<p>I was recently looking at Vassar's financial aid page, and it says students receive awards of $1,200 to over $60,000, with incomes ranging from $0 to $270,000. My family is middle (but not upper middle) class, but like many other middle class families, our EFC according to FAFSA is full pay, which is definitely not affordable for us. Annual income is nowhere near $270,000, but according to Vassar, some students with families earning that much still receive FA. Does this mean that Vassar often still provides FA to students with full pay EFC? Anyone have experiences with this? Thanks!</p>
<p>Use College Board’s Net Price Calculator to get an idea what you might get from Vassar. If you are indeed “middle class” you will not pay anywhere NEAR full pay at Vassar.</p>
<p>It’s important that you use the calculator FOR VASSAR, not a generic one. Go the the financial aid site within Vassar’s site, access it from there. Also, FYI ‘financial aid’ includes a range of stuff, from grants to subsidized loans to unsubsidized loans. Many well-enough-to-do folks don’t even bother with the FAFSA because they think they will not qualify for aid, but even if they are correct that they won’t qualify for grants, by not doing the FAFSA they shut themselves out of all federal loans too, including parent loans. (I know you did the FAFSA.) Try the price calculator, it works well. </p>
<p>The Net Price Calculator that is on Vassar’s site is the one that I suggested earlier – it is CollegeBoard.org’s Net Price Calculator.</p>
<p>Not to belabor this, but you missed my point. CollegeBoard supplies a net price calculator to A LOT OF COLLEGES, and obviously the software and etc. already cranked into it are specific for that college, but the only way you can be sure of that is to access it through the actual college’s website. </p>
<p>(Sorry, hit the wrong key, it posted prematurely.) DO NOT simply find a net price calculator on collegeboard’s website or one provided by or authored by collegeboard but for another school - you need the one specific to your school of interest, no matter who contracted to develop and provide it for the school (the federally-required net price calculator is just one more happy service collegeboard provides to schools; there are other suppliers also, but usually only one per school, accessed on that school’s financial aid website. Savvy?</p>
<p>d</p>