financial aid calculators

<p>I filled one out of a school I am interest in and it said I would get 12k in scholarship money. When I got accepted i got 16-18k . I was wondering if the amount of grant money it said I would get was wrong as well ? can anybody help me answer that ? thank you for reading</p>

<p>Some of the Net Price Calculators are better than others. If your results were quite different from the aid package, and you want to know why, contact the financial aid office at that particular college/university.</p>

<p>What I found was one school that gave me a larger than calculated merit award reduced the grant portion of the financial aid package, a second was low on merit and increased need based aid, so the total aid from both schools was pretty comparable to the NPC. I ended up going to a third school with a huge merit scholarship and good need based aid. The school that was not generous by the NPC had the worst package and one school came up with lots of additional need based aid late in the game. (My parents were going thru underemployment issues). Personally I like merit better than need based, because it is generally guaranteed for 4 years and if your need changes, you don’t know how the financial aid will change.</p>