<p>COA approx 54,000</p>
<p>College Scholarship 8800
Stafford SUB Loan - 3500
Perkin Loan - 1000
Work Study - 2400</p>
<p>EFC was 2900 and 12000 using IM
AGI is 38000
This school is supposed to meet 100% demonstrated need...</p>
<p>Another parent with a reality check:(</p>
<p>What did the SCHOOL compute as your family contribution? That is what matters. Was that amount $12,000 or was it more?</p>
<p>You have a total of $15,700 in aid. If the school is adding $12K more on that as your family contribution…you would have $27K total. That would leave you with a balance of $27K. If the school meets full need, you shouldn’t have that kind of balance UNLESS the school computered your need as being higher.</p>
<p>Does your family own a business or other real estate? Do you have very significant assets? Something doesn’t add up here.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is from another thread by the OP which is part of the reason the family contribution is higher using the IM.</p>
<p>To the OP…that 5.6% tapped for assets is a FAFSA guideline. Schools using the Profile (I’m guessing this is BC which does use the Profile) can assess your home equity ANY way they choose to do so. That 5.6% might not apply at all in this case.</p>
<p>Your FAFSA EFC is 2900? Was that your actual FAFSA EFC? I would expect to see some ($2600ish) Pell grant money in there.</p>
<p>Yes, thumper we have equity in the house… My husband owns his own business but the business is not worth anything without him working in it… meaning we dont own a building with it or anything … just the computer equipment. …and due to the economy he has done terrible over the last two years… 2009 taxes show 44000 AGI and this year 38000 AGI.<br>
We do own one piece of property that we were going to be build a new house on before the economy went south. And I knew that our need would not be as great with these assets as someone else with just a plain income like ours… I guess I was just hoping for more help that’s all… This is my first of 4 kids to go to school… live and learn i guess… just heartbreaking thats all for my kid to work so hard to get into a good school and then taken off the table so quickly.</p>
<p>Hi SwimCat… yes that was the actual EFC…we did the fafasa already… This was just an estimate package so I am sure when they pull my fasfa we will get a little more help. They based our number off our 2009 taxes and CSS form. I just sent the college our 2010 taxes which was a little less then 2009… but I dont think it will make a big difference.</p>
<p>OP…your second property, your home equity and your business likely entered into the equation for the package you received. In that package what did the college put for YOUR contribution? I’m guessing it was a lot higher than $12K per year.</p>
<p>Yes, you should be receiving part of the Pell grant to help a bit…but it doesn’t sound like this will be enough to make a huge difference.</p>
<p>You could contact the financial aid office to see when you will receive a final award. The only thing the FAFSA will do is provide you with that partial Pell grant and $2000 more worth of Stafford loans. This school uses the Profile so they will consider your other assets.</p>
<p>Fortunately, your child has applied to other schools…even Profile schools have different formulas for computing aid. Hopefully there is a school that is affordable and does NOT include the Profile that is also in your daughter’s application mix. At this point…just wait and see…you will have all of the awards to compare at some point and can choose the one that best meets your family financial situation.</p>
<p>thumper… i dont see anywhere where they put our contribution? yeah, I guess they took the property and our equity into account way more then I had home. UGH…</p>
<p>Which school is THIS?</p>
<p>*COA approx 54,000</p>
<p>College Scholarship 8800
Stafford SUB Loan - 3500
Perkin Loan - 1000
Work Study - 2400</p>
<p>EFC was 2900 and 12000 using IM
AGI is 38000
This school is supposed to meet 100% demonstrated need…</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>You submitted FAFSA and your FAFSA EFC is 2900? If so, then you should get a small Pell Grant (not enough), but still.</p>
<p>When you say that your IM method is $12k…was that from a calculator? If so, then obviously your school uses some other formula IF this is a school that meets need.</p>
<p>54,000</p>
<h2>12,000 IM family contribution (altho it sounds like this school used a different formula)</h2>
<p>42,000 in “need”</p>
<p>yet, your FA package was only for 15,700</p>
<p>If this school TRULY meets need, then the school has somehow determined that your family contribution is almost $30k per year. That really sounds like there may be some mistake. </p>
<p>Which school is this? Are you sure that they meet need???</p>
<p>Edited to add…</p>
<p>I see that this is Boston College…</p>
<p>ok, so even though my EFC is 3,000 but I have a 350,000 house that I owe 160,000 that is roughly almost 200,000 in equity</p>
<p>I wonder if BC is one of those schools that links equity protection to income. Anyway, as you can see from other BC postings, many got lousy packages this year. When the SCHOOL gets to determine “need”, it’s easier for the to claim that they “meet need.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately in the FA business, there is no point in talking about fairness or unfairness. Colleges have limited aid budgets and they have certain goals in mind (USNWR rankings, diversity mix, mix in majors etc.) and they use the aid budget to achieve their goal.</p>
<p>The question is and should always be “Can we afford it and if we can, is it a prudent and worthwhile expense?”.</p>
<p>In your case, it appears that you cannot afford it. What is plan B?</p>
<p>My son applied to 11 schools including a few financial safeties… so we will be ok in the end.<br>
… When a school says it meets 100% demonstrated needed … and ahead of time I go and do the “calculators” since college say they use the Institutional Methodology to figure out need and in my case that need should have been around 42,000 since my IM was 12,000 and I got 15700 from the college. Something just seems UNFAIR to me… But, it is what it is… and we will have to press on…it just stinks that’s all… will know better for my 3 kids yet to still go…</p>
<p>I think that the disconnect is the meaning of “100% of demonstrated need”. They say they will meet the need but not how they will meet the need.</p>
<p>To some people it means that the college will provide grants and scholarships to meet 100% of the need i.e. the difference between the COA and the EFC.</p>
<p>Colleges could have some loans (Stafford), grants like Pell, Work study added to the mix (where applicable) and these are not from the college but from the Government (taxpayer). Of the remaining they can add grants (from the college) or other loans such as Parent Plus. So Colleges can give you an aid package that has a lot of loans and they still have meet 100% of demonstrated need. It varies from college to college and some colleges are better than others. </p>
<p>Not sure about BC, next time around you may want to check out what each colleges policy really means. Do the colleges have a lot of loans in the package?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There is NO STANDARD Institutional Methodology. The online calculators give you a ball park. EACH SCHOOL has it’s own method for determining HOW to award institutional money and the formulas they use vary wildly for even 100% meets full need schools. BC has clearly shown that THEY have calculated that you have much less need than you thought you did…your business and real estate holdings contributed to that is my guess.</p>
<p>The institutional formula for any of the other schools could very well yield a VERY different financial aid award. BC didn’t calculate that you had a lot of need and they only met what THEY calculated for THEIR Institutional Methodology.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>I agree.</p>
<p>that said, I would still contact BC’s FA office to find out how/why they calculated your “family contribution” to be so high. There is a chance that a mistake was made somewhere. The difference just seems too high without a logical explanation.</p>
<p>If BC “protects” equity up to the amount of income, that is where you may have been screwed. Obviously, it’s not fair that someone with a lowish income would get such a lower equity protection. That would be an area that maybe some professional judgment could be used.</p>
<p>Or, did you over-estimate how much that extra piece of property is worth? How much could you sell it for if you were forced to sell it today (minus selling costs).</p>
<p>my husband has a small business with 2 employees as a civil engineer… the only worth of the business is his equipment in the office… …he could not “sell” the business…
I knew that there is NOT one singular calculator to figure out what the colleges would help with… but I thought if i used the IM one on college board… and I even rounded up from the 12,000 to 20,000 I thought I would be in the ball park. I was hoping for loans, grants etc in the field of 30,000 not 15,000. I thought I educated myself enough not to get blindside … but I did…</p>
<p>Unfortunately, online calculators can be grossly inaccurate for people with complicated assets/incomes. And I’d put anyone with a small business, much less land assets, in the “complicated” category.</p>
<p>Hopefully, the other schools will come up with more generous packages. Also, it’s hard to call this one 15,700 when the grant and w/s only add to 11,200.<br>
As above, please be sure you calculated fire-sale value of your home- sure, the last home on my street sold for a fabulous sum, but that was at the height of the market, it has standard amenities our old home doesn’t have and it was in perfect condition, which ours is not. Same for the second property- be sure you’ve shown the value it would actually sell for.</p>
<p>There have been a number of complaints on CC about how business assets are treated, what legit deductions/expenses get added back in, etc. Many one-person business operators are stunned at how their meager net incomes are transformed by the current formulae. As I understand it, this is one thing that will be improved, somehow, some time. Best of luck. It sounds like you tried to be on top of this.</p>
<p>I think situations like this are one reason why schools will soon be required to put up a calculator that uses their own formulas and methodologies. If the OP had known how little they would offer in financial aid while claiming to “meet full demonstrated need” they could have saved ~ $70 and decided not to apply there at all! I wonder how this will eventually affect some school’s “selectivity” ratings if kids who can’t afford the school just don’t apply to begin with!</p>
<p>We also got a FA package from BC that was well below what the various calculators kicked out for us. I agree that schools should be required to post what their FA methodology is - we certainly would not have had BC on the list to apply to if we had known.</p>
<p>I just feel bad… I told my kid to go apply as we thought we could cover what we thought they would require and then some…, we went to visit the school, he liked it etc…etc… I would have not gotten his hopes up and to see him let down …is what bothers me… Oh well, I guess I have to believe he will end up where he is supposed to be…</p>
<p>Something still feels wrong about BC’s estimate. I know that many complain about BC’s aid, but difference between FAFSA and IM seems odd.</p>
<p>I know that sometimes the self-employed get hit harder…IIRC, paying full FICA somehow negatively affects the numbers…maybe someone can shed some light on this.</p>
<p>*my husband has a small business with 2 employees as a civil engineer… the only worth of the business is his equipment in the office… …he could not “sell” the business…
*</p>
<p>I wonder if somehow the overall income of the business is being considered… with no consideration that 2 employees are getting paid. I would still go over this with BC.</p>