Don't use "avg need met" for OOS publics as a guideline!

Paying for College
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<p>A student recently PM'd me. She will likely have a 0 EFC and she thought that Purdue would be a financial safety for her because CollegeBoard states that it met 95% of need. She is out of state (OOS) for Purdue. (side issue: She is a US citizen who lives abroad so would also have int'l travel costs.)</p>

<p>Looking at "average need met" is a common mistake that people make when looking at OOS publics. Those figures are distorted because nearly all of their "needy students" are instate students - who have a MUCH lower Cost of Attendance (COA). Frankly, since a good number of their instate students also have decent EFCs, it's rather easy to meet a good part of their need with just a student loan and maybe some work-study. </p>

<p>Anyway...the point is...don't use these kind of stats as any guideline for what an OOS student would get....unless the school promises to meed 100% of need of all students without large loans or parent loans. </p>

<p>Below are Purdue's stats, but other publics could have similar stats...</p>

<p>Financial Aid Statistics
Full-time freshman enrollment: 6,460
Number who applied for need-based aid: 4,751
Number who were judged to have need: 3,448
Number who were offered aid: 3,448
Number who had full need met: 1,907
Average percent of need met: 95%
Average financial aid package: $11,144 <---- this tells the real story!
Average need-based loan: $3,990
Average need-based scholarship or grant award: $9,899 <---- and so does this!
Average non-need based aid: $6,452 <---average merit scholarship
Average indebtedness at graduation: $26,360</p>

<p>Cost of Attendance (COA)</p>

<p>In-state tuition and fees: $9,070
Out-of-state tuition and fees: $26,622
Room and board: $9,120
Books and supplies: $1,050
Estimated personal expenses: $1,690
Transportation expense: $280 (Obviously, this is too low for an OOS student) </p>

<p>So...
COA for an instate student is about $21k</p>

<p>COA for an OOS student is about $40k. </p>

<p>Therefore, it's not reasonable to think that 95% of need is met for OOS students (especially those with low EFCs) when the average need-based aid pkg is only $11k and the average merit scholarship is about $6500. (I think the highest OOS merit scholarship from Purdue is $9k per year.)</p>

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<p>I have warned about the problems inherent in providing this type of information as required by ED. Average means absolutely nothing to YOU or to ME … it only means something in terms of data points. Personally, I feel that sometimes this information is more of a problem than it is helpful.</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>I agree…</p>

<p>At some schools, many of the students have high EFCs (compared to COA), so meeting need (or nearly meeting need) is rather easy with a stafford loan.</p>

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<p>I agree and extend the warning to all schools not just OOS ones. Just because a school meets 90% pre even 100% of need does not mean that there aren’t other issues you had better examine first such as if such school is need blind and who is getting the aid. </p>

<p>I am surprised about the Purdue figure, however. Impressive, even if it mainly instate kids that are getting that much need met, given that Purdue acceptance rate is so high.</p>

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<p>Note that a school’s being need blind doesn’t affect its attractiveness, only the chance of admittance, and then usually only for those few applicants on the cusp when the FA budget is depleted. It should be mostly irrelevant to applicants; meeting full need is important.</p>

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<p>*I am surprised about the Purdue figure, however. Impressive, even if it mainly instate kids that are getting that much need met, given that Purdue acceptance rate is so high. *</p>

<p>Actually, it doesn’t really surprise me. Purdue is not the state’s flagship…Indiana U is. Purdue is 67% instate kids. The OOS kids are going to mostly be full-payers or close to it with merit scholarships and a stafford loan. </p>

<p>The kind of kid that Purdue attracts is more likely going to be STEM major kind of kid. I imagine that those kids are mostly middle-income or higher. Therefore, their need isn’t hard to meet. </p>

<p>Also, I don’t know the numbers, but I do know that Purdue is popular for some ROTC kids who have NASA astronaut or Air Force dreams. I don’t know how their aid figures in the numbers. </p>

<p>In-state students with low EFCs can have much their need met with Pell, Stafford, work-study, perhaps other state/fed aid, and maybe some small institutional aid or merit. </p>

<p>I am surprised about the Purdue figure,… Impressive, even if it mainly instate kids that are getting that much need met,given that Purdue acceptance rate is so high.</p>

<p>“Need met” reflects students who chose to attend Purdue. Therefore, all the students who got crappy packages (instate and OOS) who chose not to attend, their nunbers would not be included. I imagine that is why the school does have a high acceptance rate…there are probably a whole bunch of accepted kids who don’t qualify for Pell, but their families can’t cover COA with just their money and a Stafford loan. </p>

<p>Who cares if the “percent met” for attending students is X…that can mean that a whole bunch of students were accepted and many got crappy packages that were basically “admit/deny” packages…so, they had to go elsewhere.</p>

<p>All of this just shows how misleading those numbers are.</p>

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<p>Financial safety schools have to have a guaranteed cost to an applicant, not just statistically be attractive. For example, just because Colgate meets 100% of need and you feel you have a near certain chance of being accepted does not make it a safety school. That “near certain” is just not near enough no matter high your stats are and even if your estimators show you are qualified for so much financial aid, it is no financial safely. I know someone who operated on this basis, and yes, she was successful in her particular case, but it does not happen this way enough times for someone who truly needs the money to count on it.</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>Right…plus…if the school is a CSS Profile school, it can sometimes be hard to predict what that school will determine your “family contribution” to be.</p>

<p>And…some schools claim to “meet need” but put Parent Plus loans in the FA packages…very misleading!</p>

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<p>Purdue actually has a wonderful calculator available. OOS students will quickly find out how much (or little, depending on how you look at it) they can reasonably expect to receive based on EFC, GPA, test scores. For example, we could quickly see that the $10,000 my son would receive just wouldn’t work for us. There are OOS students who get more money than they would see on the calculator, but this would be icing on the cake for them … that is, they wouldn’t expect it & be disappointed when they don’t get it.</p>

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<p>Yes, in “Paying for College without Going Broke” Kalman Chany (Princeton Review), two of his points always ring true: </p>

<p>1.) Usually an out-of-state public is not a bargain, most need-based aid goes to their in-state students. If you are a high need student, OOS public should be at the bottom of your list.</p>

<p>2.) Including a PLUS loan in a financial aid package he refers to as “sleight of hand”. You can apply for a PLUS loan yourself, you don’t need the college to include that in your package. PLUS loans are NOT need-based loans. If a PLUS loan is in your package, they aren’t meeting your need at all. (NYU comes to mind)</p>

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<p>The Staffords are also a sleight in hand, in my opinion as well as the PELL monies. Those should be separately listed. The only thing that counts that a school GIVES are their own grants, loans and federal monies like Perkins, SEOG and workstudy that require the school to get and distribute the funds. You can get the PELL, Staffords and PLUS for any school as long as the costs justify it. </p>

<p>OOS school can be a bargain in that some of them are reasonably priced even with the OOS premium and also because some of them will give generous financial aid and/or merit money if you have the stats. When you use MomfromTexas’s tactics for finding full ride school, what you will find in abundance are some less known state schools that are willing to pay for some students who are above average from their medians, and sometimes those median points are not that high. Her post describes her experience with this methodology with her kids, one who was really not a top student at all, but someone that such schools seek.</p>

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<p>*
1.) Usually an out-of-state public is not a bargain, most need-based aid goes to their in-state students. If you are a high need student, OOS public should be at the bottom of your list.*</p>

<p>Exactly! Unless, of course, the OOS public has some kind of ASSURED HUGE merit scholarship and either your EFC/family funds or federal aid will cover the rest. There are OOS publics that can offer full-ride or near full-ride merit scholarships, but of course you need the stats for those. If you’re an EFC 0, then you’d get the full Pell of $5550 on top of that.</p>

<p>*he Staffords are also a sleight in hand, in my opinion as well as the PELL monies. Those should be separately listed. The only thing that counts that a school GIVES are their own grants, loans and federal monies like Perkins, SEOG and workstudy that require the school to get and distribute the funds. You can get the PELL, Staffords and PLUS for any school as long as the costs justify it. *</p>

<p>I would add work-study as well. If these schools had to separately list how much they give in federal aid, how much they give in state aid, and how much they give in institutional need-based aid…things would be better understood because a student with an EFC of - say - $8k needs to understand that he’s not likely going to get much (if anything) in “free aid” if the school gives very little institutional aid.</p>

<p>Instead a school will say that the average need-based back is - say $12k - and they don’t mention that all/near all of that is Pell/ SEOG (for very low EFC only), loans, and work-study (which also might only be given to low EFC kids).</p>

<p>Many schools are famous for gapping students to a large degree when their EFCs are too high for Pell/SEOG.</p>

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<p>Joining the chorus that large merit scholarships can make some OOS publics a great deal. Both of my Ds were accepted to OOS publics that were higher ranked and had a lower COA (with merit but no need based FA) than our IS public with their largest merit scholarship. It takes doing your homework, but it is possible.</p>

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<p>I give work study a bit of a benefit since not all schools apply for those funds to distribute to students. Still, it is self help, and giving it as aid takes away that buffer a student has to work to meet the EFC. That is what my kids did. If they felt that they needed more money than their summer jobs gave them, they looked for job opportunities to pay some of their discretionary expenses during the year. If they were on financial aid and work study were part of the package, that flexibility and benefit is gone, since those funds go toward the demonstrated need and not towards the EFC. </p>

<p>The same with the Staffords. THey have always been a “just in case” option for my kids. My son came close to taking them sophomore year when costs went up, he got a single room which cost more, and he no longer had that outside scholarship. He got a great job that paid well instead and we were able to come up with money for some other extra expenses that cropped up, but he was all set to apply. Staffords were also in the picture for this year’s college app kid in that they stretched the financial budget for him. He could have come close to meeting the cost of a full priced private with his summer jobs which are turning out to be cranking out more money than expected, taking on a job on campus and taking out the Stafford loans even with our limit of what we could pay for college. Instead, he will be comfortably well off.</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>I agree. </p>

<p>I do think the whole “self-help” thing needs to be more clearly explained to families and students. There was a very upset mom who posted a year ago because they had estimated that their “family contribution” at a full need elite would be $35k and they had (wrongly) thought that their D could take out a student loan and work a part-time school year job and a summer job to help bring that $35k down to $25k (which is what they could barely afford). However, when they got the FA package, there already was full Stafford, $3k in Work Study, and a $2k student contribution (presumably from a summer job) and the school expected the parents to pay $37k. They only got about $5k in a grant of free money. They were besides themselves.</p>

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<p>I can imagine. My cousin was in disbelief when I explained this to her. She expected the self help to go towards their EFC, and the numbers are almost exactly as you are describing above. And sure enough that is pretty much what happened. </p>

<p>The other bitter pill came when every bit of the college aid disappeared when the son got a ROTC scholarship so that he gets tuition and books paid at his first choice high cost private school. So all that is left is the Stafford (can’t do work study with ROTC, at least not first year until he learns the ropes) and the room and board costs are very high at this school. So their cost for their state school and the private comes out exactly the same. Can’t win for losing the way this is rigged.</p>

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<p>Many families do not understand that merit aid won’t reduce their EFC. (unless of course they aren’t eligible for need-based aid and their EFC is equal to their COA or more than their COA). </p>

<p>If you are eligible for need-based aid, a $10,000/year merit award is not going to reduce your EFC! The merit award will simply replace a $10,000/grant. You don’t “stack” your merit award on top of a FA package.</p>

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<p>It’s unfair that it works that way, but need is for that reason, need, and once it is lowered by another source, it goes away. But it is so unfair when you see someone who gets an outside award, who can just pocket it when yours can just reduce your grant. Usually schools will use the award to reduce Staffords, workstudy and school loans from what I can see, and then the Stafford can at least be used to meet the family contribution.</p>

<p>What really stunned my cousin was that the school assumes that the student will contribute $3K through whatever savings and summer work. She was counting on him making about that amount, which he did last year, and using part of it for his discretionary expenses at school and also for a week abroad that they wanted him to enjoy this summer. Instead, the college has that built in as if they knew he would make that exact amount. Scary, really.</p>

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<p>*What really stunned my cousin was that the school assumes that the student will contribute $3K through whatever savings and summer work. She was counting on him making about that amount, which he did last year, and using part of it for his discretionary expenses at school and also for a week abroad that they wanted him to enjoy this summer. Instead, the college has that built in as if they knew he would make that exact amount. Scary, really. *</p>

<p>I think schools have the following thought process…they know that about $3k-5k of the COA is personal expenses, transportation, books, misc…and they really don’t want to be paying for those things…so they require “self-help”. Schools don’t really want to be paying for a kid’s toothpaste and deodorant…or his pizza nights with friends.</p>

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<p>I think federal loans and work study are both legitimate forms of finacial aid, because: </p>

<p>When a school that meets full need admits a zero EFC student, the school is arranging all financing and the student attends without making any payment; the aid is that all expenses are covered, without the student applying or qualfying. The facts that the student must work a few hours and also repay some of the money over many years after graduating are conditions of expenses being paid up front for the student.</p>

<p>The same federal loans and work study are also given by a schools that do not meet full need, and/or the student does not have zero EFC, but those items retain the same aid status.</p>

<p>Schools that include 10% federal loans in aid can offer education to 10% additional needy students; those 10% are (or should be) glad loans are included in aid packages.</p>