<p>Some background - S1 attends pricey private with very good need-based FA. Our cost per year is about what full pay at our state flagship would run.</p>
<p>Now on to 2nd son. Although we get very nice FA for S1 - I dislike the process. The FAFSA and CSS Profile stress me out. I worry every year as to what the FA award for the coming year will be. So - with S2 - we had previously agreed to try and select less expensive schools and be full pay.</p>
<p>However, I just ran an EFC calculator for the year (2012-13) when both will be in college. It was pretty darn low. Embarrassingly low - I don't feel quite that poor! Not a zero EFC, but under $12,000.</p>
<p>So - maybe I have been approaching this backwards and should be including pricey privates and applying for need-based aid after all. My concern is that we will have a hard time being full pay at a $25,000 - $30,000 school for S2 for the year they overlap. Maybe he will get a better deal at a more expensive school as S1 did. </p>
<p>If your S2 goes to a 100% meets full need with large amounts of grant aid, the EFC that you are currently paying for S1 will be divided by 2 kids (think about now getting your EFC as a 2-fer). </p>
<p>Is S1 a freshman and S2 a senior? If yes, they will both be in school 3 years together. When S2 is a senior you will be paying for 1 child in college, pretty much what you are doing now.</p>
<p>It will depend on the schools’ policies. If the schools meet close to full need, you can do well the years that the guys are both in school. Many PROFILE schools, however, don’t cut the contribution in half, so you may pay a bit more than that.</p>
<p>S1 is currently a college sophomore. S2 is a high school junior. They will overlap for one year - which is the 2012-13 school year. I had been thinking that the way to survive that year would be to have S2 at a less expensive school and be full-pay. Now I’m thinking the opposite - he should aim for more expensive schools with good FA.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse - I did the CollegeBoard EFC calculator and plugged in to determine both Federal and institutional methodology. The IM was a little higher than the Federal - but not by much.</p>
<p>Right - but we are already paying the higher EFC now for S1. I feel like I finally have a handle on the FA for S1 and how to budget to come up with our share each year. But trying to plan for that overlap year - so many variables - it seems more than twice as complicated.</p>
<p>Rockvillemom, it is more than twice as complicated. Making it even more so is the uncertainty of what school your second son will choose and what its policies are, and what its award to your son will be.</p>
<p>I am going to have two in college this coming year. If my younger son picked a top cost school, we would have some need according to FAFSA. My older son would not get anything from his school because he is already getting merit money from them which reduces his cost down to under what EFC would be for him. How the second one’s college would handle the need is totally up in the air because only one of his school choices meets close to 100% of need, and they do not guarantee meeting it. My guess is that my younger son would get subsidization on the portion of the Stafford loan that can be subsidized. A moot point, however, because he has promptly discarded both schools that are full price and is only considering those schools that are considered within our EFC and within our family budget. So he won’t even get that subsidy if he should take out loans. The colleges he is considering are offering merit money or have a COA below our EFC for him.</p>
<p>Right - but we are already paying the higher EFC now for S1. I feel like I finally have a handle on the FA for S1 and how to budget to come up with our share each year.</p>
<p>*I did the CollegeBoard EFC calculator and plugged in to determine both Federal and institutional methodology. The IM was a little higher than the Federal - but not by much. *</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that a CSS school won’t split contribution 50/50…it will be more like 60/60. </p>
<p>So, if your IM contribution is $28k, then the split won’t be $14k/14k…it will be more like $17k/$17k (or $34k total). There’s an assumption that with 2 in college you should pay out more. Of course, this would be at schools that meet need. At schools that don’t, then all bets are off.</p>
<p>I know that Wake claims to meet 100% of need, but do you know how generous their formulas are?..Especially for a current student whose numbers drop because of a sibling starts college?</p>
<p>I think keeping all options open is the best plan - I would fill out all financial aid forms and apply to a reasonable number of schools that my child wanted to attend and then see how things work out. The worst that can happen is they don’t offer as much aid as you think you need, at least you’ve put your hat in the ring and will be fairly considered with all others asking for help.</p>
<p>Do something nice for yourself to de-stress after the paperwork is filed!</p>
<p>mom2collegekids - Wake’s FA is interesting in that while they claim to meet 100% of need - part of that is filled with CitiAssist private loans - or at least has been the past 2 years. But he also gets quite a bit of grant money, subsidized Stafford loan and work study - so I am not complaining. What I am hoping to do is call them this summer - after we get the FA award for next year - and try to get some estimate of what his aid would look like for his senior year with 2 in college. I have no idea of how much info I will be able to get from them - but I am hoping for a fairly accurate ballpark - as that will help me in planning for younger son. Otherwise - if I have to wait until June of 2012 to find out how much aid older son gets - that is going to make choices for younger son even more complicated.</p>
<p>Honestly - I don’t know how colleges expect families to make these decisions when they don’t provide the award packages until the last minute. I really don’t want to be sitting here a year from now - waiting on packages and trying to figure out where we can afford to send S2 - but I guess that is probably exactly where I will be.</p>
<p>Rockvillemom, yup. That’s what I was doing. But it’s not too bad if you make sure that there are some financial safeties on your S2’s list. Dont try to figure out what S1’s college is going to do with all of the variable of S2’s choices. You’ll go crazy doing that. You can pretty much assume that S1’s school will give you at least what they have been providing in terms of financial aid. That’s what I assumed for my son who is going to be a senior in college next year while his brother is a freshman. We then, decided a ceiling on what we can afford for S2. We will borrow most likely for the year that they are both in school. If it turns out we don’t have to, so much the better but to give my son any options at all since we really can’t afford 2 in college at the same time, we are making that one year exception, which does lower the cost of his college choices. It looks like he is going to pick a school that will come in right at what we said we would cover. He threw out the choices that are high cost without any aid offers, and is only considering lower sticker price and those with awards. Next year will be tough with 2 college kids, but then it’ll be back to the one kid in school, and we should be able to handle it. But my son did have some commuting and state options just in case since there was no telling if he would get any money or get accepted at some of his workable choices that were on the selective side.</p>