<p>Can anyone shed any light on how accurate this information is? Isn't it supposed to use a formula very similar to the actual one used by each college?</p>
<p>It’s supposed to be fairly accurate. My daughter will be a freshman next year so we’re waiting on the financial aid letters to see how close they really turn out.</p>
<p>I would strongly suggest you use the Net Price Calculators on each college website. Each college that uses the CSS Profile has its own formula for computing need based aid based on the Profile information. Just be aware that these NPCs are not particularly accurate for folks who are self employed, own a business, or in situations where the parents are divorced.</p>
<p>The calculator on the College Board website is a “generic” institutional methodology calculator, and NOT specific to the formula each college uses.</p>
<p>@thumper</p>
<p>It’s not specific? If I remember correctly, when I ran the numbers for different schools, I got slightly different numbers.</p>
<p>Knight…compare what you got to the Net Price Calculator on the school websites. The SCHOOLS put those calculators up. I wonder if you will get similar results. Let us know!</p>
<p>Some of the Net Price Calculators are linked to the College Board website, and you can save your data so that you don’t have to enter it all every time. Other institutions have their calculators at their own websites independent of the CB. Which ones are good estimates for this application year remains to be seen. Come back here in May and we may have advice on the topic!</p>
<p>I think the estimators are getting better but all bets are off until you get the actual fin aid award. I find them to be helpful but only after applying the output to my particular situation. How much will travel actually be?? If the school says $700 and you know it will be $2000 add $1300 to the net price. If the school says $1600 for books and you are going to buy used, then subtract $600 or $800 from the net price. Ditto for personal expenses. If the college is using last year’s costs (2012-2013) in their NPC, add 4%-5% to get a better idea of 2013-2014 costs.</p>
<p>Yeah it just linked to the CB one. I thought that because they were linked to specific schools, the formulas would be adjusted for each school.</p>
<p>The formulas ARE adjusted for each school. Just because the schools use the CB calculator doesn’t mean the formulas are the same. The CB calculator just stores your data so it can be plugged in for the different schools that use that calculator, but the formula is customized for each school. If you try several of them, you’ll notice that they don’t all use the same info - some require GPA and SAT scores, for example, and others don’t.</p>