<p>Here's our dilemma, our son did not get the merit aid we had hoped for at his top choice, but is perfectly willing to go to an out of state public that he liked very much. (I listened to the poster who kept saying "love thy safety"!) Without getting into specifics, he will have to take about 8K in loans at the first choice college and little or no loans at the oos public. </p>
<p>Question: We have two other children who will be in college in 2 and 3 years respectively. I went to a fin aid calculator and plugged in "2 children in college", and found that our EFC did not go up that much. Does this mean that son will get more finaid for his 3rd and 4th year? Maybe he won't need to loan out as much in years 3 and 4.</p>
<p>Child #2 wants to go down south and we will look and apply early to state schools, which should be financially reasonable. Child # 3 is an excellent student, so who knows? </p>
<p>I would love to hear from parents with 2 in college and how the finaid packages changed if at all.</p>
<p>In my experience, though not personal, it does help to have two in college IF the EFC is less than the cost of the colleges, IF at least one of the colleges is giving 100% or close to that in demonstrated need. If your EFC is $90K, it is not going to help you to have two in college,as that number just about covers two private school costs. If your EFC is $60 and your cost $90K, now we are talking turkey cuz the school starts working on your ture need. If School A gives 100% of need, you will $15K from them in a package, and if School B is the same, you get anothe $15K whereas if you had them in non overlapping years, you would pay full freight for each. If School B does not give any financial aid (like out of state public unis), you will still get the $15K from School A, if the total need is still $90K. </p>
<p>The problem often comes when the kids are in schools where they do not give 100% of need or tend to give big loan packages.</p>
<p>It halfs your EFC and has made a huge difference this year with 2 in college. Last year my S got barely anything, This year my D has gotten great offers. Her last year of college she will have an expensive year again as my S will have graduated.</p>
<p>It does make a difference. We originally thought our older son would be in grad school next year, so we noted that on FAFSA. Our EFC was around $9000. When he did not get accepted into his program and made other plans, we redid the FAFSA. EFC is now $15,000+. Since we had not planned to provide that much in aid to him after his first four years, that really hurts! Going the other way would have been nicer! :-)</p>
<p>Jamimom,
Our EFC is slightly below the cost of the college my son wants to attend. (3K) They actually gave him a grant for close to this amount. How do you find out if a school gives huge loan packages? We thought that in year four we were going to have to take out huge loans with the 3 of them in college. (We have been dutifully paying down our first mortgage in anticipation of this!) Maybe my son can go to his first choice without taking more than 20K in loans. Again, he will happily go to oos public, so it is really me and my huband who are trying to make this work. He is truly aware that his sisters are right behind him and he does not want to put us in the poorhouse. </p>
<p>And did I understand you correctly? If my EFC is cut in half (or 1/3 his final year) it won't matter what the cost of each school is? Each college will come up with a package based on the smaller EFC? With all my research, this never really came up. </p>
<p>Your EFC remains the same pretty much whether you have one, two or three in college. But the way it works is that your total need is now much more. But each college has its own way of meeting the portion of the need attributable to its cost. But before you jump up and down and get too excited, you need to look up whether a college will meet 100% of EFC. Let us say one of your kids goes to UMich out of state and your total EFC for two kids is $40K and the cost for Michigan is $30K. If Michigan were to meet your demonstrated need, it would come up with $10K, but that does not necessarily happen if you are out of state. Kid 2 might go to Brown which does meet 100% of need and costs about $40k. It would come up with $20k in need. Or it would proportion out the aid in ration of its cost to the total. If your kids do not pick the "right" colleges , it will not work. I have a friend with three in college including a set of twins, and they do not get much as none of them go to colleges that give a huge % of need.</p>
<p>My twin and I are both going to the same school, which meets 100% need. THe school costs 40k a year. If our EFC is each about 10k what do you think might happen here?</p>
<p>I asked this question of Wash U, one of my son's choices, and got word back from Wash U that when one has a second child in college, they virtually halve the EFC, but the difference in meeting one's need is made up in more work study, more loans and more scholarship, with the bulk of the difference being scholarship.</p>
<p>I did some research -- Peterson's Money Book and the large white USNWR guide and found that many schools do not meet 100% of need. The most selective seem to meet the most need. I have also read that in later years colleges aid with more loans and work study, so we will have to think carefully about this.<br>
Momofthree, I'm glad to hear you asked the school about this question because I was thinking of doing the same thing. I wasn't sure how I would be received. I know they can't guarantee what aid they will give in years 3 and 4, but maybe they can give me some sort of understanding of what we will be up against. We cannot swing the entire tuition the first two years and we don't want our son to be saddled with enormous debt. This is truly a dillemma...</p>
<p>I appreciate all of your comments. It helps to have your experiences and perspectives.</p>
<p>I doubt S #1 will get any more grant aid...we had the same situation with our D...S was one year behind her in school...when she decided which college she wanted to attend, I called the financial aid office to see how her aid package would be affected the next year when S entered college...they said the level of aid would remain the same...which meant they'd given her all the grants she was going to receive...her stafford loan amount increased of course. I wonder though if the student proves themself a gifted student, if they could apply for additional scholarships after their freshman year...</p>
<p>I'm also interested in this topic as I have DS#2 waiting in the wings. He'll be 2 years behind his brother. The following is from DS#1's college's website:</p>
<p>"Family members in Undergraduate College - For families with multiple children in undergraduate college at the same time, the parent contribution is divided among the students. For two students in colleges of comparable cost, the parent contribution will be assessed at 60%. If the other college costs are significantly less than (this college's), the parent contribution will be divided in relation to the cost at each college."</p>
<p>OK, I'm a little slow on the uptake here. Can someone please explain what this might mean for me assuming DS#2 also goes private at 42K per year. Our EFC is 24K. For freshman year DS#1 received 13K grants and 5,4K loans/work study.</p>
<p>My S's school told us last year that we would get 12,000 more in grants this year if all stayed the same and we had another in college. I hope she was right, we shall see. This is a school that is known for good finaid however. Each college handles it differently.</p>
<p>There is a group of schools that try to have consistent financial aid interpretations of the PROFILE that uses the 60% rule. Most if not all of these school offer 100% of finacial aid. What it means is that D1's EFC for purposes of getting financial aid from her school would be 60% of the total EFC that is generated if D2 goes to a school at a similar cost. If she goes to a much less expensive school, say half the total cost of D1's school, then instead of the 60% of the EFC, they will use perhaps 80% of the EFC. Because there are many ways to do the math, it is not always possible to come up with the exact formula as other factors come into play as well. Some of these schools use multiple formulas and pick and choose the one they want for a particular student, so kids are NOT given financial aid by one consistent process. Regardless, you will get more aid having 2 in college if either college gives 100% of aid.</p>