I have done the NPC for two schools that claim to meet full need. MIT gave net price of $11k and Harvey Mudd gave a net price of $50k!!! WTH?
We were all set with plans to go out in a couple weeks to take a look at Mudd, CalTech, and CalPoly for my future engineer who wants to swim in college. But that NPC is just a flat no-go!!
Agree that too many people here put too much stock on promises to “meet full need”. Each college may calculate “need” differently, and have a different student contribution.
So use the NPCs, but be careful if the finances are unusual (divorced parents, self employment, small business, etc.) because different colleges handle them differently, increasing the risk of data entry errors, and some NPCs are not very accurate in these cases anyway.
^ Very good summary though I would say Each college DOES calculate need differently.
This should maybe be a diifferent thread, but do you know if being retired is a special situation. My husband is retired air traffic controller (mandatory retirement age of 56) and we have very little earned income with most of our income coming from pension, supplementary social security ( for government employees with mandatory early retirement), and disbursement’s from retirement accounts. I’m wondering if our NPCs are pretty accurate.
We need a more secure plan than “get into MIT”.
Home equity is a huge swing factor and may be the issue here. It’s not counted on the FAFSA but is part of the NPC for most private colleges (other than a handful of which I think MIT is one). Colleges have different formulae but many expect you to contribute up to 5% of your home equity each year.
That is financially disastrous for many parents who are retired or close to it. Sometimes it is limited to a multiple of income, which can help. But run the NPC and if necessary call the college and ask about the specifics of their policy. Or focus on state schools that just use the FAFSA.
I found this article helpful in understanding these differences: http://www.thecollegesolution.com/will-your-home-equity-hurt-financial-aid-chances/
"We need a more secure plan than “get into MIT”.
OK, that made me laugh. I can’t speak to the retirement funds issue, but when we went through this with my older D, if the NPCs looked like they were no more than about 8K above the budget, we left it on the application list since we didn’t know what the financial aid would actually look like until it was received. Some came in about right, others were better than expected, others were worse than expected.
What kind of packages are you looking at for the financial safety schools (one or two I hope)???
That doesn’t really sound right. Did you fill out something incorrectly on the Mudd NCP? Is your student an international? MIT meets need for internationals, Mudd doesn’t. I’d expect MIT to be cheaper, but not that much.
Also it helps if ‘Meets Full Needs’ is followed by ‘Doesn’t use loans in FA packages’. At least one Meets Full Needs school my D was accepted included mostly loans in the package offered.
It may differ at any one individual school but generally speaking having 1 parent 50+ will result in a better FA package due to how they calculate your retirement funds.
Does it matter if it is earned income or pension/social security? it is still income that is available to the family.
Remember, the definition of need is not the same as the amount you want to pay or think you can realistically pay. Many families find their expected contribution much higher than what they are comfortable contributing.
Meets need schools mostly do include federal loans. But most do not include other loans.
@intparent They were both through College Board so used our exact saved data for both.
@mom2and My main concern is that estimate might be incorrectly calculating more aid estimate then we will actually get, not that I think we deserve more due to retirement. Just wanting to be sure that the calculation is accurate in that case.
@Dolemite My husband will be 59 when my daughter starts her freshman year college.
If you entered the type of income correctly (pension, SSI) then the calculator should work. It’s all likely income, earned or unearned.
Your daughter is eligible for merit aid at a lot of schools. Those might be a better financial deal for her than need based aid.
@twoinanddone She has found a school on the list of guaranteed full ride for NMF that has a swim team that is in her range, a decent engineering program, and she thinks she could get excited about. That is University of New Mexico. We are trying to discover more that check the boxes (not huge, swim fit, has major) that would offer more merit aid than what we can get in financial aid elsewhere.
Does Harvey Mudd have a net price calculator on their website? If so…do that one.
Well…also, if you are dealing in pension, and other retirement income…it’s STILL income…but it probably is unearned income.
@BelknapPoint isn’t the tax structure for unearned income different?
Still…it’s hard for me to believe there is a $50,000 difference in net costs between two schools that meet full need for all. $20,000 or even $30,000 I’ve heard about before…but $50,000?
Any chance you (the working parent) are self employed?
I realize this is only one data point, but when I ran the NPC numbers for our family this fall, MIT’s net price was about half of Harvey Mudd’s (and Harvey Mudd’s was definitely more in the general vicinity of most colleges’ NPCs for us than MIT’s). MIT is particularly generous, so it’s not surprising that it’s lower, but I’d run the NPC on a few other colleges to see if that $50k figure is duplicated elsewhere.
(Note: our family situation is relatively uncomplicated, NPC-wise – no divorce, no self-run business, retirement not part of the situation, located in the U.S…)
If you happened to make a mistake in whether the student is an international, MIT would show good aid, and Mudd wouldn’t.
“Still…it’s hard for me to believe there is a $50,000 difference in net costs between two schools that meet full need for all. $20,000 or even $30,000 I’ve heard about before…but $50,000?”
That’s why (primary) home equity is the likely cause. MIT doesn’t count it. So if you have a paid off home worth $800K, a CSS Profile school that doesn’t limit your contribution from home equity will count 5% of that (an additional $40K per year) in the EFC.
If you are retired you may well have to take these schools off your list, because where is the income going to come from to pay off a new mortgage?
No one goes to Cal Tech to swim. My daughter was a seriously mediocre swimmer at 13 and was faster than their fastest female swimmer a the time in her event. She looked it up.
Caltech/Mudd sports are for fun and stress relief.
Calpoly sports are much more serious.