My children are currently in 9th and 10th grade and I am trying to plan ahead how to pay for college for them. I’m divorced and my income is slightly under the US median income. I have some funds in 529 plans for each child, but not enough to cover four years of college. My children’s father isn’t going to contribute to college costs. He will also be remarried by the time my oldest starts college and it is unlikely his new wife will be contributing either.
Both of them earn more than I do, so if their income is included in the EFC calculation I won’t be able to make up the gap between their aid packages and tuition.
From what I have read, it seems the FAFSA will consider only my income, but the CSS will base the EFC on all three incomes. Does this mean that we should avoid colleges that use the CSS and only apply to colleges that use the FAFSA? Or is trying to maximize merit aid our best option?
Many schools might meet your budget once you define it.
There are community colleges, state schools - flagships and otherwise, and low cost schools. W Carolina, for example, is $5k a year tuition OOS.
It’s good you are thinking. Keep saving. But ultimately you’ll find something in budget.
If you kids get great grades and the market doesn’t change much, there will be substantial merit opportunities too - both at public and private schools.
It’s important for you to know now that your kids will have a collegiate opportunity. It’s a bit early to know given I know little about you or your assets etc. but keep doing what you are doing, make sure they do their best in school, and in a few years you’ll be able to see where you stand.
Unfortunately, your ex husband will penalize your aid situation in most cases but you’ll be able to get around that with the right choices.
You should definitely look into how the FAFSA will work for you after it changes next fall (although maybe you already have). My understanding is that, in the past, the FAFSA only used the income of the custodial parent (or the parent the child lived with the most). From what I have read, starting next fall the FAFSA will use the income of the parent who contributes the most financially. For many families, this will still be the parent with whom the child lives, but in some child support situations it could be the other parent.
As far as thinking about affording schools, I have seen lists of schools where they only use the custodial parent income on the CSS, I am thinking, maybe University of Chicago is one? And I think there were some others. There are also lots of schools that do not use the CSS, including private schools. But those things can change from year to year, so you are probably going to need to look at that closer to the time your kids are applying.
Only at schools that require non-custodial parent information. This group of colleges is the vast minority. Most colleges require only the FAFSA (which does not require the non-custodial parent at this time)…but then they also don’t guarantee to meet full need.
IIRC the new changes will be implemented for the 2024-25 academic year.
So….
Who will be providing the bulk of financial support for your kids when they go to college? That will be the parent reported on the FAFSA once they changes are fully implemented. The other parent won’t be included on the FAFSA.
This is very School dependent. Colleges using only the FAFSA use that data to award their institutional need based aid as well. The thing is…many of these colleges don’t have deep deep pockets.
Anyway…merit aid is certainly a way for this poster to deal with costs. And when the time comes, I’m quite sure folks here will be willing to offer suggestions.
the schools that “meets your need” - using CSS info will probably be tough and out of the picture if your ex won’t pay. sorry. the schools are savvy and don’t let family off the hook. (otherwise everyone would say they couldndt pay).
the majority of kids in the US attend FAFSA only schools. The FAFSA info basically tells if your kid is eligible for a pell grant, and by filling it out a kid is entitled to obtain a federal school loan. The FAFSA rules are changing soon on which parent who fills out the form; so keep that in mind.
FAFSA schools (majority and public mostly) will most likely all gap you. some states have programs where if your income is under XXX then tuition is free. Might look into that. Merit aid based on kids’ stats is great and can help a ton; you have to handpick those schools. It’s a sliding scale; the higher ranked the school, the less the merit aid.
It’s good you think about this all now. GPA is important!
I have a fairly similar situation. You don’t mention what sort of students you have in terms of grades and test scores, etc. As someone mentioned upthread, we have found that relying on merit is safer than dealing with the financial aid issues with divorce. As is also mentioned, the FAFSA is changing how it deals with divorce assets/child support etc. over the next few years, so any advice that might help today might be useless in the next few years.
In our experience, most private schools that give larger amounts of need-based aid do use the CSS in addition to the FAFSA, but not all. Even some publics use the CSS. There are some private schools that currently primarily or only look at the custodial parent. Vanderbilt usually looks at custodial only but reserves the right to ask for the other parent, which made me nervous. Princeton is known for looking only at the custodial parent if that parent has remarried. Of course, your student has to get into Princeton for that to work, and despite very high-stats students, our family is 0-2 in that regard. It also might change policies at any time.
Basically, we went the 1)merit or 2)FAFSA only or 3)long-shots that only look at custodial CSS routes in application. Merit seems safest and least prone to sudden changes during college. Dealing with disparate SES levels and divorce with financial aid is a very frustrating experience. I wish you luck and commend you for starting to look into it now.
This is not snarky advice. This is serious advice.
DO NOT LET YOUR KIDS FALL IN LOVE WITH ANY COLLEGE. This is the biggest issue divorced folks face in the affordability department. We’ve seen family after family come here after the kid’s in love, the parent is in love, the entire HS is cheering about kid getting into “dream college” only to look over the numbers and realize that not only is dream college unaffordable, but the other options on the table are as well.
Include your kids in the college budget discussions. Make sure they understand that they can get a high quality education at a wide range of colleges, and that academic rigor can be found once they know where to look.
You will be halfway to a decision that works for your pocketbook if you keep a lid on the “perfect college” talk.
Colleges using CSS Profile may choose whether or not to require the non-custodial parent finances. The second-to-last column in CSS Profile Participating Institutions and Programs indicates whether the college does require the non-custodial parent finances. However, any information there should be verified directly on the college financial aid web site, since some errors have been noticed in the past.
There are a few colleges that use their own supplemental forms, and they may or may not require non-custodial parent finances. Examples are University of Chicago (does not require non-custodial parent finances) and Princeton University (requires non-custodial parent finances unless the custodial parent has remarried).
When using net price calculators on college financial aid web sites, be sure to check whether the college wants non-custodial parent finances. If it does, include the non-custodial parent finances in the net price calculator to get a reasonable estimate of financial aid. (But if the non-custodial parent will be uncooperative at filling in the forms, even if you acknowledge no contribution, then those colleges will not give financial aid at all.)
There’s a lot of really useful information here, thank you! And I can see that the situation is complex and dynamic.
My state offers full tuition to Pell grant recipients, but we are well above that level. My older child is a strong student, not Princeton level strong, but strong enough that she could qualify for merit aid at many schools. My younger child has some physical and learning challenges that aren’t severe enough to preclude attending college, but could make merit aid much more difficult to come by.
And this is where you can’t predict the future - there’s schools out there with lower thresholds per merit. There’s community college. Given disabilities, it might be that your older needs to find the less expensive school so that your younger has money to go to the right school.
It will work out in time. It’s good that you are thinking through it.
I’m hesitant to write this but I’m going to… whatever you do, do NOT remarry at any time while you have kids in college. I was divorced with 3 kids. My ex (high income) gave up custody of all 3 kids after we divorced, paid no support & we had a no contact court order due to issues. I later dated a former good friend from college and - believe it or not- got married when my daughter was starting to apply to colleges. I was a first in my huge family to graduate from college after a late, long & winding route. Not a good experience & it didn’t pay off the way I did it.Live & learn & wanted better for my children , of course. Little did I know that when she was applying, my brand new husbands income would be included and my exs (that wasn’t legally allowed to be near any of us) would be requested by several colleges. I was able to show court orders explaining why I wouldn’t contact my ex & provide his taxes. My income alone would have qualified my daughter for just about every type of need-based aid. My husbands salary bumped us out of everything. I was an idiot but just had no clue. His income (decent) added to mine (low) helped us make ends meet but he had, oddly enough, never saved for any future imaginary kids he might acquire someday. Haha I can laugh now but it was really devastating. I mentioned on a forum before the rough situation and how it sucks that if you make just enough get by but none left over, you make too much for FA. Rich people can pay for college , very low income get need-based aid but people barely in the middle are doomed. Some people commiserated but quite a few were really ugly that I said it. I know have one out of college, one a freshman and one a junior in high school. For us, it was a crash course and LOTS of legwork to find the right fit for lots of merit aid. They both got lots. It isn’t easy but it can be done! Hang in there.
Yep middle class definitely gets short end. Double worse is divorced with high income difficult ex who won’t cooperate nor contribute. Anything outside a full ride scholarship is unaffordable for a single parent just getting by. And not many opportunities for full ride.
Schools that do not use CSS, use FAFSA in large part to determine the Financial Need of families. If FAFSA results in an EFC of $10K or $16K, some schools will come close to meeting that. If FAFSA results in an EFC of $25K, some schools will come close to meeting that number.
Most of these schools do not guarantee to meet full need, but that’s not the point. A family like this one may not require full need (as determined by FAFSA or the school) to be met.
I recommend the OP apply to a variety of schools, from in-state public universities hopefully likely to be affordable, to various privates that do not use CSS, to maybe a couple of Meets Full Need CSS schools if their student has suitable stats. Not necessarily a high number of schools. Maybe as few as 7-8 total, maybe a few more, maybe 20+, depending on what the family/student can handle or see fit.
The median income in this country is about $69,000 a year. In some states that will qualify your students for decent aid to attend college.
In NY, you would qualify for TAP. In CA, the Calgrant. In some states your kids could attend community college for free…or at a very modest cost for two years with a transfer to a four year to complete the bachelors.
In some states there are merit awards like the Hope, Zell Miller, Bright Futures.
Lots of options to research when the time comes…because policies DO change.
Between working and parenting I don’t have time to date, let alone marry, but this is really good advice, thank you. It is counterintuitive that having a second income in the household could make college harder to afford rather than easier.
If they only count my income. My exhusband’s and fiance’s income put us well above that. My state university uses the FAFSA, but they only guarantee full needs met to students who qualify for Pell grants. When the time comes closer I’ll need to look much more deeply into what they can offer my family. But it seems like guidelines change so it might be too soon for that.
