I’m fairly new to CC and new to this forum so please feel free to send me to past threads that likely address this. Our D is HS senior very competitive academically and musically. We’ve done a great number of visits, the list is narrowing (relatively - to about 15 now), and we’re digging into the aid picture so we don’t get caught in the classic trap of getting accepted to a bunch of great schools we can’t afford.
Many of the schools she’s looking at claim to meet 100% of need, and of course that doesn’t necessarily cut it for many of us in between the dumbells of income ($125K AGI). But I’ve been surprised to see the variation in results of the NPCs for these schools. For example Vassar and Columbia NPC results are low $20Ks, while Brown and USC and Barnard are low $30Ks - all using the exact same saved data via College Board.
I realize NPCs are estimates only and final packages may well vary. Yet they’re there for a reason, and that level of difference is enough to influence application decisions. It appears from various browsing that those numbers may have some basis in reality, ie represent a real difference among “100%” colleges in how they define need. Given that many/most of these schools also claim to give NO merit aid, their definition of “need” is critically important to affordability.
Can folks here with much more experience confirm the truth or lack there-of in that assumption, or provide additional perspective on this issue? Are there lists that compare/rank the relatively small universe of 100% need-met schools on their need packages, ie on which are the most generous in their definition of need and which are much tighter?
I am not aware of such lists. Each school has their own formula. My take is that if your finances are fairly straightforward, then the NPCs are more reliable. If you have small business ownership, rental property, trusts, or other financial complexity, they may not be as accurate.
Each school use their own way of defining “need”. If your financial situation is not complex, NPC will be close to the final package. At least for us, it was true.
Based on our experience, we got FA package very close to NPC values, which were widely different. DD accepted to 4 schools from top 15 national university and 2 schools from top 4 LAC. The difference varies 25K. Best from Columbia and worst from Brown. But all the packages we got were very close to their NPC.
And… we appealed the most of the FA package with the best FA offer and all the schools matched their FA package.
NPCs for us were all over the place. Some were right on the money and others were over $20K off. We used them to help determine our ‘where to apply’ list and then were sorely disappointed when schools we thought would help (based on NPC) basically gave us nothing. Some people say that they are accurate. I know for us, it didn’t quite work out and we have no special financial situation.
I don’t have any advice other than prep your highly competitive student with how much you can realistically afford then find a few financial safeties that she will be happy attending. Based on our experience, its really a ‘you never know until the aid package comes in’. For the sake of full disclosure, we did get some merit packages from schools who say that they give little to no merit and some financial aid from schools whose npc said we would get nothing.
Is home equity a major asset for you? Profile colleges vary in the amount that they count your home equity as an asset. If the home equity is capped (generally at 1.5 to 2x income) then your EFC can drop quite a bit.
(FAFSA-only schools never count home equity in determining EFC.)
Obviously, each college can define “need” differently, and each college can have a different expected student contribution (i.e. how much student loans and/or work earnings it expects the student to contribute).
Some NPCs may be less accurate for financial situations other than mostly wage/salary with small amounts of investment income (e.g. owning a business, real estate, mostly investments, etc.). If the parents are divorced and not cooperative, that can be a problem, particularly at colleges that require both parents’ financial information (CSS Profile Non-Custodial Profile).
It states how many of the colleges use home equity in their calculation (but the article is dated, so be warned). It also states:
Which is an interesting tidbit. We had noticed that our estimate on the NPC was slightly higher than the actual EFC. When we took into consideration the cap, this difference seemed to account for that.
Thanks for posting the link to that article,ClaremontMom! So if a specific college’s NPC directs you to the College Boards EFC calculator, can I assume that the college in question uses 100% of your home equity in their calculations?
@LYLMom I don’t think so. The College Board provides multiple versions of its Net Price Calculator, because different schools calculate need in different ways. The OP was getting different net prices for different schools even though the NOCs were all hosted by the College Board.
Schools are required to have an NPC, but the range of accuracy varies and there is no agency enforcing the accuracy. They can also use the College Board’s calculator, and that is not going to give anything other than the basics.
@iasetter If you think the net price calculators are all over the place, wait until you see the actual need based financial aid awards. Each college has its own formula for computing need based aid awards. Some schools NPC also include merit awards in the mix. The NPC should be viewed as an estimate…not an engraved in stone amount.
Your kiddo’s financial aid awards could very by $10,000 or more at schools that meet full need. In addition, some schools package student loans and others don’t.
So…apply broadly…cast a wide net…and see what happens.
Thanks everyone, this is helpful and largely confirms our experience. How colleges define need varies widely, though (for most anyway, with not-too-complicated financial situations) the NPC is at least a decent indication of how the final package might come out. If this is the case it does seem like an opportunity exists for a research project to create 10-12 “financial situations”, run them through the NPCs for a bunch of top schools (relatively easy to repeat for those that use collegeboard platform), and create a comparison table!
But wait, @HappyDad2112 said “And… we appealed the most of the FA package with the best FA offer and all the schools matched their FA package” - really? I thought most of the “meet-need” schools, in addition to stating no merit (which I understand has some wiggle room), also clearly state and largely abide by “we do not adjust our packages to match others”. Is that simply not true? Are certain schools known for doing this, or for holding firm?
BTW when I referred to all the example schools using the College Board NPC I meant the platform. It definitely mean they don’t all use the same criteria in the same way, and even among the large number of College Board NPCs we’ve used, there are still many differences in what date is even collected, let alone how it may be used in calculations.
But I admit is is very handy to have many schools use one platform. I’m sure there are good reasons a school may choose something in-house or unique, but it takes a good bit more of our time as parents to run them.
@LYLMom - since the NPC does calculations based on the individual schools I would tend to agree with the others that say you shouldn’t assume that. It would stand to reason that if they cap equity to say 2 x’s your salary that they could include that in the calculation. However, the quote stated otherwise. They said that even if the school caps at 2 x’s your salary, that it will still use the full equity. So if you believe them, and your equity is greater than the cap, the estimate EFC should be greater than the actual EFC. In our case, this turned out to be true (nice surprise!) and the difference was about right to be based on capping our equity. But again, this could have simply been a coincidence.
@iasetter I am not sure which school states that they do not adjust their package to match others but our experience says different. For example, Cornell has Award Match Initiative which matches FA package from other ivies, stanford, mit and duke. We used our Columbia offer and they did not ask any question but matched. I called Brown and FA office asked me to upload Columbia offer and the next day, they matched offer even though the difference was 25K.
U of Chicago was a little tricky at first. They asked we need to pay 10K more than Columbia but after e-mail, mail, and a couple of phone calls, they actually gave a better offer than Columbia, about 3K. There were a couple of other schools which gave us the same offer as Columbia, so I did not try them.
I think if there is a significant difference in financial aid package, you can use better ‘need based financial package’ as a leverage as long as the other school is considered as a peer.
Those are all peer schools with very generous need based aid.
Some folks think that they can take ANY high award from any college and others will match it. That is simply not true.
And as I said…YMMV because some colleges will NOT discuss the awards the have given out or change them…unless your financial picture has significant,y changed since your applications were submitted.
Out kid applied to three peer schools. One had an offer that was a bit higher than the others. We wanted to discuss this with the other two colleges. College one didn’t even allow a discussion. No changes…period. College two did make some adjustments and that is where DD enrolled.
But believe me when I say…this is NOT a universal practice even among all private universities.its just not.
And if you are talking merit aid…all bets are off.
NPC’s are as accurate as they are detailed - if you can only input very little () you get inaccurate results and have no way to get better results.
That being said, a key factor is the way assets, and in particular home equity, is factored in. Boston College, which claims to met 100% need, factors 100% of your equity, probably considering that’s HELOC you should take on their behalf. Some colleges don’t consider home equity at all (Princeton) and many cap equity (1.2; 1.5; 2; 3; 4).
To know how equity is considered, you can run the NPC with different levels of equity.