For the rest of us, college is still affordable

Parent Cafe
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<p>At what colleges?</p>

<p>Trinity College (Hartford) posts a rather detailed table showing mean need-based aid by family income (<a href=“http://www.trincoll.edu/AboutTrinity/offices/InstitutionalResearchPlanning/Documents/financialAid.pdf[/url]”>http://www.trincoll.edu/AboutTrinity/offices/InstitutionalResearchPlanning/Documents/financialAid.pdf&lt;/a&gt;). For family incomes of $90K - $119,999, the mean n-b aid (for families receiving it for 2012-13) was $40,111. That would leave an EFC of about $18K, which is a little higher than the school’s mean net COA for students receiving n-b aid ($16,221).</p>

<p>Trinity is not even a need-blind, full-need school. So there must be about 50 other private colleges that are at least competitive with Trinity for need based aid ([Need-blind</a> admission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission]Need-blind”>Need-blind admission - Wikipedia)). If you were looking only at OOS public schools, I suppose it’s not too surprising if you concluded that families at these income levels are shut out of need-based aid … though of course, their sticker prices would be lower, too ([Best</a> Values in Public Colleges, 2011-12](<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/colleges/]Best”>Best College Values, 2019 | Kiplinger)).</p>

<p>Is Trinity College an unrepresentative example? Again, that depends on what schools you’re considering. Trinity seems to be somewhat less selective than Georgia Tech, UNC, UVA, UCSD, W&M, Michigan, UCLA, or Berkeley (maybe much less so for OOS students with need).</p>

<p>It seems to me that if your family income is in that $75K-$125K range, and if your student has pretty good (not necessarily phenomenal) stats, you should have a fairly good selection of colleges with a net COA of ~$25K or less per year.</p>