financial aid. That’s why you run the NPC – to see what the aid might look like at a variety of colleges. With your income, many colleges will not give you financial aid. The most selective colleges, which also happen to be the most generous, will give you SOME financial aid from their own institutional funds. Also, the term EFC is a Fafsa term. It’s confusing when you use “EFC” to describe your NPC results. The result of your NPC – which is not the same measure as the Fafsa EFC – shows your net price (ergo, it’s called net price calculator).
It means $41,234. The FAFSA is a tool that determines your eligibility for FEDERAL financial aid. The EFC is really more of an index than a real dollar amount you are “expected” to pay. Your result shows that you are not eligible for a federal Pell grant.
$41234 is for ONE student. 2 will be $82500. I don’t know how we can afford. After mortgage, property tax and other taxes, we only have 100k left. If we pay $82k for colleges, we have only 18k left for the family of 4.
Your sons should chase merit aid. If they go to your state flagship they might get a very good education for a bargain price. It’s just a fact that very few parents can pay the price of a $70k school OOP every year, and you have 2 going at the same time.
Even if they get into top schools that are very generous with need based aid, you have a lot of income so those schools would still expect a big contribution from you.
?
You have no college savings with a 1 million $ loaded retirement? These kids were born 16 plus years ago, so the schools assume your financial savviness will have included college planning. I am surprised you get 20K EFC on ANY NPC. All your assets are protected? You have a decent mortgage still?
The first question you must answer is actually very simple. How much can you afford to pay for the next 4 yrs and divide by 2. That is your budget. Out of your remaining $100,000, can you live on $40k, $50k, $60k?
On top of tuition, room, and board, you need to factor in travel costs, books, and possibly health insurance if the school won’t accept yours. Allow for 5% increase in costs/yr.
(I do agree with @Sybylla that I am surprised you got $20k on any NPC bc we have never gotten that with 2 in college and multiple dependents still at home. Did you add your yrly retirement savings into your income? You do not get to subtract that out. I suspect there might have been user error on the lower NPC results.)
Fwiw, you don’t have to pay $$ beyond what yo can afford with students like stats like your kids. They can chase merit at lower ranked schools and your costs would be significantly lower. They could attend free tuition at a list of schools, close to full ride at others. It is a choice to attend a highly ranked costly school, not a right.
@anxiousNot In a thread that your son started back in February, you also posted and indicated that there were no cost constraints. Has your financial situation deteriorated since then or did you assume there would be merit for such a high-achieving student?
@yearstogo I went and looked at that thread. Wow. They could be in much different college application situation right now if they had posted this question then.
It is now mid-Nov of sr yr. Many of the best competitive scholarships deadlines have passed. Many have deadlines of mid-Oct to mid-Nov. Too late to pursue scholarships like GT’s presidential, UNC Morehead, UGA’s Foundation Fellows, etc.
@anxiousnot: so we can help you, can you tell us again whether you have cost constraints (seems so v.prevvious posts???), what money you can divert from savings to help with college, whether you can handle some “belt tightening” or not.
Can a spouse work more hours and divert the money to college costs exclusively?
If you add everything (savings, diverting revenue, belt tightening, income…) what can you afford for each kid?
What do you wish the costs were?
(“Ideally, we would comfortably afford 18k per child but we could stretch to 26k”.)
Have you encouraged your children to look at any college, without financial constraints, or do they know the situation?
Right now your children should focus on sending apps VERY QUICKLY to schools with good merit for their stats: Pitt, Miami Ohio, TOsu, UMD College Park, VTech, UMN Twin Cities, Michigan State, USC Columbia, College of Charleston, UTDallas, UF, FSU, UKentucky, UIowa, Indiana U.
the deadline was either Nov 1 or is Nov 15, check, and hurry.
(I know the main NC deadlines have passed).
Anyway, since you now believe that paying for your twin’s college costs will leave your household with too little to live on, your sons’ need to chase BIG merit. A nice sized merit award will still leave you with too much to pay.
As mentioned, it’s already midNov and merit deadlines have either passed or are coming up in a couple of weeks. So, I suggest that you have your twins QUICKLY apply to a few schools with ASSURED HUGE merit for their stats.
This is probably going to be a difficult discussion with your twins since they’ve not expecting a cost constraint, and likely have spend the last 8 months dreaming of pricey schools.
Checking for clarity…is EricCO the son? On that other thread.
Important question…is your $1 million of retirement savings in qualified retirement accounts? IRA, TSA or something like that? Or is that money sitting in regular savings, CDs or other liquid assets?
Anyway…with an income of $170,000 a year and retirement money IN qualified retirement accounts, I would guesstimate a TOTAL FAFSA EFC of about $50,000 or so. But if you have two in college, you would see this divided in half for each kid…so $25k or so per twin. But that is a Thumper estimate!
Did you indicate that there will be TWO in college on each FAFSA forms?
@anxiousNot don’t feel badly about not having college savings…MOST families do not have college savings. Like you, we put our monies into our retirement accounts, not into college savings. But we didn’t have twins.
Here is the good news.
Your kids can eye $70,000 a year colleges...but the fact is...no student needs to ATTEND a $70,000 a year college.
As noted above...you will need to hurry...but your kids CAN get merit aid if they apply quickly to the right places. They have great stats. Start with University of Alabama. Add Arizona State University, and University of New Mexico...but hurry up...because you may have actually missed some early deadlines required for the best merit consideration.
With two in college at the same time, it IS possible that you could see net costs in the $25,000 a year range at places like the very very generous schools that meet full need for all students...places like the Ivies, Stanford, MIT. But please have a money talk with these kids, and let them know your budget...sure...apply...but they need to understand they will need to walk away from colleges that don’t meet your budget requirements.
Also, keep in mind that some of these schools accept under 10% of applicants.
You are lucky lucky that you are CA residents. There are many excellent public colleges in CA that many students wish they could attend at instate costs. Hopefully your kids have those schools on their application lists. And please don’t say “but they really want to leave CA”. It’s a big state...and there are lots of choices.
Any chance either kid is a national merit finalist? That could open up some other doors.
Look at Colleges That Change Lives. Great schools, and your kids might get some merit aid to ease the cost burden for your family.
There are some highly ranked colleges that give merit aid...Vanderbilt, Duke, for example. Tulane gives merit and is a fine college. Case Western gives merit. What is your definition of “top colleges” and why is this a necessity? There are many many terrific colleges that are not top 50 where your kids could get an excellent education with merit aid...if cost is really a factor.
A question...does your $170,000 income for 2017 include the contributions you made to tax deferred retirement accounts?
@thumper1 Your post is very helpful. I would just clarify that it is rare to see an actual 50-50 split. Even the most generous schools tend toward a 60-60 split.
I don’t think it makes sense to take college funding solely from current income. We figured 1/3 from savings, 1/3 from current income, and 1/3 from other. The other is future earnings (loans), student earnings, merit and/or need based aid, and the AOTC (tax credit). Students can only borrow ~$5500/year (~$27k total), so that has to be taken into account. We added up all the numbers from available resources and that was our budget.
I think you really need to figure out how much you can pay for each child (taking into account younger siblings, if there are any), and let them know that number as soon as possible. If you can’t pay $70k/year each they need to look for merit and/or less expensive schools. If you miscalculated and told them there weren’t any financial constraints it might be a difficult conversation, but you won’t be the first family to have made that error. Better to know now when you can do something about it than to have a bunch of unaffordable options in May.
Yes, it is very late in the day. But these kids are getting into a UC, quite plausibly Berkeley or UCLA. Like most CA residents, you will find that is a wonderful deal, and where most of the smart kids go in the end. Now if you can’t afford the $30K per kid per year cost of a UC, that’s more of a problem, but I don’t see any reason why that isn’t going to be the case, with a reasonable amount of loans and a summer job.
Finding anything that is better value will be hard - maybe the most generous need-based aid (you may have to focus on private colleges that don’t consider home equity), or perhaps merit at public honors colleges. What would they say about Utah for example, where there are 30 full rides per year (deadline Dec 1) and the top math students get very prestigious graduate scholarships (https://unews.utah.edu/university-of-utah-student-awarded-prestigious-churchill-scholarship-3/)?