<p>I did one for Northeastern and the estimate was just under the cost of tuition. I feel like that's too good to be true, is it?</p>
<p>bump…</p>
<p>Have you asked that question in the Northeastern Forum? Someone there is likely to know.</p>
<p>I was just using northeastern as an example. I was just wondering in general how accurate they are?</p>
<p>It varies. Some just quote average aid values, so they are fairly useless. Generally speaking, the ones using the College Board calculator are the worst. </p>
<p>I found most of the non-College Board calculators accurate within a few thousand per year or less. Vanderbilt’s calculator predicted our number within a few dollars of the actual.</p>
<p>So should I not take the estimates I get from college board too seriously?</p>
<p>That would be my advice.</p>
<p>I think that generally, the more questions a calculator asks, the more reliable will be the results, especially for the private schools that typically award almost everyone at least some “merit” aid (aka discount pricing). I would be really suspicious, however, of CSS PROFILE schools, no matter how much they ask for - there is no way any of the NPCs get nearly as complete a financial picture as they get from the PROFILE information, and presumably, it’s the PROFILE information that drives the need-based award.</p>
<p>We found last year that the NPCs for the private schools were useless - some predicted a significantly higher cost than the actual aid package provided, some a significantly lower cost. The one public where DD applied and was admitted was accurate within a thousand dollars.</p>
<p>My experience last year was different than some of those expressed above. My experience with the NPC from schools that use the CSS Profile ranged from very accurate to underestimating the aid significantly. I did not experience an NPC the significantly over-estimated aid, and in the end the actual aid offered in all cases was higher than what the NPC had esitimated.</p>
<p>That is not to say the NPCs don’t overestimate aid, just to say that they can vary greatly. There are many factors that I think play a role in an NPC’s accuracy. How complicated are your finances, does the school practice preferential packaging, or does the school offer merit. </p>
<p>In my case all of the above were true. Our finances are fairly straight forward, one of the schools offere excellent merit aid and I suspect preferential packaging was the reason for higher offers in a couple of cases.</p>
<p>I was told that they are very accurate for those schools that do not give out much or any merit and tend to meet a high percentage of need. That makes sense to me. Also if the school is fairly formula in their giving of merit, and the NPC asks for gpa and test scores, it could be accurate. These have not been around long enough to really have a track record. Also if your family finance situation is tricky with some things in questionable categories, any estimators may be off.</p>
<p>They can be wildly INaccurate if the student’s parents are divorced, if the family owns a business, has a second home, or has income that is not taxed, since most of the calculators don’t ask information at that level of detail.</p>
<p>If your family has a very vanilla situation (Parent(s) are employee(s), no special assets, no significant untaxed income, no trust funds, …) then it is probably a decent indication, especially for the schools with very generous financial aid policies. </p>
<p>They’re still very new.</p>
<p>(Also, most of them still use LAST year’s COA, even though THIS year’s COA may be several thousand dollars higher.)</p>
<p>Kay…
can you copy/paste the results?</p>
<p>did your parents help you with the inputs so that you know that they’re accurate?</p>
<p>We found the NPC on each college websites (not college board) to be very accurate if we put in correct financial information. We do have a “vanilla” financial situation- no self-employment, no 2nd house, no divorce.</p>
<p>My D is a freshman at Northeastern. One excellent thing about NEU and many other schools is that you can apply early action. You will have a decision and basic financial information in Dec/Jan. The April decisions were very tough for our family. One thing to note is that NEU won’t stack merit and need based aid. For example, my daughter originally qualified for work study and a grant. Once she received full tuition for NMF, the work study and grant went away. We no longer qualified for need-based aid. It wasn’t a problem because we knew this would happen but could be a shocker if you weren’t prepared. NEU doesn’t meet full need but does offer generous merit scholarships.</p>
<p>You need to give yourself a big pat on the back for looking into this so early.</p>
<p>This is what I wrote down for Northeastern’s estimate:</p>
<p>northeastern total- $35900</p>
<p>pell $2400
state $300
neu grant $30200
sego 3000</p>
<p>Not sure what all of that means…
My mom just did the FAFSA for my sister do she had all the info on hand.</p>
<p>And I’m pretty sure that was on college board’s NPC</p>