Financial Aid package changes throughout college

Paying for College
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<p>Is anyone familiar with how drastic a financial aid package can change throughout college? Especially when you first applied to college with two siblings in college so your package was most likely heavily reliant on that fact. I applied to numerous out of state schools but was either wait listed or flat out rejected, except two. I'm choosing to go to one of them solely because my FA package was more than the other. My FA package is full tuition plus 2k more for housing (all grants) then some loans but I did not calculate that in my costs. My question is: when my brothers graduate and head off to grad school (different years) will my FA package change so dramatically that I will end up not being able to afford the college thus forcing me to drop out? I ask this because I plan to do pre-med so we all know the less loans the better. </p>

<p>The school am I going to is Brandeis (as a midyear). Sadly I am not one of their top applicants so I did not qualify for their generous merit scholarships (strangely enough my grant is called a scholarship), but luckily my spring semester will be mostly all paid for except room & board. I have read before that the FA package does change, but I am asking to what extent will this be for someone like me. Universities fail by not being able to tell their students what future years will be like. </p>

<p>PS I am planning on calling the school for an estimate but I rather have some real life input on this issue</p>

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<p>Your need based aid and EFC is based on the fact that you have 2 siblings in school. That is being taken into consideration. </p>

<p>Let’s say you have one sibling who is a senior and one who is a junior.</p>

<p>Right now, your financial aid is based on having 3 kids in college. Senior sibling graduates.</p>

<p>For sophomore year’s financial aid, you will have an EFC that is based on having 2 kids in college. Your need based aid will be reduced (in addition your junior siblings aid will be reduced because the monies your parents were using to help your older sibling should now be redirected to you and your sibling).</p>

<p>Junior year, your aid will be based on having one kid in college (you). Your need based aid will be reduced again because the assumption is that the monies your parents were using to send your 2 older siblings to college will be redirected to you.</p>

<p>Theoretically provided that they did not have any major shifts in income, your parents will be coming full circle;When the oldest was in college, they paid based on having one kid in college, then 2 kids then 3 kids. Now it is 3, 2, 1. IF your parents are used to paying out the same amount of $, then nothing radically will change.</p>

<p>The big question is can your parents continue to pay their EFC at the same rate for another 4 years?</p>

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<p>When you call the school, do send an email reiterating what they have said to you so that you have something in writing.</p>

<p>The fact of the matter is that schools all handle this differently. I can’t remember whether Brandeis guarantees to meet full need, I don’t believe they do, though they do tend to come close most of the time. But in your case, it doesn’t matter because it is your need that will change and that puts you in a category where nothing is guaranteed. You need to run some NPCs and see how the numbers match up for you now and if they do, re-run with just you in college. That will give you some idea what your package would have been without your parent contribution given a 40% hit which is typical for PROFILE schools looking at families with 3 students in college. The percentage goes up to 60% for 2 in college. </p>

<p>Your student contribution is likely to go up each year anyways. That 's the way nearly every college works as it expects the students to take on more of the college cost as they move up in the ranks. Also, the cost goes up each year. So, yes, it is pretty much a certainty that your aid package will be reduced and you may even not qualify for aid when you are by your lonesome. But then your parents will not be paying for your siblings either, freeing up those funds.</p>

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<p>Roughly, the family has an EFC. In a 3 college kid family, the EFC for each child is 1/3 of the family EFC (actually a little more, but gives you an approximation). I think you said you are getting need based scholarships. If so, you can expect to see those scholarships decline in the amount of the other child’s EFC that is allocated to you.</p>

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<p>Brandeis uses PROFILE for their own money, so their expected contribution from the parents would be 40%, not 1/3 of what one kid in school would be. it would be 60% not 1/2 with two kids.</p>

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<p>My parents do not pay for my brother’s college, because one got a merit scholarship and the other is taking out his own loans. They both go to a state school in Arizona so cost is minimal. When you all say that it will be reduced, by how much (number wise). If I am paying nothing for tuition at this moment, how is it possible that I come to expect to pay full tuition when I am alone in college? My oldest brother (the merit one) will graduate in the winter of 2013. The second one (who has no merit) is graduating when I become a junior. Is it suggested I directly ask the school, or use their price calculator? One thing that I think also affects my FA package is that we currently own two houses with 180k owed on the first then 80k on the other. My family income is 80k which isn’t super low, but sure isn’t wealthy. Do colleges take in account that my family has never contributed to their child’s college costs? I am asking this because one of you stated I may not qualify for need based once I am alone. I can’t imagine going in with no tuition costs to going out paying the full price tag.</p>

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<p>Thank you for your replies. I do not understand some of them though. What I am understanding is that my EFC for my family will virtually stay the same, however my brother’s tuition is 10k a year whereas Brandeis is 40k a year. I don’t understand how my families EFC can stay the same when we have completely different tuitions.</p>

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<p>Matthew, the way it works is that your parents input their financial information to FAFSA and get an EFC for themselves. That EFC divided by three is the parental contribution amount. Then each of you students have an expected contribution too that is added to that number, but I am going to guess that it is nominal so we can, for example purposes give it a zero. So in that scenario, your family EFC is is the same for each of the students, that is the total EFC divided by 3. If that number is $30K, then each of you students has an EFC of $10K. </p>

<p>So if Student number one is going to a school with a Cost of Attendance (COA) of $10K, then his need, according to FAFSA is zero, and he is not entitled to any financial aid .</p>

<p>If Student number two is going to a school with a COA of $30K, then his need, according to FAFSA is $20K. But bear in mind that it does not mean that he will get $20K in financial aid because 1) Most schools do not meet full need 2)Those schools that meet full need usually use PROFILE when it come to giving out their own money 3) The only funds guaranteed by FAFSA EFC is the PELL ( and his EFC is too high to get any–the max is about $5K or so in EFC) and subsidized Stafford loans. Non subsidized Staffords, anyone can get. He is also eligible to get but not guaranteed SEOG, Work Study,Perkins loans and whatever the school wants to give him. </p>

<p>So for student 2, let’s say that the school decides to give him $10K of their own money, and he gets $3500 subsidized Stafford and $2500 Work study, but gets gapped $4K that the school could have still given him in terms of meeting the financial need as defined by FAFSA</p>

<p>The we get to you. Student 3. Your EFC in this scenario is also $10K. What that means is that according to FAFSA your need at a school like Brandeis that costs about $60K in COA, gives you a need of $50K. Since your school costs more it is possible for the school to give you more and still give you federal funds which are bound by EFC and COA, both official numbers on file with the US government. </p>

<p>So using EFC, we have Student 1 with zero need because his school’s COA of $10K= EFC of $10K. Student 2 with need of $20k of need because his school has a COA of $30K-$10K EFC = $20k
You, Studnet 3 with need of $50K because Brandeis has COA of $60k-$10K EFC = $50K.</p>

<p>All three with the same EFC but different COAs come up with three different need. Zero, $20K and $50K.</p>

<p>But there is the additional complication that Brandeis does not use the FAFSA EFC for their own money. They use their own formula. They probably use 40% of what they calculate as a parent contribution. So your parents may not end up with a $30K contribution figure under PROFILE, PROFILE takes into account home equity, and some other things, but let’s just say for simplicity sake that the PROFILE expected contribution is EQUAL to the FAFSA EFC, something that in reality rarely happens, for your parents. Now PROFILE also does another funny little thing which is have a student contribution regardless of what the students assets and income are. Just something that every student is expected to contribute to his own education. Let’s say, that is $2K. So now you have your Parent’s contribution of $30K which now has to be divided by the number of students in college. PROFLIE uses 40%, not 1/3 so you get a parental split of that comes to $12K ( $30K x .4 = $12K). Then add your student portion and you get a total contribution from you and your family of $14K in terms of what you should pay Brandeis. Subtract from the COA of $60K and you get need of $46K that Brandeis will then try to meet with grants, loans work study or whatever combo. </p>

<p>Now next year if student #1 is gone, then the Brandeis parental EFC, with all thing staying the same would be split by a 60% factor rather than 40% which means your parental contribution goes up to $18K ($30K X .6). Add in your student contribution, which usually goes up each year, let’s say it’s now $3K. You now have a family contribution of $21 K expected, and if Brandeis’s costs stayed at $60K, you will get aid in the amount of $39K instead of the prior years $46K</p>

<p>When student #2 is out of school, your parents required contribution wiil be the full $30K plus the increased student contribution, probably up another thousand dollars to $4K, and you will have a family contribution amount of $34K which means that Brandeis is probably going to just give you aid in the amount of $26K, and you and your famly have to come up with that $34K yourself.</p>

<p>These are just samples and I am assuming Brandeis costs staying the same, and just making up your siblings’ costs. But what you get as an expected contribution does not depend on your siblings actual costs but on the split that is made on the total Parental contribution, that FAFSA calls its EFC. Again, Brandeis does not use that FAFSA EFC for giving out its own money which is why the splits will differ.</p>

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<p>So does this mean Brandeis is doing bad by not using the FAFSA EFC or is it doing good? I ran a NPC with no siblings in college and it came out to be 33k. I think anything under 35k is low and harsh.</p>

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<p>No, the only thing that the FAFSA EFC does is determine whether or not you are eligible for different types of federal aid (PELL, SEOG, Federal Work Study, Perkins loans, Subsidized stafford loans, etc). Brandeis uses the CSS profile to determine you financial need when it comes to distributing their own institutional aid.</p>

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<p>Thank you all for the helpful replies! They definetly do not teach this in high school.</p>

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<p>When applying for student financial aid from the federal government based on the information submitted by the student and their parent(s). </p>

<p>The FAFSA determines your eligiblity to receive federal aid : pell grants, seog grants (if applicable to your school) federal work study and federal student loans (subsidized/unsubsidized stafford loans and perkins loans). The FAFSA is required by all public colleges and universities and an overwhelming number of private schools require the FAFSA (some in addition to other FA forms). The cost to file the CSS profile is $25 for the first school and $16 for each additional school.</p>

<p>Approximately 350 schools use the CSS profile to gather additional financial information in order to grant their own institutional aid.</p>

<p>If you attend a profile school, they use a combination of both the federal and institutional methodologies. </p>

<p>At minimum you file the FAFSA (at almost every school) to determine your eligibility for federal aid (Pell/ seog grants, stafford and perkins loans). Most public univeristies will just require the fafsa (the exception may be UVA, UNC- CH, Mich and a few others which may require their own forms)</p>

<p>The CSS profile is used at different colleges that distribute their own institutional aid (Many of these schools have much deeper pockets).</p>

<p>Many schools that use a federal methodology to determine EFC will require only the FAFSA. Schools that use an instutional methodology or a combination of the 2 will require the CSS profile or their own FA forms.</p>

<p>Differences between the IM and FM models are</p>

<p>IM collects information on estimated academic year family income, medical expenses, elementary and secondary school tuition and unusual circumstances. FM omits these questions.</p>

<p>IM considers a fuller range of family asset information, while FM ignores assets of siblings, all assets of certain families with less than $50,000 of income, and both home and family farm equity.</p>

<p>FM defines income as the “adjusted gross income” on federal tax returns, plus various categories of untaxed income. IM includes in total income any paper depreciation, business, rental or capital losses which artificially reduce adjusted gross income.</p>

<p>FM does not assume a minimum student contribution to education; IM expects the student, as primary beneficiary of the education, to devote some time each year to earning money to pay for education.</p>

<p>FM ignores the noncustodial parent in cases of divorce or separation; IM expects parents to help pay for education, regardless of current marital status.</p>

<p>FM and IM apply different percentages to adjust the parental contribution when multiple siblings are simultaneously enrolled in college, and IM considers only siblings enrolled in undergraduate programs.</p>

<p>The IM expected family share represents a best estimate of a family’s capacity (relative to other families) to absorb, over time, the costs of education. It is not an assessment of cash on hand, a value judgment about how much a family should be able to use current income, or a measure of liquidity. The final determinations of demonstrated need and awards rest with the University and are based upon a uniform and consistent treatment of family circumstances.</p>

<p>Except in the most extraordinary circumstances, Colleges classifies incoming students as dependent upon parents for institutional aid purposes, even though some students may meet the federal definition of “independence.”</p>

<p>The profile will take into consideration tuition for children attending high school. They may consider school expenses outside of high school for special needs children. They will consider unreimbursed medical expenses and taking care of elderly parents.</p>

<p>Students enrolling as dependent students are considered dependent throughout their undergraduate years when need for institutional scholarships is determined.</p>

<p>For institutional aid purposes a student may not “declare” independence due to attainment of legal age, internal family arrangements, marriage or family disagreements.</p>

<p>Your COA (cost of attendance) is tuition, room board, books travel expenses and some misc. expenses associated with attending college.</p>