<p>Note for U of Alabama, there is a 2-part process. You must apply for admittance and be accepted. After you have been accepted to U of A, you must apply for the Honors program and the scholarship. This is a serial process and all parts must be complete by close of business on 15 December, unless they extend the deadline. Your call tomorrow is not procedural, if anything is late; it is to request help, including extending the deadline, and it not optional on your part (totally optional on theirs).</p>
<p>Get that Alabama application done TONIGHT…and the scholarship application too.</p>
<p>How do you know your EFC if you have never filed one before, especially if your father is self-employed? The formula is pretty complicated. I can’t believe a self employed person’s income would stay exactly the same year to year.</p>
<p>I agree a UC would be ideal for you, but you are the one who brought up going to far away private schools. I think you also need to consider the incidental costs of going to a school like Vandy or BC or Emory. Travel costs, set up costs for your dorm/apt. We found it less expensive to just buy new bedding and a coffee maker and toiletries than to ship them all 2000 miles for my daughter, but it was still expensive. She doesn’t fly home for holidays because her grandparent live close. There are fees for her club sports, clothing, some activities (although most are free with her student ID card, there are still movies and food and coffee).</p>
<p>I will call UAlabama tomorrow. I’m also reading good things about Gettysburg College and their financial aid. Anyone know of any other colleges that have need-based aid that only consider custodial parent’s info?</p>
<p>All colleges have need based aid. Schools that use the FAFSA only do not ask for custodial parent info in most cases. A good number of the Profile schools do not require the NCP Profile.</p>
<p>You need to check…some schools do gather NCP info via their own forms. </p>
<p>Carefull about colleges that dont require NCP Profile, but require instead NCP information on their own forms.</p>
<p>UVa is a disappointing example of this. That’s part of the reason I’ve taken to these forums. It’s so complicated and confusing trying to determine which colleges are 1) decent, 2) have my major, 3) have need-based aid or guaranteed merit aid that would make them less than 10k/year for someone with a FAFSA EFC of $500, 4) do not require noncustodial parent info. So far, the list of those schools seems to be:</p>
<p>University of Santa Clara (not sure of the total cost yet, somewhere between 5k-20k/year)
Vanderbilt
Franklin W. Olin
University of Chicago
Gettysburg
University of Alabama
New Mexico Tech
U Texas Dallas</p>
<p>Finding other colleges that meet this criteria is the goal of this thread.</p>
<p>Not wishing to be picky…but it’s Santa Clara University (DD is a grad).</p>
<p>ah lol, I was wondering how people told University of Southern Cal. and University of Santa Clara apart.</p>
<p>The former University of Santa Clara changed its name to Santa Clara University to avoid confusion with one or two other “USC” schools.</p>
<p>In any case, if your father’s funding for UCs and CSUs is uncertain, you may want to still apply to one of the automatic full rides or some such as a super-safety.</p>
<p>University of Alabama appears to be $15,000/year tuition/board/expenses after Presidential scholarship is applied. That’d be more expensive than the UC’s.</p>
<p>Well, I think you had to apply by the 15th, but if you took engineering, you would have had an additional $2500 scholarship, plus with the low EFC, you should have had at least $4K in federal money, and took the cheaper dorms which would have saved another $2K per year. S</p>
<p>So you could have reduced that $15K to around $7K, which is well below your $10K sticker price. I know that is how we are looking at if for DS and we should have an EFC of around $1300.</p>
<p>Here’s the list of CSS Profile schools:
<a href=“CSS Profile Participating Institutions and Programs”>CSS Profile Home – CSS Profile | College Board;
<p>Pay particular attention to the next to the last column, which indicates whether a school requires NCP Profile information. </p>
<p>As a general rule, the public schools do not require NCP information; I don’t know if that’s based on Federal law in some way.</p>
<p>As a general rule, <em>most</em> private schools that use CSS Profile do require the NCP Profile information. The exceptions I’ve found on the list are Vanderbilt and Bucknell. </p>
<p>I understand Chicago has changed their policy, and they required it when this list was assembled, but no longer require it. (They also waive the application fee now for everyone who requests Financial Aid.)</p>
<p>I understand Duke may (sometimes?) not require NCP information, but I’m not clear under what circumstances. Contact them directly for more (and more accurate) information.</p>
<p>I understand Princeton (who do not use Profile) require NCP information <em>only</em> if your custodial parent has not remarried. The rest of the Ivy League do use Profile, and with the exceptions of Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, they all say they require NCP info.</p>
<p>The room board costs you are seeing for Alabama are for the most costly dorm, and for the most costly meal plan. You can choose the LEAST costly options and save money.</p>
<p>You didn’t mention what type of engineering you are interested in. Do you know that U Chicago does not have engineering (mech, elec, aero, etc)? Save yourself an application if they don’t have what you want.</p>
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<p>As a self-employed parent I can tell you that FAFSA forecaster/estimators are not at all difficult to fill out. All we have to do is look at the profit/loss line carried over from Schedule C to 1040. Does that vary from year to year? Sure. But getting an estimate of Pell for the upcoming year at least, isn’t hard.</p>
<p>Now Profile…that’s different. If the low income is the result of a lot of deductions/expenses, Profile schools may add some of them back to income. But FAFSA doesn’t.</p>
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<p>I think Bama (like Temple, with a similar scholarship to Bama) allows you to stack your Pell grant onto that full tuition scholarship, plus you get some amount for engineering there ($2500?). So even if R&B is $15K, it would be more like $7500. A summer job and a Stafford loan would cover it.</p>
<p>One point the OP made is that he and his father prefer UC, unless he can find a lower-cost option. Thus, he was presenting an apples-to-apples comparison that Alabama will achieve parity with UC (before travel expenses). CalGrant will give tuition & fees, his dad has an EFC of $500, and with UC need-based scholarship, Pell Grant, work-study, and Stafford loan his UC situation is very much like his Alabama situation (with those same Federal resources applied).</p>
<p>UC is preferred and has lower transportation costs, so he is opting not to go for 'Bama.</p>
<p>I thought it was gracious of him towards those giving advice here to take a second look at Alabama, even though he stated early on that he had looked at Alabama and it did not work for him.</p>
<p>I get it, just pointing out that Bama won’t be $15K. It wasn’t the right choice for my D either, I’m not a Bama cheerleader 
Also, are the UCs sure things for acceptance? Bama is (as would be Temple and quite a few other schools). I think the posters here are trying to make sure a financial and acceptance safety is in place for the OP.</p>
<p>Some of the listed UCs are very likely, but not certain, for acceptance for the OP. The OP also mentioned applying to a CSU, but that probably means SLO, which also falls into the very likely, but not certain, category.</p>
<p>If the OP does not apply to a safety with assured admission and assured affordability, the OP’s default safety is to start at a community college and then transfer in two years to a UC or CSU to complete a bachelor’s degree. This should be an affordable and academically viable option, although it may not be what most students with the OP’s stats have in mind for going to college.</p>
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<p>These are also graduate programs.</p>
<p>One of the biggest challenge is that Op’s dad is self employed. The net price calculators will not give an accurate number . Even when filling out the FAFSA/CSS profile, while op and dad may feel that they are low income, the school may compute their aid differently (as many of the business deductions are added back in).</p>
<p>As someone up thread mentioned, while a school may not ask for the CSS non-custodial profile, they may have their own institutional form for collecting information from the non-custodial parent.</p>
<p>for example; at Princeton:</p>
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