@BelknapPoint I do understand where you’re coming from. Since the NCP asks for the income and assets of both the natural and stepparent, it’s difficult for a school to go off of the NCP in its totality to determine a fair biological contribution and properly separate the two. I’ve heard of schools, particularly some 568 schools, that compute a biological contribution based on the proportion of the bio income to the total income, and the proportion of the bio assets to the total assets. Perhaps Columbia does a similar procedure upon receiving the NCP info.
It is probably reasonable to expect a higher contribution given the hypothetically high stepparent income you talked about. I just don’t find it completely fair for schools to expect a stepparent who perhaps only sees their stepchild a few times a year to contribute to the education to the same extent that the bio parent does.