I don’t know where you get your number from. I just entered your scenario into Harvard’s NPC (for a family of 4 with 1 kid in college and no asset). The cost to that family is $25,800. So don’t assume or believe in hearsay. Run your scenario in the school’s NPC.
Even the NPC aren’t necessarily accurate - but you have to remember, private schools and even a few publics use CSS. They delve much cheaper.
Some (few) meet full need, some meet with loans. Some are need aware so if you need too much it could impact your admission. Bottom line - Harvard’s endowment can handle the person making $200K gets a $50K grant whereas Bentley’s cannot.
That’s why there is so much disparity.
For people who are requiring significant aid, they need to do the homework up front and find those colleges where it’s possible vs. applying to where they want and expecting it.
Those with the best endowments, btw - yes, they grant big but they’re also usually 50% or more full pay!!!
American’s decisions just came out. There’s people saying I got a $4K need based grant - and I needed $40K. I can’t afford it. Yes, they should have applied if it’s their dream - there’s always hope. But - for their sake I hope they had a strategy and included schools they know they can afford.
They are out there.
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Yes, CSS Profile delves deeper into family finances. However, NPCs (apparently with some exceptions at a few schools) offer reasonably good estimates for most families. Even when the estimate is eventually proven to be inaccurate, it still serve a useful purpose when asking for more aid and justifying why more aid was expected from the college’s FA office.
There’s a sliding scale at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc:
Total costs (tuition, fees, room, board) for a family of 4, 1 in college, owning house, minimal assets/investments, making 145K: parents contribution $14,500 + student contribution: work-study (no student federal loan)
The same family making 125K: parents contribution 10K + student contribution: work study (no student federal loan)
The same family making 165K: parents contribution 22,500 + student contribution: work study (no student federal loan)
A family making 175K: parents contribution 30K + student contribution: work study (no student federal loan)
A family making 185K: parents contribution 32K + student contribution: work study (no student federal loan)
So, it’s only for families making 190+ that it’d cost more to attend Harvard than to attend a typical flagship and that’d be without packaged student loans:
a family making 200k would have to pay 38k (which is only slightly more than your flagship).
A family making 65k (so, middle middle class) would have 0 to contribute, with the student having to work part time.
At the upper level of middle middle class, a family making 85K : parents contribution 3K + student contribution: work study (no student federal loan), if the family makes 100k they’d have to contribute 5K.
To compare, for a family making 100k, at Northeastern (moving to meet need) the family would be expected to pay 24,800, the student would be expected to take on the full federal loan and do work study.
At Vassar, which is a need-based only college, a family making 100K would be expected to pay 19,800, the student would be expected to take on 3,500 in federal loan and do work study.
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I’m surprised you’re getting a somewhat different number too. I actually entered no asset, which theoretically should give a lower number than yours (but mine was actually higher by a significant amount at $28,500). I used NJ as the state of residence but I don’t think it should make a difference.
Edit: I see your numbers aren’t specific to Harvard. I ran the same scenario for Yale and it came out to be $24,400
That’s what I was getting at, but you expressed it much better. The idea is that if a middle class kid can get into an Ivy type school it will be as affordable as the state flagship option and often cheaper.
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Thanks for posting the reply and the Freshman Profile: it explains something that’s VERY IMPORTANT for all parents, but which is not intuitive.
So, it’s very important for this thread: the university will only offer merit to students who are top 10% (or at least 25%) *compared to the students they usually admit. It doesn’t matter if they’re top 10% among their peers, in their HS, or nationally - they need to be top 10% (or at least in the top 25%) for the group they’re competing with.
So, you have your answer, even if it’s cruel: the Rutgers top 25% threshold for Enginering is 1500 SAT. It means that to have a shot at a scholarships, students need to score more than 1500, whereas he’d have been on the cusp for the College of Business and would probably have received something if he’d applied to the other colleges (Biological&Environmental sciences, Arts&Science, Nursing).
PLEASE convince him to apply to Rowan but he needs to navigate this smartly:
he needs to click on one of the links in the emails they’re using and he needs to email his regional rep from there, indicating that he’s received the university’s email encouraging him to apply, however he’d need to know whether he can still be considered for scholarships. (The App deadline is April 1, but the scholarship deadline was Feb 15).
Then he can look at this
(he doesn’t have to stay past his 1st year but at least for his 1st year it’d provide him with more opportunities and great peers in addition to ‘unlocking’ scholarships.)
honors@rowan.edu
Dear Dean Talley, My name is … … and due to circumstances, I am only now applying to Rowan. As a result, I was not able to meet the March 7 deadline for the Honors College. I took … APs (…, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, …, ), with a … unweighted GPA and a … SAT score. I’m also a passionate reader (in particular, _ … _, …) and I love discussion-based classes. I understand I am 10 days late, but is there any way that I could be considered for the Honors College?
Thank you for your time. Sincerely, … …
Pure luck: EE is Rowan’s point of strength – They happen to rank #15 in the country for Electrical Engineering - higher than Rutgers!
FAFSA: if 1 child in college =100% EFC, 2 children in college = 60%EFC+60%EFC for FAFSA. So, your FAFSA EFC should be 120% of EFC with 1 child in college.
Review your FAFSA line by line as there may be a stray zero somewhere, or parent earnings put on the student earnings, etc. So it may increase your children’s eligibility for subsidized loans, or it may make you eligible for Pell grants, depending on your personal situation.
That being said, even if your EFC changes, colleges often do not “meet need” and thus don’t change anything in their FA package even if you have one more child in college. Hopefully there’ll be a few “meet need” colleges on the list of colleges that miscalculated yield in May and he can apply there, so that the fact you’ve got 2 in college would yield better aid for the time they overlap.)
I hope this helps.
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The assumption of minimal/no assets gives a false picture. I’ve run these calculators for myself and others that had assets typical for such incomes and got far higher than the numbers in your post. Families making those incomes dont typically have minimal to no assets.
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I used $6,500 in savings, 300K house with 180K equity.
$6,500 in savings is very low at those income levels. The equity is reasonable for some parts of the country but low for the coasts.
The article said the family saved enough for their state school (UMD), but the student had stats that made her competitive for an Ivy. A ~$33k/year budget ($25k from parents + the $5500 federal student loan + ~$3k summer work earnings) can cover a lot of nice schools. So it’s not that they didn’t have affordable options. They just didn’t want them.
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For what it is worth, FAFSA4caster estimates that married parents in California with 2 kids and 1 in college with an income of $200,000 has parental asset net worth of $95,999 (not including home equity in primary residence or retirement accounts like IRA, 401k, etc. that is not used in FAFSA calculations). That does not seem like a lot of savings and investments for that level of income. Is it typical?
I used the fact 50% Americans don’t have $400 in savings, and multiplied by more than 10 to reflect a relatively comfortable income level that may have been hit in the past year. But obviously it’s a simulation. Anyone can run the NPC for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, then compare to their flagship and an OOS public university of choice.
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@MYOS1634 You give such amazingly helpful information. I’m not the OP in this thread, but I always really appreciate reading your posts and I have learned so much from them!
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My issue is the definition of “middle class.” Someone living in the tri-state area could not live or provide for their family on a salary of $65,000 a year. I live in NJ and my property taxes are close to $16k a year.
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Median household income in New Jersey during 2015-2019 was $82,545 according to https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/NJ .
According to Income Percentile by City Calculator in 2019 , the median household incomes for metro areas:
$72,962 New York / Newark / Jersey City
$73,000 Philadelphia / Camden / Wilmington
$77,744 Trenton
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My son lives in Jersey City–his rent is more than my mortgage. At a $72k income, he would never be able to afford to live on his own. His rent, right now for a 1 bedroom, 703 sq. ft apartment is $2700 not including all ELECTRIC utilities, which run him an additional $300-$400 per month; parking is $250 a month; then he has internet (which he needs for work at another $125 per month)–so we are looking at well over $3k a month for living. Now imagine trying to support a family on that–it could never happen. But our good ole federal government believes we can do that as well as save a few hundred a week for our kids’ educations. It’s not even plausible. We haven’t even discussed the car insurance rates in NJ–out of control. What’s interesting is the Trenton median salary, when Trenton is more of a lower-income community. And, Camden–that’s crazy since Camden is one of the poorest cities in the entire country. I actually work for the state of NJ; more than 40% of my income goes to a MANDATORY pension fund; mandatory life insurance and health/dental benefits–yet the FAFSA wants my gross income, 40% of which I can’t touch. I am just in awe that each of my son’s FAFSA’s require me to contribute $20,000 to the education, a total of $40k a year–that’s just crazy.
agreed!!! I am so glad I found this site. I wish I found it two years ago.
My son just got a rejection letter for Northeastern–which we probably couldn’t have afforded anyway.
Here’s part of an email from Rutger’s Engineering regarding that: *or all of our merit-based scholarships, there are no minimum test scores or GPA requirements. Rather, the university bases their criteria on the competitiveness of the applicant pool for that year. Click here for a link to our Admissions Profile which will show you the ranges of scores and GPA’s for admitted students last year to the Rutgers. Typically, the top 5-10% of those ranges are considered for scholarships. Invitation to school based honors programs is even more competitive.
**Undergraduate Admissions also cannot consider offers from other colleges and/or universities because our merit-based scholarships are a reflection of the competitiveness within the applicant pool here at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.emphasized text
Does anyone have any knowledge on North Carolina State University for their Electrical Engineering program? I believe they have a rolling admission and the cost is cheaper than Rutgers, even though it’s out of State. Just looking for some feedback/recommendations as it appears they are #8 in electrical engineering.