First time parent doing this college stuff. I have a question and would like to know opinions, if it’s good or bad.
Our family EFC is super low. Was offered full tuition grant (no room/board) at a private school that costs $65k per year. The other $20k is offset by Pell and SEOG grants. Loans were offered to my child Sub & unsub, work/study as well. After student loans, as a family we would have to come up with around $6k a year. Is this a good investment? Would probably need a parent loan but no idea how to pay that back. It would be about $50k between both parent and student loans for 4 years.
Other private schools have offered anywhere between $12-18K scholarship, high tuition (as above) though.
State school is charging around $10-11k a year.
Community college in our state is $$, and then if a transfer happens we lose grant.
Stats high, child feels student loans can be repaid upon graduation no problem. Not sure if they understand how debt can cripple you.
I’d rather not mention the well-known school but course of study is engineering. Top 1% of HS class, AP credit,
interesting EC’s. Incredible work ethic.
The 20k is for fees, room & board, basically everything else but tuition. I think they claim full need. All in all, between student and parent loans we would need about 10k a year.
The student loan and Pell will be the same at any school. R&b can be similar at schools, but not always. I have two daughters in school, one public and one private, and the public was $8000 per year, the private $13,500. That’s a big difference. Public schools also seem to be a little more lenient with exceptions - live off campus, lower meal plans, more dorm choices (and cheaper options). If the private school requires you to live on campus and buy a meal plan for 4 years, that may end up costing you a lot more.
If your child was offered full tuition grants AND $20K Federal grants; the $20K should be more than enough to R&B and other expenses. I don’t know any schools would charge $20,000 for R&B.
It might be helpful if you posted the actual award. I’m not really following this very well.
“The 20k is for fees, room & board, basically everything else but tuition. I think they claim full need. All in all, between student and parent loans we would need about 10k a year.”
The parent and student contribution is $10,000 per year? Is this the cash component? In the original post you said it was $6,000.
Have you called the school and explained you can’t meet the EFC they have set for you? Are there extenuating circumstances? Health related expenses? Do you have any money saved for college?
I don’t think your DD should walk away from this school until you really understand the COA.
So your student has the $5500 federal student loan and you need to borrow $6k on top of that? That’s $11k right there. How much is the Work Study? That’s really money to live on not for tuition because the student is only paid as they work, so if WS is $2k, your gap is actually $13k.
If you don’t know how you’d pay back the ~$25-30k you’d have to borrow so your child could attend this school, I don’t think it’s affordable. I wouldn’t borrow $30k on the assurance of my 17-year-old that he’d pay me back. If he changes his major, if something happens and he has to leave school before he graduates, if he doesn’t maintain the required GPA to stay in engineering, if you don’t qualify for loans all 4 years and he has to transfer then you’ve got ~$20k+ worth of debt and no way to pay it back.
What’s the net cost of the state school after grants are applied (but before loans)? What are the SAT/ACT scores? If he’s a high stat student, there may be more affordable options. Do you have other children to put through college? If so, it’s not a good idea to max out your borrowing to cover the costs for the first child. Parents who do that may not qualify for loans for the 2nd child. If income is really low, they may not qualify after the 1st or 2nd year for the first child.
For the edification of posters: maximum Pell is just under $6K, max SEOG, $4k, per year. Don’t know this student’s actual awards.
To OP, colleges cost of attendance (COA) usually includes some things that may not apply to you. It may include health insurance; maybe your child has full coverage under your plan and can opt out. It may include a generic travel allowance. What will actual travel expenses be?
I personally would not put my family in debt to the tune of $40k to $50 for undergraduate degree.
Student should be able to make $2k to $3k per summer. They need to sock it away, not fritter it away.
Does student have a car? Sell it. Add any money saved on gas, maintenance, and insurance to the college pot.
Can you afford NOTHING? Can you squeeze out $1k or $2k per year without loans?
After factoring these itrms in, recalculate your gap.
My personal limit for total undergraduate debt is $20k and I am hoping it comes in under that. Depending on D’s final choices, would possibly allow a few thousand more in debt vs. no college or local cc.
Unless the school does not meet 100% demonstrated need, the 6k is most likely the parent contribution along with the student contribution from summer earnings.l, which is not unusual. If student were to receive any outside scholarships then it would reduce the self help potion ( loans and work study) of the financial aid package.
It is probably unlikely that the family received a full Pell package ( that comes with a 0 EFC and a full SEOG award where stools get limited funding)
The reason I asked about the direct cost is that there are ways that they can cut cost on the indirect costs. Does the package cover being on campus, fees having a place to sleep and being able to eat?
“Full need” schools meet full need as they see it and in the way they see it, i.e., they may think you can pay more than your FAFSA EFC and they can count loans as part of meeting full need, although I believe they only count student loans.
Schools that use the CSS Profile have a lot more family financial information than is reported on the FAFSA, so this college may feel you are capable of paying more than the EFC.
If you feel that is unreasonable, you can contact the FinAid office to discuss it. Maybe you made a mistake somewhere reporting income or assets. Do you have a lot of savings, own property, have a lot of home equity or own a business? A lot of that does not show up on the FAFSA. Colleges will expect you to tap into such assets to pay your portion of tuition.
For instance, if you own a home free and clear, this will not show up on the FAFSA but it will on the Profile and colleges will expect you to take out a mortgage to pay for college.
My choice of example left something to be desired.
My real point is that the Profile asks about assets that the FAFSA does not. So a family can have a low FAFSA EFC but the Profile may decide they are capable of paying more. This may be based on parental or student assets. The Profile will usually determine that a certain percentage of those assets are available to pay for college. The colleges will never say “You must mortage your house,” but if a home is owned free and clear, a college may be factoring a percentage of that value as part of what the family can afford to pay. It’s up to the family how to actually come up with that amount of cash.
I’m just throwing all this out there rather blindly, as examples of possible factors explaining why the family is being expected to pay more than they think they can afford at a “full need” college, and much more than their FAFSA EFC.
The Profile just collects information and passes it along to the colleges. Each college makes its own determination based on factors that college deems important. There is no one Profile formula used by all colleges like there is with FAFSA and federal aid. Different Profile colleges may use different percentages when looking at assets and income, and different Profile colleges may consider or ignore certain kinds of income and assets, such as primary home equity.
Yes ultimately each college makes its own decision but the lion’s share of the determination is from the Institutional Methodology as established by the College Board. Colleges do not just get raw data from the Profile and work their own calculations.
Institutional Methodology (IM) - Most colleges and universities awarding institutional scholarship funds use some variation of the Institutional Methodology as established by the College Board. In using IM, Brown University adheres to a number of additional policies when reviewing each student’s eligibility for scholarship assistance. This analysis includes several income and asset factors not considered in FM [Federal Methodology, i.e. FAFSA]. We believe in most instances that this method of needs analysis more accurately determines a family’s ability to pay for education. Typically, this EFC will appear on your award letter from the University. However, there are situations where the IM calculation may actually be lower than the FM calculation due to slight differences in the tables and indexes used to calculate the contribution. Given that Brown awards federal funds, we must use the higher FM calculation in such instances.