<p>I keep reading and hearing about looking at colleges and what I'm seeing over and over again is that the first thing one needs to do is determine "how much college you can afford". My D14 is currently looking at colleges and we've visited a few. I know what I have saved for her college and the amount will just pay for over one year at "full sticker price" at a private LAC. I've been on some of the college sites and used their net price calculators but they don't give me much information other than she would be give a direct subsidized federal loan. So, at this stage of the process, how do I know if we are looking at schools that would be beyond our financial ability to pay? What's the best way to know if a certain school is "affordable" for us? I don't want to waste my time, my daughter's time, and the schools time. Sorry for my ignorance with this whole process but I just want to make sure that when she decides on a school that she's not crushed and heartbroken when I tell her we can't afford the school. Please tell me there's a way to get a ballpark estimate for what it's really going to cost me out of pocket. I certainly don't want to consider a Parent Plus Loan. Thanks in advance for any help or information!</p>
<p>I’ve been on some of the college sites and used their net price calculators but they don’t give me much information other than she would be give a direct subsidized federal loan</p>
<p>If you’re using LAC’s NPCs and the only aid you’re getting is a Federal Loan, then that suggests to me that you have a very high expected “Family Expected Contribution”…which means that you don’t qualify for any “free aid” because your income and/or assets are too high. </p>
<p>If you can’t pay as much as these NPCs are indicating, then how much can you pay each year? Once you determine that amount, then find some schools that will give enough merit so that you can pay the rest.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids…thanks for your quick reply. You are correct. Our family income is much too high to qualify for any of the “free aid”…Pell, etc. What I’m finding difficult to determine is what merit aid schools will give out to students. Some of the schools list a few of the “scholarships” they offer based on GPA’s/test scores and then they say their are other scholarships available but don’t go into any detail.</p>
<p>You need to look at the NPC again, and see what they say YOUR sticker price will be. Not the full sticker price of the school, but what they expect your family contribution to be. Unfortunately for many families, that is going to come as a shock. But remember that college is paid with 3 pools of money: Money you already have saved, money you are earniing, and money you or she will earn later (paid now as loans).</p>
<p>Federal aid is given out based on FAFSA. Many private colleges use the CSS Profile, or their own forms with their own internal formula to determine what it a reasonable amount to expect you to pay. At a “full need met” school, they will find a way to cover the rest through financial aid. That aid might or might not include scholarships, loans, and work study.</p>
<p>If you’ve run the NPC, and you can’t afford what they suggest (remember, some savings, some current earnings, some loans preferably in the student’s name), then you need to look elsewhere. If that is the case, stress with your daughter that her grades may determine where she can go, because they may open to door to merit aid, which is based more on her grades and scores than on your financial “need.”</p>
<p>The other thing that’s important at this stage, is for her to understand the profile of the students accepted at these schools. Each publishes a “common data set” that can give you a sense of what grades and scores she needs to be accepted, and to understand that even if she maintains a 4.0 and has a perfect score on the SAT, she still isn’t guaranteed a spot at the very top schools. They only accept about 10% of applicants, and most of their applicants are highly qualified. They also don’t offer merit scholarships, because they don’t need to in order to entice the top students. Their money goes to those with the greatest financial need.</p>
<p>Edited to add: most of the time the scholarships listed on the NPC are the ones that are pretty much guaranteed. Others are competitive, and they don’t want to lull you into expecting to get them. Some are also very specific, and not worth their time to include in the NPC calculation, because very few students will qualify.</p>
<p>EFC = Expected Family Contribution
COA = Cost of Attendance
Need = COA - EFC
Gap = Need - financial aid</p>
<p>All colleges require you to fill out FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) which will determine your EFC. In addition, many colleges require you to fill out the Profile or their own form. Based on the additional forms, colleges might adjusted your EFC.</p>
<p>The FAFSA EFC is very roughly calculated by ~25-35% of your annual income and ~5% of you asset (not including primary home, retirement account and some asset protection based on age).</p>
<p>Colleges web sites have their COA. The NPCs on the college web sites are trying to figure out your EFC/need to determine if you might get any aid.</p>
<p>For example, your EFC is 35k, COA is 50k, you have 15k of need. Most colleges don’t meet full need. Often you have to pay your EFC plus gap. If you get aid, the package might include loan, work study and/or grant.</p>
<p>If you think you have a high EFC, you might not get much financial aid. You can look into merit aid.</p>
<p>M2CK is right - there are affordable schools out there. There are several state universities with scholarships that are awarded automatically if a student’s GPA and SAT/ACT scores are high enough. And there are many, many other schools that award generous competitive merit awards. You can look at the threads at the very top of the financial aid forum to find the competitive and automatic scholarship schools.</p>
<p>Then do some of your own research, and look for small liberal arts colleges where your daughter’s GPA and test scores would be exceptional for that school. You can start with the Princeton Review website - they list the average GPA and test scores for each school’s incoming students. Find schools where your daughter’s stat’s would be above the 75th percentile - those are the schools where she’d be likely to qualify for merit scholarships. Once you find those schools, your daughter can do more research, and figure out which ones she might want to apply to. And, while you’re looking, don’t ignore the women’s colleges!</p>
<p>The trick is to tailor your starting list to those schools where your daughter is either certain or quite likely to get good merit aid . . . and then let her pick her “dream schools” from that list!</p>
<p>Lots of the NPCs don’t give you merit aid information. They will tell you about loans, grants (which don’t have to be paid back!), and possibly work study. A few do give merit aid estimates, but a lot don’t. And we found the ones that did give some merit aid estimates weren’t too reliable in our case (they were not schools with “automatic” awards).</p>
<p>If you are not seeing any grants when you run the NPCs, then you are probably looking at paying full price with some loans taken out and any merit aid your student can garner. Most merit aid (especially aid that carries over every year) comes from the colleges themselves. You have to go look at the financial aid website for the colleges and find their page on merit aid. If your D has stats near the top of the admission pool at a given college and they give merit aid, she may end up with some. But you won’t know until she is admitted what merit aid she is offered; it usually comes with or right near the time of the admission offer. And until she has taken her standardized tests, you can’t even tell where she falls in the applicant pool for the college. PSAT scores from fall of junior year is usually the first real indication you get of potential SAT scores.</p>
<p>At the more expensive schools LACs that offer merit aid, the school prices are approaching $60K. The most common merit aid amount we saw last year for D2 at the schools that offered it was $15K, bringing the annual cost down to $45K without any additional need based aid or loans. One gave her $25K per year (bringing cost down to about $35K). There are some LACs that are less expensive – examples would be schools like Lawrence (~50K) or Gustavus, just to name a couple – and Lawrence gave my D $23K per year in merit aid, so it would have been about $27K/year for her to attend. So merit aid is out there, but at many schools it is not guaranteed. There are some bigger awards (for example, Kenyon has some full tuition scholarships) – but they are VERY competitive – my kid with 2390 SATs couldn’t even get into the interview pool for the Kenyon scholarships.</p>
<p>I would say you probably need to start a list of colleges with merit aid available, but have a range of colleges on the list because you don’t know what your kid’s test scores will look like. Once you have a better idea in spring of junior year, you can narrow down the list further.</p>
<p>One more piece of advice – do NOT let your kid get set on a “dream” school. Don’t encourage the idea, especially if finances are an issue. Make sure she knows that ANY college choice is going to be dependent on the cost. If she gets her heart set on a school hoping for merit and she doesn’t get enough, that is heartbreaking. So you have to treat this somewhat like the business transaction it is, and set that tone for her as well.</p>
<p>“Sorry for my ignorance with this whole process but I just want to make sure that when she decides on a school that she’s not crushed and heartbroken when I tell her we can’t afford the school.”</p>
<p>You need to look at your savings and what you can pay out of pocket each year and what she can pay from her own savings, earnings, and student loans. Set an approximate figure now. Let her know now what your financial limits are. That way when the admissions offers and aid packages come in she will be able to toss the unaffordables without a tear.</p>
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<p>Don’t let her decide on “a school”. Let her decide on a list of matches, safeties, and reaches with the financial constraints clearly understood. You are not looking for A college at this point. You are looking for a list of colleges that will be suitable from multiple angles (cost, academics, size, geography, campus vibe).</p>
<p>Don’t let her decide on "a school</p>
<p>Exactly…not until you know for sure that you’ll get the aid you need. </p>
<p>Tell your D now how much you can pay each year. Tell her that you won’t borrow or co-sign loans. </p>
<p>As for merit awards…look over the automatic scholarship threads to find some schools that will give assured merit for stats…those can be your safeties.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for your comments and suggestions. I’m hoping that by the time she finishes her senior year I should have enough saved for $15-20K/year for four years. I’ve been reading The College Solution book and it has some great information. My D has decent stats. She attends a private HS and her UW GPA is in the 3.7 to 3.8 range with college prep classes, has taken some AP courses, has very strong EC’s but doesn’t excel at standardized testing. Her ACT composite is only at 24. She’s scheduled to take it again next month and has been taking lots of practice test so hopefully she can raise her score some. I checked out the Princeton Review site but can’t seem to locate the percentile information. Is registration required to access this? I’d rather find that information in one location than have to go to each schools standard data set. Any advice on this would be appreciated. This is one area that the College Solution book recommends and I think she might be able to get more merit aid by applying to the 75 percentile schools. I guess I’ll know more about where she may fall after the September ACT test.</p>
<p>You can get the scores for all schools at collegedata.com</p>
<p>Each family has to determine how much is affordable for college. Just as you decide how much you can afford for a house, a car, vacation and in later years weddings, retirement home, etc. You indicate that your DD is at a private school right now, so you know you can pay that much. Add the amount you are saving for college. DIvide what you have saved by 4. You DD should also be thinking of working summers and saving money and putting a few thousand a year towards the cost of her education. If she’s your only child, you can extend the payment period over 10 years with borrowing. It’s not such a terrible thing to borrow as a tool, as long it’s not a crutch. </p>
<p>The cost for college usually involves past, present and future income on part of the parent and student. The big problem that often arises is that a lot of folks simply do not save for college. And they’ve sewn up their life styles with commitments that make it difficult to squeeze out any sizeable payment from current income. When every dollar that’s coming in is already commmited to something, you can’t pay an additional big ticket item, and college can be The Big Top when it comes to tickets. But you have saved, and you have a private school tab that will end when your DD goes to college, and hopefully you have some wiggle room in your household budget. You will have some fewer expenses when your DD is gone to college and you can decide if you can truly scrimp for the next 4 years and focus on putting the money towards college costs. Some other spending has to be cut, if it’s possible. If you are already slicing into flesh, then you can’t. If there is still a gap, you borrow. Your DD , as the NPCs show, can borrow $5500 in Direct Loan freshman year and a bit more each subsequent year. Maybe you want to borrow a match. I suggest start your repayment of school loans as soon as the money is dispensed so that you can gauge when you are borrowing too much with each monthly check you write. That’s what we did. Not gonna say it’s easy. We felt every dollar the repayment over close to 14 years took, but better than the 25 years some are taking with payments starting after graduation. That’s a life sentence. </p>
<p>But ultimately it’s up to you.</p>
<p>Don’t be worried about registering at Princeton Review. I’ve been registered there for a couple of years, and have never had any problem with spam, etc. as the result of registering. And if you click on the “admissions” link for each college (after you’ve registered), it will bring up the mid-range SAT scores for the school, which is a good starting point. I’m not familiar with the site BobWallace suggested, but if he recommends it, I’m sure it’s good.</p>
<p>Once you have a tentative list, you’ll probably want to go to the school websites and take a look at the more detailed information in the school’s most recent Common Data Set.</p>
<p>One of my favorite resources:</p>
<p>[The</a> Women’s College Coalition](<a href=“http://www.womenscolleges.org/]The”>http://www.womenscolleges.org/)</p>
<p>She might want to try the SAT as well, some kids do better on it. And she should take the PSAT her junior year just in case it is her strong suit. What grade is she in? I am a little surprised she is taking the ACT at age 14; most kids don’t take it until they are juniors unless they are taking it early for a talent search or something like that. A 24 at age 14 could very well turn into a 30 at age 16 with the additional high school curriculum, better reading skills that develop over time, and some prep.</p>
<p>Also for quickly checking which schools match by 75th percentile, see:</p>
<p><a href=“USA University College Directory - U.S. University Directory - State Universities and College Rankings”>USA University College Directory - U.S. University Directory - State Universities and College Rankings;
<p>We were about in the same boat when our kids started school. We had just about enough to pay full sticker price at an expensive lac for about 1 year. Instead of going that route they are both at a top state school in our state. Because the price is about a third of the private school - even at full price - and they both got some merit scholarships - we can reasonably make up the difference each year with no loans. Our kids knew that if they chose the more expensive private schools they would need to take out some loans. Half way through we are glad not to have any loans so far. Also, there is so much less pressure to keep up the grades to keep those merit scholarships. Although they are both doing well and their GPA is easily high enough to keep the merit scholarships it would be quite distressing if a $20,000 piece of the puzzle was suddenly missing because of a low grade in Chemistry or something. One big question to ask is how many kids meet the requirements to keep their merit scholarships all 4 years. Also, my son is looking at needing an extra semester to finish out his double major. With tuition much lower than $10,000 per semester, that is not going to break the bank if we need to add that in the budget.</p>
<p>“doesn’t excel at standardized testing”</p>
<p>Has she always had a discrepancy between her classroom performance and standardized tests, or is this a new thing? If it is a long-standing pattern, some things to investigate (among others) would be poor test-taking strategies, test-induced anxieties, and slow processing speeds (think dyslexia “lite”). Each of those has a different work-around, and finding that work-around can make a huge difference in college survival, not just in college admissions.</p>
<p>I think D14 means the daughter is graduating from HS in 2014…is that correct?</p>
<p>I would suggest that you look at your instate public universities. If you have $20,000 a year and your student takes the Direct Loan, plus works in the summers and 10 hours or so during the school year, these instate publics will likely be affordable.</p>