It is anyone’s guess (unless websites state clearly a timeframe) when FA information will come out this year.
The FAFSA and CSS profile became available earlier this year (October), and maybe colleges will release FA awards earlier as well.
We received ours in March/April about two years ago. Your D has until May 1 to decide where to attend.
You should have the financial aid information well ahead of that date.
@kaylamissy Don’t forget that with your daughter’s stats she qualifies for the SC Life scholarship of 5000.00 a year and an extra 2500.00 a year sophomore through senior year if she studies a STEMs major.
I just wished we knew how much it was now and where she was going to. I hate that I want the time to pass by quickly until we will receive all information especially since this is her last year at home. She’s stressing and I’m stressing but we need to be patient and enjoy her senior year.
Did you run the Net Price Calculator on each website? If not, do it to get an estimate of what each school will cost.
If your daughter applied to test optional schools and didn’t send scores, I wouldn’t expect merit awards from those colleges. I think you have to send scores to be eligible.
@kaylamissy --run the calculators. I would think you would get a very realistic idea and can start to temper some expectations.
Use the time to encourage excitement and contentment for the school you totally know you can afford.
Yes, enjoy her senior year. If you have done your part applying for aid, then all there is to do is wait.
And even after you have the award, the actual bill in the fall will depend on current tuition & fees, room and meal plan chosen, courses registered for. Tuition can go up several % per year, and fees as well as housing costs increase periodically.
You will know the net costs to YOU once you receive all the financial aid packages. You will get the aid amounts in a financial aid award. Subtract that amount from the cost of attendance…and rhe remaining cost will,be what you will be expected to pay.
BUT…you said your FAFSA EFC was $30,000…right? It is HIGHLY unlikely that your net costs will be less than $30,000 except at the SC colleges IF your daughter is pursuing a STEM major. The SC public colleges will cost $25,000 a year…or so…subtract a $5500 Direct Loan which your daughter can take. And if she is a STEM major…subtract another $5000.
I got an email from Furman today and I’m really not dumb but when it comes to this financial info I need help.
Basically my daughter received $15,000 Bell Tower, SC Life $5,000, SC Tuition Grant $3,000, Federal Work Study $1,500, Federal Subsidized Loan $3,193, Federal Unsubsidized loan $2,307, Furman Grant $2,991
I’m not sure what any of this is except the Bell Tower Scholarship and the SC Life Scholarship.
Help
So it looks like if you add all that up = $32,991
$5,500 in loans
Work study $1,500
…and the rest is in grants or school scholarships
Cost of attendance LEFT for you to pay = $30,593 (plus or minus a few thousand depending on her transportation and book costs).
You guys just have to decide if that’s doable for you?
Do you think the other private colleges she was accepted to will be around the same amount? Or do you think Furman will be the highest since the cost of attending is so high to begin with. She’s looking at Elon and Wofford even though she has not been accepted to Wofford yet.
Well–I consider myself a rookie and also we didn’t allow our daughter to apply to private schools since we do not have our EFC so take it with a grain of salt: but so far at least it looks like it is lining up to where you will indeed be responsible for your EFC. I would predict Elon would be very similar.
I know it seems like everyone is saying the same thing—but you really really need to run the “Net Price Calculators” on those school’s websites. Unless your daughter has tippy top stats that might put her in the running for a competitive merit scholarship at those schools, I don’t see that the NPC will be off by too much.
Have you run the NPCs on each website? What did the NPC on the Furman website show?
Yes I ran NPC on Furman website and it is very close to what they sent me.
Your best estimate would be from the net price calculator of each school. Nobody on CC can answer this question for you.
As for the Furman F/A package: Anything that is not labeled “loan” or “work study” is free money that you do not have to pay back. Add that up. The loans are loans – you have to pay them back. The unsubsidized portion begins accruing interest right away; the subsidized portion does not begin accruing interest until a few months after graduation. Work study is a job. She can apply for jobs on campus that are eligible for work-study funds. The advantage of a work-study job compared with a non-work-study job is that the money she earns from a work-study job does not count toward income in next year’s FAFSA (although it does count as income to the IRS).
Important: Be sure to ask if you can expect the same/similar package all four years if your financial circumstances remain the same.
Actually on the website it’s $4,000 less than what they emailed me.
You wanted to know what your can expect from the other colleges. The answer is that you have to run the NPCs of the other colleges.
I just wasn’t sure how accurate they were
More accurate that the guess of someone here on this message board. I know it’s hard to wait. But you have to wait. In the meantime, your best estimate is the NPC for each college.
Thank you!!
Good luck!
The only thing that matters is the bottom line, not the dollar amount of grants or scholarships.
Each school will be different.
Make a spreadsheet, and subtract financial aid out from the COA.
Don’t treat offers of loans and work-study as a subtractor --those are amounts that your daughter will have to pay or earn. But they are relevant to affordability.
So the two most important numbers to evaluate are:
What do you have to pay out-of-pocket? (COA less grants & scholarships, loans and work study)
What is the overall cost? (add the loans and work-study back into the costs column)
Also, separate out the hard from the soft costs of COA: hard costs are firm numbers, like what the college charges for tuition, required fees, housing, required meal plan.
Soft are the estimates – books, incidentals, travel costs. They vary with the student and colleges can be quite variable in the way they arrive at these estimates, but expenses for books & incidentals will tend to be the same wherever the child attends, assuming the same major. Travel costs are location dependent, and some extra costs may not be factored in – for example, if a student living in a warm climate opts to attend school in a cold climate, there is an added expense for a winter wardrobe. So I personally left all of those soft costs off the financial aid spreadsheets and just budgeted for them separately.