People are thinking your cost may be higher because your parents own several businesses. The NPCs often don’t capture that financial information accurately but the official forms will. And unfortunately, those families who own small businesses often get less financial aid than the NPCs predict.
Were you able to enter the value of the businesses in the NPCs? If so, it is likely to be more accurate than if the NPC didn’t ask that.
And also, the posts earlier that explained about “adding back” typical business deductions will also greatly affect aid, as those are “added back” to income and income is assessed quite heavily for financial aid purposes.
You can try contacting a financial aid office at a college that you like to see if they can provide any specific guidance.
The questions they ask are value of the business and how much is owed on the business. I do not know specifics or estimates for these so i was putting in random numbers to see pricing.
Anything financial, the reality is you need your parents.
They may do without you, with you.
Some may not know the answers.
In the end though, if they tell you - apply anywhere and we have it covered - then you’re good.
Or if they say, apply anywhere and we’ll figure it out later - that likely means you’re going to waste a lot of time applying to schools you won’t be able to attend and thus your search was wrong and inefficient.
That’s why I suggest showing them the Cornell cost of attendance - it’s our top school and I sent the other day - and reposted. It’s $88,150. It will help you to bring a real world situation - you’ll see by the reaction - is it no problem or holy crap? Add on 5% for when you start and 5% more each year for 2, 3, 4 and see what they say.
You’ll also point out med school costs as well and the other sibling. That’s why I said - if they’re full pay - the reality is they could be spending a quarter of a million a year - can they do so? It seems they could answer pretty easily without having to do a lot of financial analysis. For 98% of society (that’s a guess), that would be a heck no.
Aside from possible issues with the small business and NPC, UMich does not meet full need for OOS students. They provide limited merit aid for OOS students as well.
Did they give you a copy of their 1040 so that you could enter accurate numbers from that?
Often, it’s best if the parents run the NPCs (either with or without the student, depending on their comfort level with sharing financial information) so that the most accurate information can be entered.
So it sounds like CMU may cap their assessment of parental business valuation.
Also, note that any money in a 529 account is considered a parent asset, not a student asset, even if the student is the beneficiary. However, you have to enter the value of all 529 assets, not just the one(s) with you as the beneficiary.
Editing to clarify that a 529 is a specialized education savings plan which some families establish specifically for college savings.
Please note there is one more complication with the NPCs.
As you are probably aware, some schools are “FAFSA-only” schools and some schools use a much more complex financial assessment (and ask for much more data). These latter are “CSS Profile schools”.
In the past, families who had multiple undergraduate students in college at the same time often qualified for additional financial aid. (medical school siblings never counted towards this).
The bad news is, starting in academic year 24-25 (your freshman year) the FAFSA-only schools will no longer be doing this. No one knows what the CSS Profile schools will do – whether they will or will not continue to give extra financial aid to families with multiple undergraduate students at the same time.
So…to be thorough, you may have to run the NPCs with two times – one when you assume you are the only student in college (that is, enter 0 for siblings in college) and one where you assume your sibling is also in college (enter 1 for siblings in college). Do not include your medical school sibling (although I think you can still include the when inputting the number of people in your family when that question is asked).
This is called…garbage in, garbage out. What you are getting from the net price calculators is a VERY rough guess…not even an estimate…if you don’t know the specifics. Also, a lot of this depends on how the business and ownership of the buildings they are paying for are structured.
It is very possible…but I’m guessing too…that the net costs you are getting now are not accurate.
In addition, most net price calculators are currently set for students starting this fall 2023, and that’s not you. And yes, policies do change as well as COA.
I have a new question. I will do research but if it is already known. What schools from my list require both rec letters to be from core class teachers? Right now I only have my AP Physics teacher as a science class and then my engineering/robotics teacher as my non core class. However I have had engineering for all 4 years of high school if that helps at all.
Core, in this context, means not art, music, PE, theater, drivers ed, woodshop, etc
Elective subjects in the core subjects if English, math, science, social science, and foreign language are still core. So recs from teachers of psych, econ, CS, PLTW, etc are still core.
But pay attention to what each school requires. MIT requires rec from a humanities teacher. Cornell engineering requires a math teacher
From Cornell College of Engineering: Two (2) Teacher Recommendations. At least one of the two teacher recommendations must be from a math teacher. You are strongly encouraged to submit a math teacher recommendation from a pre-calculus or calculus teacher who has taught you in grade 11 or 12 (or equivalent years). The second recommendation may be from a teacher instructing a subject of your choice.
I have not taken precalc (I took IB Math AA this year) but I am taking Calc BC next year. I don’t wont it to hurt me that I am going to have to get a rec from a teacher that does not know me yet. I did email them asking if they would consider physics C as calculus math. Would they consider anything? If IB Math counts as precal class I highly doubt that my teacher would write a letter for anyone as he was abruptly put in to teach it only a few days before school started. The whole class had to go and complain about him because he did not know the course himself and we had to get a college student who was interning to come teach us.