<p>A 30K EFC on 90K income seems high to me too, but I don’t know exactly how the formula works. Assets also come into the picture.</p>
<p>We are a family of four with an income around 65K and no assets. Our EFC is around $8K. Obviously the percentage of income considered available for college goes down with lower incomes because of basic core expenses taking up a greater percentage of the family’s income.</p>
<p>We have a house, a five1/2 yr. old mini van and a 3 year old honda. Our only other assets would be retirement savings and we are 55 and 58 with twins to put through college as well.Honestly, we don’t even have cable TV. That is why I find this number so insane. They knew what they gave us last year for whatever reason but honestly what they expect now is 5x as much.</p>
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<p>Exactly, Thumper! Colleges aren’t expecting you to ONLY pay out of current cash flow. That is only one of many pots of cash that they are assuming a mid income person to have.</p>
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<p>This might be true sort of in one scenerio I can think of…</p>
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<li>For schools that offer merit aid OR do not guarantee to meet full need…the financial aid for students who are highly desired might be better or more than for those who are not particularly sought after. BUT Connecticut College does NOT give merit aid and they guarantee to meet full NEED. So…your package is based on your need, not on how much they “want you”. NOW…the school could give you more loans than grants in your financial aid package if you are not a most desirable student, but you would still have the same family contribution. In subsequent years I suppose they could increase your loan aid and reduce your grant aid…but your family contribution would only change IF your financial situation changed.</li>
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<p>Schools that give need based aid only (and Connecticut College gives need based aid only) are very clear. If your financial situation changes, your aid will also.</p>
<p>You don’t seem to understand. Your family contribution for last year should have been a LOT higher. It was artificially low because they wrongly projected that your 2009 income would go down A LOT. However, when the facts bore out, your income didn’t decrease by the projected amount…instead, it went up by at least 15%-20%. That is a larger increase than most families experience. </p>
<p>At some point during 2009 or at the beginning of 2010, when you were seeing that your 2009 income was not a lot less, and in fact was a lot more, you should have known that you would see a huge increase in family contribution because your prior contribution was based on an incorrectly projected low family income. One could argue that your family contribution last year was unfairly low because others who had the same income had to pay a lot more. </p>
<p>You may not have a 6 figure income, but your 2009 income was high enough that the family contribution is about $25k. Those with 6 figure incomes have EFCs that are much, much higher. A family with an income of $150k will often have a $50k+ EFC. </p>
<p>The complaint about “5 times more” is not relevant because the initial amount was too low. If your family contribution for last year had been what it should have been (probably about $20k per year), then the increase would not have been 5 times more. </p>
<p>You got a super discount last year and that’s why the change is so great. </p>
<p>I know that none of this is going to make you happy. It’s just an explanation. It’s unfortunate that your family didn’t “do the math” to realize that once you had to report a “real normal income” that your EFC would multiply several times and may not be affordable (so perhaps another school should have been chosen).</p>
<p>The reality is that your family contribution is largely based on your income from 2009. If your family contribution for this year is about $25K, then your income is somewhere between $75K and $100K for the 2009 calendar year. Is that correct…because if it is, then the school has computed your contribution accurately.</p>
<p>Need based aid is computed ANNUALLY. It really doesn’t matter what your daugher’s aid was last year…that was based on the 2008 income. The current package is based on the 2009 income.</p>
<p>Consider yourself fortunate that your income has increased. Many folks are NOT in that position.</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter what your daugher’s aid was last year…that was based on the 2008 income.</p>
<p>Actually, in their case it wasn’t based on their 2008 income. The school gave them a gift and ignored their highish 2008 income and thought that their 2009 income would drop a lot because of a job loss, so the school artificially dropped their family contribution by a very large amount. However, their income didn’t drop…instead it increased.</p>
<p>That’s why the difference is so much for this year. The current family contribution is based on real numbers - not artificially lowered ones. Last year’s family contribution should have been about $20k…not (about) $5k. </p>
<p>There never should have been ANY expectation that the family contribution would stat anywhere close to the same since the family knew that that number was based on a lowish income (which never happened.)</p>
<p>Again, I know that none of this makes your current EFC affordable, but at least it should make it clear to you why the numbers changed so much. Last year’s family contribution was not a real family contribution - it was highly discounted.</p>
<p>Instead of thinking that your contribution went up by 5 times, realize that your contribution last year received a 75% discount.</p>
<p>While the evaluation and advice given in this thread are solid, I have to feel sorry for this mom and for her daughter. It is obvious that the family misunderstood the admission and financial aid signals sent by Conn College and confused merit aid with need based aid. Fwiw, that is not totally uncommon as the appeal or the perception of merit aid yields a better story. Colleges do not spend much time explaining it well and parents of freshmen are hardly seasoned pros! </p>
<p>I do not have to add much to the very good appraisal offered by people in the know. I would simply highly advise to seek a complete explanation of last year and next year. This is mostly for the family to understand what has happened and that the changes are neither insane or arbitrary. Once that is established, I would highly recommend to seek the help of someone who might verify the PRESENTATION of the income. For instance, can some of those insurance payments not reduce the self-employment income? Can there be costs related to the house reduce the income? If work was done from the house, can a portion of the utilities not reduce the income as well? It is important to know that every dollar in useful expenses will reduce the EFC by roughly 30 cents. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I would make sure that the person who might be able to rework the tax returns should also understand the FAFSA formulas. There are NO mysteries in the EFC calculations … it is not hard to build your own calculator with the existing formulas. Another option is to run on of the online calculators. </p>
<p>Finally, when discussing the financial aid situation with the school officers, ask them to verify if they did not miscalculate the daughter’s income. It is quite FREQUENT for schools to assess the need based income reported on the CSS profile as earned income that could be assessed at 50% of the reported income. </p>
<p>In the end, this family will face hard choices. Schools such as Conn College are rarely academic bargains as they do not have the resources of the HYPS of the world and cost a LOT more than equally reputable schools. Attendance at such school DOES represent a large sacrifice for middle class families. It only works if one is willing (or able) to make such sacrifice.</p>
<p>Alas, that is the way it DOES work!</p>
<p>I agree with much of the advice given but have one thing to add. There is a book that is often recommended on the financial aid board: Paying for College Without Going Broke. It comes out annually, is written by the Princeton Review and I believe will help you figure out how contribution is figured out. That would be helpful to you as you follow xiggi’s advice.</p>
<p>to the OP … one other comment about thinking about other options for schools … if the EFC Connecticut College used for your daughter’s FA package was in the range of 25%-33% of your families current income this is a very typical EFC (however much it changed from last year’s award) … overall I believe Connecticut College is pretty good about financial aid (not on par with Harvard and Princeton and the other trend setters but better than tons of private schools and public schools) … so transfering to another school with not likely change the financial aid situation much unless your daughter gets into the handful of schools with terrifc financial aid. That said there are potential two other possibilities that might provide a lot of financial relief … 1) your local state U might be the most econimical choice (probably not so if you need FA for the state U also … it is likely to be less than Connecticut College provided) … 2) Given you Daughter is attending Connecticut College her very strong academics make her a strong candidate for merit aid at lots of very good schools (I am not knowledgeable about applying for merit aid as a transfer student.). One last comment … the EFC is your total expected family contribution … so when your twins get to school that EFC number will be what you are expected to contribute in total for all the kids in school at the same time; e.g. the financial aid per student will increase a lot while you have multiple kids in college at the same time.</p>
<p>Thanks xiggi for your understanding and compassion. Again, I will probably be told I am wrong but I believed that when given a grant the college could decide how much to give. I realized that my daughter did not receive merit aid, but that she may not have received such a generous grant had she not been a desirable student. And you are correct in saying that parents of a freshman are not seasoned pros!</p>
<p>2) Given you Daughter is attending Connecticut College her very strong academics make her a strong candidate for merit aid at lots of very good schools (I am not knowledgeable about applying for merit aid as a transfer student.).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the great stats that an incoming freshman has that motivates colleges to offer lots of merit money doesn’t work for transfer students.</p>
<p>Colleges offer the big bucks to incoming freshmen with great stats because they want the best freshmen class possible (because it helps them with ranking). So, there’s little incentive to give such offers to transfer students. There are a few out there, but not many big ones, and not usually for popular schools.</p>
<p>That’s what makes this situation so sad. The family concluded that CC was affordable based on a short-term discount on family contribution because the school mistakenly predicted that the family’s income would sharply drop. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the family never considered what would happen if the family’s income stayed highish or even increased. If they had, they probably would have chosen another school with great merit.</p>
<p>It’s too bad that when Conn Col came up with their reduced family contribution that CC didn’t include some kind of note saying that if the actual 2009 income resembles the 2008 income (or is higher), then the family contribution will be XXXX (or higher). Then the family would have realized that there was a good chance that they would soon be facing a huge EFC…</p>
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<p>You did come to the right place to find understanding and compassion. You also came to the place that gives solid advice (acquired through experience) but also give the “hard love” by bringing a dosis of reality. It is for that reason that the advice of forgetting what was intimated last year is good. Focus on this year and keep on communicating with a realistic expectation. </p>
<p>Best of luck to you and your daughter.</p>
<p>My D had a friend whose parent’s decided after her FA award came that they could no longer afford the school she went to Freshman year. I do not know the circumstances but her friend lives in an area which is going through a very rough time economically and there could have been a change in many things.</p>
<p>Anyways, her friend transferred to a community college in the city of her state flagship. After one semester she then transferred to the state flagship. She found an apartment and lived with some friends from her high school. She is so happy at her new school. Things went really well and she has transitioned very nicely.</p>
<p>I’m just saying that I think that these things happen all the time. Things change and I do hear that people cannot afford a school that they thought they could afford. We told our D and continue to tell her if things change and her aid package changes so drastically, we will no longer be able to afford her school and she will have to transfer to another school that we can afford. She knew this when she was looking at schools and I tell her this every year.</p>
<p>We found that there is a lot of difference in how schools that “meet your need” interpret what you can afford. We have also found that the school puts more burden on the student with loans as they advance. </p>
<p>I am really sorry that this has happened. It is so confusing. When my D decided to apply to need only schools, I felt that I spent weeks trying to figure out how they would meet our need. It’s still confusing, when I explain it to people their heads just spin lol!</p>
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<p>FA is very confusing, and so are the applications for aid (FAFSA, CSS Profile, seperate college forms). I could never attempt to explain the process, and I still have no idea as to how our packages were arrived at (we were gapped to some degree everywhere, but some gapped much less than others).</p>
<p>3xamom, </p>
<p>I don’t see how you would have surmised from your first year’s financial aid award that it was a discounted aberration unless the school had communicated that. I graduated college just a few years before my oldest applied to college and I didn’t realize what awful financial aid the oos publics offer. That’s well-known around cc but I happened to have known several kids who got generous oos awards from our state school so I didn’t realize that that’s unusual in other states. Anyway, my first kid was gapped 5 figures and almost didn’t go away to college because of it. </p>
<p>I do think you need to read that book I recommended so you have some idea how to present your numbers. Then go back to the college. In the end, you have to figure out whether or not the finances are workable for this college for the next 3 years. It doesn’t matter whether or not John Doe thinks the contribution is ‘reasonable’ for your family income; all that matters is whether or not you can swing it.</p>
<p>*I don’t see how you would have surmised from your first year’s financial aid award that it was a discounted aberration unless the school had communicated that. *</p>
<p>the family should have realized that it was a discounted aberration because the family communicated to the school that the H had lost his job and they anticipated that his 2009 income would be a lot lower. I think at some point the OP stated that her H gave them an estimate of what he would likely earn in 2009, so the school accepted that and didn’t use the 2008 income to determine family contribution. Since, the school used the family’s projected income, the family should have known that their contribution would go up because the income was actually higher, not lower.</p>
<p>The family acted like it had a split personality. They conveyed to the school that they would have a low income for 2009, so the school adjusted the family contribution to a low amount. Yet, when the family received the FA package they convinced themselves that the low family contribution was somehow linked to the D’s fine academic stats. Then, when the 2009 income was not low, and instead was higher than the 2008 income, they act surprised that there is a huge increase.</p>
<p>Imagine a similar, but different, scenario…</p>
<p>Imagine that the family was a two-earner family and earned $80k total ($40k each ) for 2008. But, then the wife had to stop working in 2009 to take care of a dying grandparent, so they informed the school that the 2009 income would be much lower. So, the school graciously bases their family contribution on a projected $40k income. The family then learns that their contribution is a few thousand dollars for 2009-2010 school year (which is obviously based on that low projected income).</p>
<p>However, the very sick grandparent dies in 2009 and the family inherits $55k. So, now, when the 2009 income gets reported, the family reports an income of $95k. Why would the parents then be surprised to see that their family contribution would go up and reflect that $95k income?</p>
<p>You wrote, “Why would the parents then be surprised to see that their family contribution would go up and reflect that $95k income?”</p>
<p>Because, unless they knew how much the school expected them to pay before they conveyed that the dh had lost his job (and I understood that they didn’t), there is no way to know how much a Profile school is discounting tuition. If you look back several years in the financial aid forums for people who’ve had unusual circumstances, the schools handle them very differently. Sometimes, they make big adjustments. Some other parents have complained that the adjustments are small. Most schools that I’ve read about will not completely discard the previous year’s earned income when the job was lost in November. (To be honest, the cases I know of this have been on cc over the past many years. Assuming that we are more likely to hear about the cases of inadequate aid, it may be that many schools do just that and ignore an entire year’s worth of earned income.)</p>
<p>Plus, it’s very difficult to tell what your contribution will be when you’re self-employed (and her husband was freelance so he was probably self-employed). There are deductions that schools will add back in. I believe it was Calmom who said one school had a very unusual way of calculating what the worth of her business was (which had to do with how much she earned per year). When my kids applied to Profile schools, we had schools that estimated twice what other schools estimated.</p>
<p>Oh, one other thing. I don’t agree with you that how much grant $ a non-merit school gives you has nothing to do with how much they want you. My kids applied to lots of schools and when you’re talking about self-employment income or an unemployed parent, the schools have some wiggle room. In almost all cases, it was obvious that we were more likely to see more money from schools that wanted them <em>if</em> the school had good resources. And again, I am comparing awards from meet-full-need no merit Profile schools. (I just want to add: the differences were NOT as large as the OP presented, of course, but there were differences in the $5-$10K range.)</p>
<p>So yes, they should have anticipated that their contribution would increase and if they are expected to contribute $22K out of a $95K income, that is within norm-- but I understand how they may not have anticipated what happened.</p>
<p>3xamom</p>
<p>I have a great deal of sympathy for the untenable position in which you have found yourself It is impossible to know how a Profile school counts the completed tax year (2008) and the projected income year (2009). I think you expected you would have some increase in EFC since your H earned more than predicted (2009) but the amount seems way out of whack. I was in a similar situation except I am divorced so I really had no idea what me Ex indicated for his projection. He lost his job in Dec 2008 so it was only a couple of months prior to filing the NC Profile. I was assuming they they would not take his unemployment into account since it had not been going on very long. I did speak to the FA office in April to inquire about outside scholarship application and asked the FA department if they took the unemployment into consideration and they said they had not - would I like to have it considered? I said no - if we could squeeze through this year it would (I assumed) be reflected in the following year. I do not have the FA award for D1’s sophomore year yet but D2’s high school (FA apps are very similar to CSS with projections of income for future year) decreased her award by a couple thousand (which is ok). I would ask them to clarify what the original award was based on - 2008? Projected 2009? I wish you luck and only wish I had some answers!</p>
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<p>That’s why whenever there is anything unusual about the family finances – the family needs to meet with the financial aid department and ask. </p>
<p>I’m not faulting the OP --but this is a message for others who may be reading the thread – it would be a simple matter to ask the financial aid staff what would happen in various scenarios, when you anticipate that there is likely to be a significant change in circumstances, one way or another. </p>
<p>I think the biggest mistake that people make is the “hope they won’t notice” error – of failing to tell the financial aid people of an increase in income out of fear that they will reduce the current year’s award, and then thinking it will all slide by. </p>
<p>I also think that anyone who is a situation where income and assets are likely to vary over the 4 years that their kid is in college does need to understand – at the outset – that a need-based financial aid award is calculated fresh each year. Because of my own situation --(self employed, with ex-husband/non custodial parent also self employed) --I was in constant fear each spring that I would not be able to send my d. back to college for the coming year.</p>
<p>This is something that families need to keep in mind when accepting an offer to a school that will be something of a financial stretch, and something to discuss with the student – there is always the possibility that even though the first year’s aid is generous, that the family won’t be able to afford all 4 years.</p>