Many people often assume that a high income correlates with no need based financial aid given. That’s just not the case.
My family’s income is about 200k. Now that seems really high but with schools that meet 100% of need, you can still get a lot of financial aid.
From two schools that meet 100% of need, I received ~35k from each of them and these are grants that I don’t have to pay back.
So if you have a high income, don’t assume that you’re not going to get any money from schools.
Congrats! You might start a list of these by naming the good FA schools you had such good results with @zbthsjunior
OP, you raise a good reminder that folks should run the NPC at each school and plug in their own family’s information.
At the 100% needs met schools, it is quite possible that a family earning $200K but with 8 kids and no meaningful savings, will get much more need-based aid than another family with the same $200K earnings, but has only 1 child, and a half-million dollars saved up.
It all depends on the school. Deep-pocket schools that have large institutional need-based financial aid programs can afford to be more generous to wealthy families than schools (even 100% meet need schools) that have more limited resources.
Yes, there are some very generous colleges that meet full need…and do provide need based aid for students at your family income level.
BUT the first hurdle is to be accepted. These colleges accept 5% or so of applicants so 95% do NOT get accepted.
No one should assume that these very generous, well endowed, and highly competitive colleges are a slam dunk for admissions…because they are not.
But if you DO get admitted…as you did, yes, it’s possible to get some need based aid.
Notably…your mom family still has to pay $35,000 or so for you to attend, right?
In our situation one bio parent is remarried. I called Cornell (a 100% need school) to ask how they calculate financial aid in that case and they said they just use the 2 bio parents. They also said the right way to use the NPC in this case is to run each bio parent separately and add their net prices together. Do not just add the two incomes together as if it’s one household. I ran the numbers and our combined bio parent income of about $195k could result in a need based grant of about $40k. Really hoping that’s anywhere close to accurate! Will repost in a few days when we find out.
Suggestion: make note of your NPC inputs and grab a screen shot of the EFC result. If the actual EFC turns out to be substantially more, you have a good foundation to ask Cornell for an explanation.
Which schools, what COA, how does the award break down. The trouble is this is how myths start. It is more than obvious on threads on CC that people have different idea of what FA means. If you have 3 siblings in college with a 200K income, vs one kid applying to Harvard, for example. Devil is in the details and details are never forthcoming on CC. But for sure, do share, the details.
I got ~35k from both Colgate University and Union College so yes it is usually the better schools that give more money. I also just got into Vassar so hopefully they are comparable with their financial aid.
And if you want some perspective on my families situation. I have two siblings and one is a freshman in college (state university) but we do have very little savings.
Your sibling being in college plays a major role in your aid.
Yes, can you put up the specific award breakdown and the COA?
How do you know they’re need based and not merit based grants? The schools would have to have enormous endowments to give $35k/year to every family with a ~$200k income. If that’s the case, I would think the admit rate must be really low. It doesn’t matter if a college offers great aid for your income level if your kid doesn’t get admitted there.
Colgate’s breakdown is
Colgate Grant: 35k
Federal Loan: 2.5k
Federal Work Study: 2.8k
Colgate does not give merit aid so this is all need based.
So after all that my family and I will owe 32k (which is doable).
^ OK, but you need to realize that once your sibling graduates, and if you are the only one in college, your parents EFC will go UP!
Your EFC will go up once your sibling graduates. You will likely be full pay or close to it.
Thankfully he’s a freshman so when that happens, it’ll only be for my senior year.
OK but be sure your parents are aware of that, too!
As long as the sibling is in a college (not a service academy) many schools do not ask what the tuition is or how much the family is paying, just that there is another in school. Both my kids got credit for having a sibling in college at the same time. One receives a full ride, but how much she receives in not a question on the FAFSA, just whether a sibling is in school.
They’re paying about 30k for him so they know that they will have to put that extra money into my last year of undergrad.
It would certainly help avoid user error if they put the above information on their policies on the web page leading to the net price calculator: https://finaid.cornell.edu/cost-attend/financial-aid-estimator
Compare to how Princeton explains how to use its net price calculator for divorced parent situations (note: Princeton policies differ from Cornell’s policies, but the point is that Princeton is up front about them): https://swebapps.princeton.edu/FinAid/finaid_form.pl