Well…given the above two posts, this OP has these options.
BUT this poster needs to know what the parents can and will pay for college costs…or all of this is a shot in the dark.
And then…remember also, the first hurdle is getting accepted.
It is not so much that your stepparent will have to pay as much as it is looking at the income of your stepparent in relation to the income of your parent.
To all who have responded to this thread, I wanted to provide an updated policy, given to me by Columbia’s financial aid office as of today (July 26th, 2017).
I inquired given I have a non-custodial stepparent and no custodial stepparent. With that circumstance in mind, Columbia responded and stated unequivocally that they only consider the incomes of the two biological parents in determining expected family contribution. Columbia does, however, consider assets jointly held by a biological parent and stepparent, if there are any. But there’s a good answer to this question. Columbia will ultimately only consider the biological incomes. Maybe the situation is different with a custodial stepparent, but that’s what I was told. Hope this helps!
@lisabees this seems close to what you experienced. Thanks for the insight!
@sybbie719 perhaps this is different from what you learned?
Thanks for the update. Yes, this is what they told me and what we based our decision on - in addition to the fact that they meet 100% need and are more generous in general.
Thanks @picknroll222 for coming back with an update. That will be very helpful for future readers. Navigating financial aid is very difficult, but especially hard in situations of divorce. This is exactly the kind of info. I was looking for when D was applying this past year and I’ll be going through it again soon with S. It does seem that there are a number of schools that require info about step-parents’ finances but ultimately do not use their incomes to determine financial need. Good to know that Columbia is one of them. Good luck!