Every year is a new need based financial aid year. If I got an adjustment for year one, I would want it IN WRITING that if my finances didn’t change, my need based aid would be very close. Remember…most schools do increase the student contribution.
In my kid’s case, she (oddly) got a Perkins loan, and work study added to her Direct loan and scholarship. Neither of those is guaranteed…and both are limited funding per campus.
Here’s how it worked for us:
Colleges told us they meet 100% need.
Then later they told us we don’t have any need.
^^^
My brother found that out quick! When doing campus visits with his first child, he kept hearing. “We meet 100% of need,” so he thought they’d get some aid.
then he thought that being told that they were “full pay” at the one school, that they’d get aid the next year when he had two in college. Wrong…he was then told that even with two in college he’d get no aid. I don’t know how it all works anymore with CSS Profile, but back then if the COA was $55k, and you got no aid, it could mislead you into thinking that you’d get a 60/60 split when another child goes. Anyone know if that’s still the case?
Some schools will not let you “negotiate” using a better pkg.
However, if a school does allow it, be prepared to tell them that your child will commit if X more is given. Schools don’t want to go to the trouble of refiguring, etc, only to have you go elsewhere (and use the new-better pkg to get more money elsewhere)
@SouthernHope when you say
do you mean the college’s NPC told you they would meet need…and then the FA package was different. Or did the NPC not match what you thought your need was?
It may have been before NPCs were even out there. I think they’ve only been around for about 4 years or so.
@stlarenas It’s more that we were just really naive with the first kid…i didn’t even know about the NPC…i went to college meetings and they kept talking about meeting 100% of need and I looked at our salaries and we seemed in the ballpark…but I didn’t realize that we had made decisions back when my kids were in middle school that came back to haunt us (like my husband and his 3 siblings brought a townhouse for their aging dad but it was put in my husband’s name because we had the best credit. Then it appreciated…and voila) plus home equity…savings…
let me put it this way, I"m a lot smarter the 2nd time around. 
@SouthernHope Well that is reassuring. This is my 1st time around and I am really hoping I have this figured out. We have a couple state schools we can afford but I am letting me D apply to a few privates further away because their NPC show that they are in our price range. But they include a lot of need based grants…so I hope I am not setting her up for disappointment.
The NPCs are not perfect, and should be vieAnd… we appealed the most of the FA package with the best FA offer and all the schools matched their FA packageed as an estimate.
The most important number is what you CAN and WILL pay. Make sure your kids know that number…and let them know that schools will need to come in with a net cost at or below that number to be considered for matriculation.
Just don’t let your kids apply thinking that you will,fund any school if they get accepted…if you can only afford a certain amount.
There’s also another FA calculation model that’s kind of between FAFSA-only and the full PROFILE “institutional” calculation, which is the “Consensus Methodology” of the 568 Presidents’ Group schools (list of members here http://568group.org/membership/index.html )
I found this article helpful in describing some of the differences between the different methodologies, which might help explain some of the variations you see when running EFC, even at “meet full need” schools.
http://collegeselectionstrategy.com/expected-family-contribution/
@mom2collegekids good point about the negotiation process. I can certainly see how important it would be to have one’s priorities figured out and pretty well finalized before taking one package to another school, as you really don’t want to lead them on unfairly. I imagine - with this whole college-financing world continuing to evolve year by year - that if that process is abused the opportunity may not even be around forever. But it’s very good to know it’s a relatively widely accepted practice.
Do folks have specific experience with schools with unbendable no-negotiation policies?
I would also suggest using caution with counting an getting FA matched. Although it may work with some, I gave it a try with S2 and was shut down fast and hard. It never got to the point of negotiation, I was simply told immediately that the offer was the offer…2 of the schools are on your Ds list btw.
I would be concerned that even if the pkg was matched based on them looking over another school’s offer that the following years, especially if income changes a bit, that they’ll just go back to their “old ways” of calculations.
We got D2’s school to “re-evaluate” her offer, and told them she was having a hard time turning down a higher ranked school because the FA offer was better there (we named the school, too). They had us send the offer and matched it. Aid was good year 2, too. Then my business recovered from the recession and we are full pay now, but that is not the school’s fault. But we had the same conversation with the other school in her top 3, and they wouldn’t budge. So it does vary by school.
OP, another thing to consider is that the NPCs are not current, and schools do change their formulas from year to year. The changes won’t be as noticeable for the tippy-top schools, but for the 100%-need-met schools that aren’t at the very top, they make changes each year to ensure their finances don’t get out of whack (eg. LACs ranked 20-60). This happened for us for kids more than 1 year apart admitted to the same school - diff’t aid calcs.
You could look at the Forbes financial grade for the school; most are A+ at this level, but those at A or lower may be looking at the formulas to find ways to better manage their FA budgets.
You might be able to get the school to share the specific formula with you (and whether it has varied from prior years), but my guess is that unless the student is an admit or attending, they wouldn’t be inclined to take the time to do so … but you could try. If you do try, be very specific with your questions. “What percentage of home equity?”, “What percentage of parents’ assets?”, “What percentage of student’s assets?” The more specific your question, the more likely they’ll be to play ball.
Slightly different angle: One indicator I really like is the average debt that graduates carry. This is an easy way to tell (at-a-glance) which schools are financially generous. Note that some 100%-need-met schools have very high debt averages. collegedata is a great website for this kind of research. you can search for schools that meet 100% need (or 95%, etc and then sort them by their average debt. note that some schools don’t report the data though.
Most new price calculators are currently set for students who will be freshmen for the 2017-2018 academic year. Since that is the academic year most current applicants will be freshmen, I call that current!
Schools reset their net price calculators annually, usually at the nod of the summer prior to the start of the current academic year. So most reset their NPCs for 2017-2018 either August or very early September 2016 for the 2017-2018 freshmen.
I imagine that this reset timing will be mire critical as the new FAFSA filing date is now October 1 instead of January 1.
I’ve also found differences in estimated COA from the NPCs of colleges that meet full need; from COA of 23K to COA of 43K. Based on OPs brief account of his finances, it sounds like we fit similarly in the middle of the donut hole.
One thing I would suggest if COA’s vary widely is to go back and double check your entries. When I first started doing the NPC’s I misinterpreted one of the questions. The colleges that used that question gave drastically lower COA’s than the ones that ignored it. It took me several weeks to figure out what was going on.
Thanks again all, this continues to be very helpful to a newbie in the process. @thumper1, I’ve actually found half a dozen calculators that are asking about 2014 data, so though most update annually some are not. @VryCnfsd I agree, there are some unique questions that do seem to change output. I realized pretty quickly I should be carefully recording the process, and definitely printing/saving the input/output, not just the final figures. @lz57c4 I definitely agree, the average debt for graduates says quite a bit, it’s a data point on our comparative spreadsheet, which I assume helps to get at issues not only related to initial generosity, but the continuance of aid generosity through a student’s graduation.
We had very similar financial aid offers from the 100% need met schools but one school threw in an extra scholarship making it substantially better. The offers for us at the 100% need met schools were within a few hundred dollars of our EFC but we have very straight forward finances.
We found the NPC accurate. Now that I am looking for the next kid I am also finding HUGE swings in NPCs. What is even more interesting is I have friend with slightly different finances who is also looking. Certain schools are fine for her and TERRIBLE for me and vice versa. So I guess it depends if you have more assets or income which the school counts more. One school that would give us almost nothing, would give her a free ride almost yet another school would give us 10k more than she would get
So even if I made a list and shared it with you, your list even at the same schools would be different. I have seen this
“So even if I made a list and shared it with you, your list even at the same schools would be different. I have seen this”
Yes that’s interesting and appears to be true. My question I suppose has two parts, one part gets at the accuracy of the NPCs themselves which I understand to be pretty good EXCEPT in certain cases such as business ownership and divorce/NCP.
The other part is whether these schools can be said to have consistent, deserved reputations for being on the generous or less generous side of the “100%” claim. What you’re saying suggests not, though I have heard many cases that suggest there is at least SOME basis in reality. Just for example I’ve heard or seen many claim that Vanderbilt and Columbia are consistently generous, while USC and Brown are less so. Clearly that may not be true for all, and so it’s probably true that such a list would be of limited value.