“As I see it then, Bates’ 0% merit aid means we can say to our daughter, there is no way institutional merit aid is going to reduce what we’ll have to pay to a number below our EFC. The next sentence for our family in a situation like that (“cross it off!” or “let’s keep talking!”) is tbd.”
We paid $10k less then our EFC suggested at Bates as a family with only one kid and income between $120-$130k/yr. The change over the 4 years (S graduated in 2015) was the amount Bates required as our student’s contribution (which we paid for him, and very small amount for income increase. He was not a student who was eligible for work study, either. 4 yrs cost us $80k - exactly what our instate public would have cost - where he wouldn’t have gotten any aid. We took no loans and neither did S.
The highest merit award he got was $30k/yr and 4 years would have cost us $120k.
You family contribution at any college will be largely based on your income. If your kiddo receives a merit award that is higher than the COA minus Family contribution…your family contribution will,be reduced.
For need based aid…your family contribution will NOT be reduced.
The NPCs provide an estimate of what your net costs will be. Esoecially at Profile schools, there are tons of financial things that factor in. Yes, some of the NPCs do use their formula that they use to calculate need based aid. But beware…garbage in…garbage out. Some NPCs do not have a large number of questions. Some don’t ask for stats (so how would they calculate merit aid?). Some don’t ask for marital status. Some don’t ask whether families are self employed. And yes, that can make a huge difference. Some thst definitely use home equity don’t ask about it on the NPC.
The thing that surprises most folks…they didn’t add back in contributions to pretax retirement accounts as income.if you and a spouse are both contributing the max, that can be $40,000 that is added back in as income. And some NPCs don’t ask that question either.
I think you need to look at your net income…and you need to determine how much you can pay annually for college. Do that FIRST. Then start the hunt for colleges where your kiddo will be able to afford to attend.
Oh, and lastly, unless a college guarantees to meet full need for ALL, don’t expect that your full need will be met…because it probably won’t be.
Emily, if not rude to ask and if so please disregard, does that mean that Bates provided non-need aid (by that I mean aid that went beyond the difference between your EFC and the cost of attendance)? If so, would you characterize it as “merit aid”? Trying to figure out the implications for Bates indicating they give 0% of students on-need aid, which I had assumed meant that Bates as an institution would expect full EFC from all families (and cover only “need” - a term I’m using to mean the gap between EFC and the cost of attendance).
Thumper, thanks. I think what this is all leading to is that there are no clear answers as to any particular school. It makes me a little unsure about the approach of deciding what we can pay first. I agree that is an important step. But we’d then have to figure out for each school whether it is possible - through “need” aid, “merit” aid, or otherwise - to get the cost we’d be expected to pay down to whatever we decide in the first instance we can pay. In my mind, that just begs then all the same questions about the EFC calculations for a particular school, whether they give merit aid, and if so under what conditions. Otherwise we’d just be comparing what we decide we can pay with the EFC amount on the NPCs, and for all the reasons you and other shave cited and the possibility of merit aid at some schools, I think that is a starting point but maybe not the only inquiry…
Nope it wasnt merit aid at all. Bates does not give any merit aid as, in their own words, “all accepted students to Bates are meritorious.” It was the amount of institional need based aid they calculated we qualified for from our CSS profile information. And he was not a kid who was Ivy League material and applying down - Bates was actually a reach for him.
Bates and many other schools (especially those that use CSS) have their own formulas for calculating institional aid. Institutional aid comes from the colleges endowments.
We were very surprised with how generous his FA package was.
Here is my opinion. The first thing you need to do is figure out what YOU can afford to pay annually each year for your kiddo to go to college. Until you have that number figured out, all the rest of this is blowing smoke.
Simply put…if you say you can pay $50,000 a year…your kid will need to,look for schools that come in with a net cost at that amount or under. This can be because of assured merit aid for,her stats, or because of guaranteed need based aid…GUARANTEED for all acceoted students.
Or it can be because the college actually costs less,than your allocated budget…whatever it is.
If your income is $150,000 or more, you can exoect to,receive NO need based aid at the vast majority of colleges. If your kiddo gets accepted to HYPS then you will see some need based aid. Is she looking at those schools? If so…getting accepted is the first hurdle as >90% of applicants are denied admission.
What sorts of colleges does this student want? Does she have exemplary stats…at the 75% or above for acceoted students at schools that award merit aid? Is she considering schools that guarantee merit aid based on her stats?
We looked at our family budget. We knew how much we could spend. That is what we discussed with our kids. Nothing else really mattered.
Thanks much to you both! Thank Emily, I get it now - Bates’ CSS-based “EFC” was materially lower than the EFC that FAFSA-based (and/or other schools’ need-based models) produced, resulting in a nice surprise: the combination of a lower EFC under Bates’ model and Bates’ commitment to cover all your family’s need meant that the cost of Bates was lower than your non-Bates EFC number. All while confirming Bates doe snot give merit aid. Thanks!
Thumper, thanks as well. All good and agreed what we can and are willing to pay is critical to establish so it can be compared with what the cost to us will be at any particular school (as influenced by all the factors you cite). And like with all families, what we possibly could pay and what we are willing to pay are not necessarily the same and those considerations are informed by all sorts of financial and non-financial judgments. A path you have walked, and I appreciate the help very much.
I have no idea how they calculate aid or how other CSS colleges do. I do know that if he applied to the schools at the top of the food chain (Harvard, Yale, etc.) he likely would have gotten even more. But that wasn’t ever going to be a reality so.
He applied to lower ranked schools and most gave minimal FA and the merit aid went from $15k/yr at low end up to $30k/yr. Also, unlike what I’ve see on CC as conventional wisdom - the higher the college ranked on USNWR the more merit aid he got.
Note that 40% of students receiving merit aid with an average of $17k means little if you are not among the top students. A significant part of it may go to athletes leaving far less than 40% non athlete students receiving any merit aid. In addition, majority of the students receiving merit aids far less than the $17k average. There may be a few full ride, some full tuition, and some relatively large scholarships. It is just like the prizes for a lotto ticket, vast majority received only small prizes with the minimal matching numbers.
<<<
Even if a school gives merit aid, it may not reduce the EFC, and therefore it will cost you the same amount.
<<<<
^^^ THIS!!! ^^^^
If a family wants to reduce their EFC, then the merit has to be SO HUGE that it covers any need and then cuts into EFC.
For instance…
$70k = COA
$40k = EFC
$30k = “need”
To reduce that $40k of EFC to an affordable amount (let’s pretend the affordable amount is $20k per year), then the merit award would need to be about $45k per year…
$70k EFC
$45k merit award
$25k net cost
$5k student loan
$20k family pays
So…a 15k per year merit award would not reduce a family’s EFC at all.
Even merit aid may be not enough to reduce EFC, it may reduce the loan amount in the FA package. Loan is still your (future) money. In my D’s case, most scholarships would reduce the loan amount (and then workstudy), except for the state funded scholarship that would offset the grant money making it useless.
After all that being said, don’t rule out schools based on the the COA, NPC or other estimates until you know all the facts about how that school views things. I initially dismissed the school my daughter attends because the COA was pretty high We went to check it out anyway, many things fell into place, there are some state scholarships/grants I didn’t know about, the merit money was better than I thought, etc. Worked out to be the best deal despite the sticker price. As Emilybee said, it seems like the New England LACs have their own way of calculating an EFC, and you never know what the numbers will be until you talk to them.
In other words, the last thing to be taken from students with outside scholarship would be the Bates grants, and that only after the family’s contribution, loans, and work study had been covered.
FA packages can be very confusing. Some questions to consider…
Is that merit award renewable for years 2-4 or is it only offered freshman year? If it is renewable, is it automatic or does the student need to requalify in some way?
Can the scholarship be taken away? If your student is given an athletic scholarship but is injured or is dropped from the team will he or she be on the hook for the costs formerly covered by the athletic scholarship? Can your child lose support if his or her GPA drops below a certain level?
Does the school pledge to cover full cost for 4 years, even if the family’s financial circumstances change?
How will outside grants, many of which only apply to freshman year, change the FA landscape for your family? Will they make it more affordable or does the school simply use them to replace school grants?
How good is the school about connecting kids with work study jobs or paid summer internships?
What part of the FA award is grants that don’t need to be repaid vs. loans that do? A school that offers a large FA package may seem to be offering a great deal, but if the majority of that FA is in the form of loans or the student is expected to make huge contributions from summer work or work study you could end up in a world of debt.
What is the average level of indebtedness students with FA come out of schools with? This stat can be more useful than average award because it reflects the difference between grants and loans. The Project on Student Debt gives information on average student debt levels at individual school in this interactive map. It shows the average debt of the Bates students in 2014 as $18,989 and Mt. Holyoke as $23,914. The differences may be accounted for by different numbers of low-income students other factors other than the generosity of the schools, but I think can help you in formulating questions about FA and debt. http://ticas.org/posd/map-state-data-2015#
To show how this can be useful one can contrast Bates with the Maine Maritime Institute. In 2014 MMI’s COA was only $24,098 so at first glance it would seem to be much more affordable than $61,000 Bates, yet MMI students graduated with an average debt of $40,909 vs. Bates students’ $18,989 average debt.