<p>Has anyone been accepted to multiple schools that claim to cover full financial need? How do their aid packages vary? Was your expected family contribution higher at one school than another?</p>
<p>I was accepted to a few schools that all claimed to meet full financial need, but my expected family contribution varied a lot from college to college.</p>
<p>I volunteer with a group that helps low income kids apply to colleges. The differences I’ve seen in packages are huge. Especially if a parent is self employed.</p>
<p>I’ve seen colleges call Parent Plus loans meeting need, some add a Perkins loan on top of a Stafford, work study can be modest or a large number, student summer contribution varies, home equity can wreck havoc…all this under the guise of meeting full need.</p>
<p>Now if you mean very top, HYPS top, it’s more generous and more consistent though some consider home equity while others don’t.</p>
<p>There were some kids last year that reported wide differences in expected “family contributions”.</p>
<p>My D was accepted to 8 schools that met full need. The EFC was close at all 8 schools, but the contents of the aid packages varied widely. Some schools had more loans in the package than others. Another really important thing to look at is actual cost. Add up the tuition, fees, room, and board. Subtract the scholarships and grants. The difference is “real cost” to you. You will be expected to pay this amount, whether it is through student loans, parent loans, or EFC (work study is not guaranteed & is earn as you go so should be considered icing on the cake rather than money available to pay the “real cost”).</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Is anyone willing to share any information about specific schools?</p>
<p>(that gave better aid than others or whose aid package was “smaller than advertised”)</p>
<p>Yes, we saw significant differences, and we were able to compare FA 2 years: during fr year admissions (the year before HYPS changed their policies for mid-upper income families) and during sop transfer (the first year with the new policies).</p>
<p>For our situation, HYP (did not apply/was not accepted to S) were more generous than Amherst, Brown, Dartmouth & WUSTL. HYP gave us more than we expected (though not necessarily as much as we needed ;)), while A, B, D & W all said that we did NOT qualify for ANY need based FA beyond loans.</p>
<p>YMMV</p>
<p>Yes, D applied to about 6 schools promising to meet full need and packages varied by as much as 20K. I’m happy to share the details if you would like to PM me. D is at Williams now.</p>
<p>On the college board website, for each college, under financial aid, you can see the average percent of each financial aid offer that was loans vs. grants.</p>
<p>Some colleges also offer their own low interest loans to parents to supplement the maximum amount of federally subsidized loans. They include that in their offers.</p>
<p>Thanks!
Entomom, that is really helpful info. I had somehow thought that Dartmouth covered need without loans (hadn’t looked too closely, just remembered what I had heard from Yale and Harvard and unconsciously transferred the knowledge). As to the schools that did not give you grants: Amherst and WUSTL do give some (extremely smart and lucky) students merit scholarships, right? (and Dartmouth and Brown do not?)
GTalum, I’m sending you a message now.
Charlieschm, thanks for that reminder (of the college board website). I’d forgotten about that, and that is VERY relevant.</p>
<p>According to the Dartmouth website, “Beginning with the Class of 2015, which will matriculate in the fall of 2011, Dartmouth will continue to provide free tuition and a no-loans expectation for students with family incomes of $75,000 a year or less. However, Dartmouth will meet the financial need of students with family incomes above $75,000 through a mix of loans, scholarship and work-study.” Loans for incomes between $75,000 and $99,999 are limited to $2,00 each year.</p>
<p>I posted the financial aid decisions as they played out in our house. there was about a 10-12k gap where every school met 100% demonstrated need.</p>
<p>Dartmouth has done away with its no loan policy starting this admission cycle for families that make over 75k (it was no loans for approximately 4 years). Current freshman class has been grandfathered into the no-loan policy. But, that is not to say that Dartmout will not give you a package that does not contain loans (especially if you are asking for a financial review and you submit a package from a peer school). IIRC, Amherst only gives need based financial aid (no merit $). WashU gives a limited number of scholarships but most FA is need based.</p>
<p>We naively put savings in our kids’ names while they were growing up. There’s a huge difference in how colleges treat student assets. Most take 20-25% per year but a few, like Harvard, treat student assets the same as parents’.</p>
<p>My DD was accepted to 7 LAC’s that meet need. Our EFC was 19,600. The financial packages offered gave us a “real cost” (as defined in a post above) ranging from 20.5 k to 31.7 k. When loans and work study were factored in the range was 13 k to 27.4 k.
The LAC with the least generous aid package was in fact a college that touts it’s generous financial aid. When I called them to understand their offer I learned that the fin aid officer had made some interesting interpretations about our expenses that went well beyond information asked for on any forms. They did offer an improved aid package that put them closer to the middle of the pack. But the upshot was that there was no way I could have anticipated their calculation of our need.
If financial aid is important then you should develop a list of compatible schools, apply to them all, and see what the offers are. ED is not an option if you want the best financial aid. For us, the best financial aid offer didn’t decide where DD attended but the least generous offers did take some schools out of consideration. This eliminated one of her top choices but left another top choice on the list where she is now attending. DD saw the differences in aid offered as corresponding to how wanted she was at those colleges.<br>
Ironically, we recently visited with another family whose daughter chose between the same two top choices. But in their circumstance the situation was reversed - the least generous school we eliminated was significantly more affordable than the school DD attends which had offered them a much less generous aid package.</p>
<p>For anyone with savings in their kids name, it is easy to transfer that over to a 529 account that has the child as the beneficiary. 529 accounts are considered parent’s assets not student’s assets. The first couple thousand dollars in the student’s name don’t matter - you can keep that in your kid’s name for their college spending money, books, etc.</p>
<p>It also is bad to keep college savings in a student’s name because then the student can control the money. I knew one student in my freshman year who spent his tuition money on a really expensive electric guitar. Last I heard, the University kept sending him eviction notices to leave the dorm.</p>
<p>With a 529 account, it is owned by the parent. If the child drops out of college, the parent can transfer the account to another person for college expenses, such as another child or their spouse. The parent can also keep control of the money until a child matures and decides to go back to college in a couple years.</p>
<p>What charlie says is partially correct. It’s very easy to transfer funds from a child’s UGMA or UTMA to a child-owned 529. The title of the account must remain the same, typically parent as custodian, child as beneficiary, until the child is 18 or 21 at which point the child is the legal owner. </p>
<p>For FAFSA, UGMA and UTMAs are assessed at the child’s rate of 20%. All 529s are assessed at the parent rate of 5.6%.</p>
<p>Since the assets originally were owned by the child, the new 529 account that holds the transferred money must also be owned by the child. Unlike a parent-owned 529, money in a student-owned 529 cannot be transferred to another beneficiary.</p>
<p>Another incorrect statement in the post above is that the first couple thousand of the child’s savings don’t matter; in fact, there’s no asset protection allowance for student savings. There’s an income protection allowance, which will be $4500 next year for students, but all student assets “count” towards the FAFSA EFC.</p>
<p>Adding that the range of difference between schools for us was 15k as a fr applicant, and 25k as a transfer with the new FA policies; and these differences were all grant & WS, no loans included. </p>
<p>I believe that last year Williams and Dartmouth both had to start giving loans again as part of their FA packages.</p>
<p>It cannot be overstated: Not all FA packages are created equal, even all packages that meet need. </p>
<p>My D got 2 such offers; one consisted of federal loans, a laughably small grant, a huge workstudy, and a ginormous parent Plus loan. The other consisted of federal loans, a large scholarship, an even larger grant, and a small workstudy. Both packages technically met demonstrated need, but package #1 would have been a disaster financially.</p>
<p>A parent PLUS loan is not … and I repeat, NOT … a component of a package that meets need. If it is in the package, it should ONLY be in the amount of the EFC (remembering that IM EFC can be higher than FM EFC). If a school claims that it meets need and includes a parent PLUS loan in an amount that is higher than the IM EFC, that school is not telling the truth.</p>