Now that my kid was accepted and has committed to Columbia- are we too late to apply for Financial Aid for the 22-23 school year? Is there an income threshold where it doesn’t make sense to bother filling out all of the forms? (Eg: If you make over $400k, don’t bother)
If you make over $400,000 a year, you won’t likely qualify for a nickel of need based aid at Columbia.
Columbia has a net price calculator. If the parents are married, don’t own a business, arent self employed, and don’t own real estate other than the primary residence, the NPC will give a decent estimate of potential need based aid which is the only kind of aid Columbia offers.
From their website:
“ US Citizens, Eligible Noncitizens and students living in the US without legal citizenship or residency – You can apply for financial aid after the recommended deadline, without penalty. We do recommend that you file by the deadline to assure you receive a timely eligibility letter.”
Also, your student and you can file a FAFSA at any time during the academic year to access the federally funded Direct Loan which is $5500 for freshmen.
Will you require need based aid to commit to attending columbia?
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I’m totally clueless (as usual) on things like financial aid. Do any of these make a difference? I haven’t done an NPC calculation, so I guess I can state it another way: if the parents have stuff like this, do the NPCs help in resolving the question of whether FA is even a possibility?
Thank you in advance for any guidance.
You can still apply now. But if your income or assets are high, you won’t qualify. But go ahead and apply - nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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The due date was Feb 15 for RD applicants.
But I think that for some of the schools, they will accept late applications. It’s always worth calling the financial aid office to ask.
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The NPCs are supposed to be fairly accurate – although some college NPCs are much more detailed than others and that would lead to greater accuracy. It’s worth trying them to see if you are within ballpark. We own a small business and have found that the NPCs are fairly accurate.
Also, I would think that if you own additional real estate and can calculate your equity in it, then adding the value of that equity to your assets and entering that number should work. @thumper1 , is there any reason why that wouldn’t work?
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Hmmmm, you look rich, don’t bother. 
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Thanks so much.
It’s the business aspect that I was getting at, and this helps. Revenue and profit are obviously very different things than salary!
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If the net price calculator asks about your business deductions, equity in your secondary real estate, income from non-custodial parents if parents are divorced, then maybe they will be accurate. I personally know of NO Net Price Calculators that ask all these questions…but there are 3000 or so colleges and I haven’t seen them all.
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See above note from the Columbia website. One CAN apply after the deadline but might not receive their financial aid award in a time’s fashion.
- Re businesses. Some colleges add back in deductions allowed by the IRS but are not allowed for financial aid purposes. These are added back in as income. I’ve never seen anything from any college that specifically details how they do this. So…just beware, this can happen.
@MMRose perhaps your colleges didn’t have this in their formula…or maybe you didn’t have business deductions that would be added back in.
- Second real estate…most colleges use a %age of your primary residence equity (there are some that use it all…). But for secondary real estate, colleges feel this is something you could sell. IOW, they aren’t going to grant you need based aid so you can own additional real estate. So NO simply adding the equity in both properties together likely won’t be accurate as colleges most likely will assess a higher amount of your second piece of real estate.
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Thanks for that. This has piqued my interest, so I got onto Columbia’s NPC. This is what it says about small businesses:
"If your family owns a small business, click here for more information
Reporting ‘total income’ for families that own small businesses may be complicated due to U.S. tax law and IRS regulations. Columbia’s Quick College Cost Estimator results are accurate for approximately 90 percent of families, including small business owners. A likely cost range is displayed along with the personalized estimate on the results page, and families that own small businesses often fall closer to these low and high boundaries. In general, if your family owns one or more small businesses, then you should include income received from your businesses in total family income. In most cases, business income refers to the owner’s share of taxable income before IRS deductions for depreciation, vehicle expenses, meals, and business use of your home."
The second half of this is key “before IRS deductions for depreciation, vehicle expenses, meals, and business use of your home”. These items can really add up. It’s nice to see that Columbia states up front that those deductions just aren’t counted as deductions for financial aid purposes.
But you can see why this can be a shocker to business owners or self employed who take these deductions…and have no idea they will be added back in as income.
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Yes! I was just “shocked” now when running the NPC for Columbia! Having those deductions would really help for a small business, but based on what I am seeing, no dice.
Oh well! Back to work so that I can give it all to College X! 
In terms of fin aid, small business owners, mom+pop landlords, and farmers all are at a disadvantage. Even with schools that are extremely generous with fin aid, they will look at the value of the assets that produce the family income (the farmer’s land, the small trucking company’s business vehicles, the mom and pop landlord’s rental property) and count that as available to be tapped for tuition, since the owner could sell or mortgage those assets and pay the tuition. Of course, since the business would have to then pay the mortgage (for as long as the next 30-40 yrs),or not even have the resources necessary to run the business, the business would not then be producing much revenue for the owner to live on, but that won’t really show up in the fin aid calculations for another two years at least. The college’s argument is that the small biz owner/farmer with, say, 100K/yr in income but real assets (land, real estate, mortgagable equipment) is in better financial shape than, say, the state employee earning 100K/yr with no such assets. They don’t take into account that the state employee can expect a pension, has no healthcare costs, may have much greater equity in their home, has great short and long term disability, whatever.
This is why so many children of the self-employed choose to go to their flagship state U. Overall, in terms of the family’s total financial picture, they may not be better off than those who are other than self-employed, but they wind up not qualifying for financial aid.
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When given the choice, always run the full NPC, NOT the MyIntuition calculator. The NPCs go into more detail, especially in the areas we are discussing (business, farm, real estate holdings beyond primary residence). Here’s Columbia’s page where you can access both: Estimate Your Net Cost | Columbia Financial Aid and Educational Financing
And the NPC link: Net Price Calculator
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I didn’t even know there was a difference! Thanks for this.
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I just ran the NPC for one of my son’s colleges, and put in various amounts of equity on real estate for a non-primary home. The change to our financial aid package was consistent with the college treating that equity as cash – ie, neither more nor less favorable than other assets. However, full disclosure, this is one of the Ivies and is known for giving very good need-based aid, so I am in no way saying that this is consistent across the board.
If anyone else wants to run their students’ colleges NPCs to see if this is consistent or not, it would be interesting to tally the results.
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It will be more interesting to see if actual net costs align with these results…or not.