<p>I ran one for my #1 school and I shuddered because I know there is no way my family will be able to afford that. They would want us to be full pay. (Eek!) So I would like to know if there is anyone out these who received a substantially (or even slightly) different package than what the school estimated. Thanks!</p>
<p>If a NPC is showing that you’re full pay then believe it. In that way, NPCs are pretty accurate.</p>
<p>However, if it’s the other way around (showing lots of aid), then be aware that the NPC may not be taking into account a particular situation (parents own a business, divorced parents, extra properties, etc). And, sometimes NPCs are overly optimistic, such as showing work-study or SEOG grants when those are limited.</p>
<p>Lots of people will get a very different (more negative) actual FA pkg when their particular situation isn’t included in the NPC calculation. </p>
<p>I know that you applied to Bama…did you get a half-tuition scholarship? </p>
<p>@mom2collegekids Nope. I got the $3,500 because Bama doesn’t super score. We can afford that though.</p>
<p>There is no way for any of us to know if you did the NPC accurately. Assuming you did, then yes…they are accurate. </p>
<p>If your parents are divorced, own a business, are self employed, or own real estate other than your primary residence…or if you are independent for financial aid purposes or are an international student…or a transfer…you might find these NPCs are not accurate. In these situations, your actual family contribution could be higher.</p>
<p>@thumper1 Assuming I inputed everything correctly</p>
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<p>It is not likely that you will see need based aid from most of your colleges. The list is on another thread. Most of your colleges do not meet financial need for all who attend. The ones that do…USC and Northwestern…do not have the same very generous need based policies as places like Harvard and Yale.</p>
<p>Your family contribution based on income only would be estimated at between $62,000 and $79,000 a year (1/4-1/3 of that income). For the Profile schools that meet full need…when two of you are in college, you would each pay approximately 60% of that amount. What I’m estimating does not include any assets you have, or any college savings…both would add to your family contribution. </p>
<p>So…it is possible that you might get a small amount of money from NU or USC…but it would be on the smaller side.</p>
<p>You say your family can afford to pay the OOS cost of attending alabama minus the $3500 you received as aid. And you have already been accepted to some other safety schools as well.</p>
<p>Is there any savings from (parents’) past income for college? Your parents earn almost a quarter of a million dollars per year - they must have some non-retirement savings; or is this income level a more recent development?</p>
<p>Do you have any savings from a summer job?</p>
<p>How much is the cost of attendance at your sibling’s college? How is that paid?</p>
<p>@Madison85 My parents have money saved, but not for college. They never did that planning even though I have been asking them for years. They’ve been at this income for probably 4-5 years.</p>
<p>I had a summer job and I earned $1200 for the whole summer but much of tht money was lost paying for transportation, food, and school supplies, so I has nothin left. I have a job now, but I only get to work a total of two hours per week, so that’s only $16 per week and that goes to food too lol. For my sibling, they just transferred to a 4 year college from 2 years at CC. The CC was about $5000 per year and the 4 year college now is about $8000 per year. My mom and dad pay for that without any aid.</p>
<p>The problem is, my parents really don’t like discussing finances with me. My mom told me not to worry about finances until the letters get in and I asked for a budget and she refused to give one. For the past two years, my mom has been finding great schools like Northwestern, Harvard, Stanford and USC and has been encouraging me to apply, telling me how much she loved them for me. I then did research and begin to love the school for myself too. I liked USC and Northwestern and to this day, she is saying “You should apply to Stanford!” And I spoke to my parents yesterday after running the NPC, and they said there is no way they are going to pay and they likely aren’t looking to pay anywhere more than $30,000 per year in total. </p>
<p>I wish my parents were more like the parents on CC who get involved and invested in their child’s education. My parents arent like that. They are more or less unaware of the cost of college and unaware of how colleges view out financial situation and for that, I can feel the panic coming on because I don’t entirely know how I would feel if I were to get into Northwestern and USC, just for my parents to send me to a state school. I know I might be overreacting lol.</p>
<p>@CaliCash You sound very mature and I commend you for that. </p>
<p>Have you looked at the thread of schools that cost $25,000/year or less?</p>
<p>What are your stats?</p>
<p>What 4 year school only costs $8000/year?
Does your sibling live at home and commute?
Wow so your parents earned about one million dollars in the past 4 years and don’t have any set aside for college?</p>
<p>It often takes time for things to sink in as to what the bottom line costs for college are going to be. I am seeing this with my high school senior’s crowd now. There was a lot of hope and expectation when the school announced financial aid info night which is a lot of rah rah and encouragement to appjy for aid, “you never know” sort of thing. I’m hearing rumblings of discontent as people have run the NPCs and some have gotten ED packages that are saying they are full pay. They can get loans if they qualify. Not what they had hoped to hear. The colleges that were not high on their lists are the ones coming up with the merit awards for the most part. This happens each year, but now with NPCs available, the reality is hitting sooner, which is a good thing. Now if people would only run the numbers the year before. i’ve suggested this to the GCs at the school, to tell parents to run those NPCs when the kids are juniors, not after the apps re in play. </p>
<p>Our experience was that both schools that my son got FA packages from after acceptance were off quite a bit, not in our favor.</p>
<p>The two major factors were cost of attending going up, more than 5K per year in each case, and the merit aid offered being less. </p>
<p>One was almost 10K less merit aid and the school FA office explained that was because the NPC did not differentiate between merit aid and need-based aid, and the other was 7K less merit aid.</p>
<p>The upshot for us is that we will owe around $40,000 more in loans, mostly taken out by my son, than expected.</p>
<p>If your family has a good financial situation, you can certainly take loans out yourself with your parents co-signing, which will help defray the actual costs.</p>
<p>As for not having any money set aside, that’s immaterial to me because we didn’t put money aside, we built equity in our house and will pay college from that (not recommended by some on CC). But if your parents are making 250K per year, they must either have a nice house with a lot of equity and be able to access it, or have a great credit rating and be able to easily co-sign for your student loans, or be in deep doo doo debt-wise. And if the last is true, take a deep breath and attend whichever school is the cheapest and meets your minimum needs. Minimum needs are offering the degree you are interested in, and a relatively safe campus.</p>
<p>For reference, assuming you are in the US, a family that is making 250K per year is taking home around 2/3rds of that, around 167K. If your parents need to pay 60K per year for your college, many schools offer payment plans of 10 monthly payments, usually starting in July, so they would be paying 6K per month. Of the 14K that they normally make, and two months they pay nothing. </p>
<p>But, if your parents are paying a 5K per month mortgage, that’s a problem for you. Or if they have a business and have to put all of their excess money into that. Et cetera.</p>
<p>(FWIW, we were pretty accurate with our NPC calculations, and the college’s FA office told us that their NPC was incorrect, that their NPC did not explain the FA correctly. Which kind of defeats the purpose in our minds.)</p>
<p>For those schools that have merit money built into the NPCs and also those schools that do not guarantee to meet full need, the numbers are often averages, and can therefore be off. If it comes to an average of $10K a student for merit aid, and the NPC so spreads it out to every student, that isn’t going to be the case, when some students get nothing and others a full ride. The average is meaningless in such cases. </p>
<p>@Madison85 They have money in savings, but just none saved for college. Surely not a years worth of tuition in savings. My sibling goes to a public 4 year college as a commuter student. </p>
<p>I have looked at those threads of schools for $25,000 or less, but it’s too late for that. My school limits the amount of applications you can send. As of right now, I’ve gotten into UAlabama with the $3,500 scholarship, UMinnesota- Twin Cities and am waiting on the merit aid, and SUNY Albany with the presidential scholarship.</p>
<p>Thank you for the compliment. I appreciate that :)</p>
<p>@rhandco My parents both have a credit score of about 830 each. Will that make me eligible for loans without the really bad interest rates and where would I go to find these loans?</p>
<p>The NPC’s were exactly right for both my daughters’ schools, but that’s because we receive no need based money. I was happy I ran the NPCs because for DD2, the merit award was $5k/hr lower when the award letter came. After many phone calls and transfers and my nagging, it turned out the admissions office didn’t have the right ACT scores so had awarded a lower amount. </p>
<p>Calicash, I made less than half of what your parents do, and have two in college, and I am full pay for both. Don’t count on any need based financial aid. Tuition at both schools was increased in the summer, just weeks (or days) before I had to pay it. That wasn’t easy on the budget. If your mother is saying she won’t pay more than $30k/yr, believe her. The reason safeties are called safeties is because they meet your needs, not your wants. Fall in love with a cheaper college.</p>
<p>Your parent credit rating will not increase your ability to get a loan on your own…but your parents likely are worthy cosigners or can get loans in their name only.</p>
<p>Your parents would likely be eligible for a number of different loan types.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Parent Plus Loans are available to any family who has kept up with their bill paying. Up to the cost of attendance. This is a parent loan.</p></li>
<li><p>Private loans. Check at your local bank. These can either be in your name with parents as cosigners or in the parent name only.</p></li>
<li><p>Home equity loan. If your parents have home equity, they could be able to take out a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit. This is a parent loan.</p></li>
</ol>
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<p>@CaliCash </p>
<p>Your mom probably doesn’t understand that your stats would need to be much higher to get into USC, NU or Stanford. Since she’s not been paying attention to such things, she may not realize that the students who are accepted have an ACT 32+ or 1430+ (M+CR) likely not-superscored. </p>
<p>you have an ACT 27 and equivalent SAT. Unless you’re a star quarterback (not likely cuz you’re a girl), those schools won’t likely accept you since those scores are well below the middle quartiles. </p>
<p>Anyway, don’t worry about those schools and their costs. Thankfully, your parents have now seen the expected costs for those schools and will not encourage you to waste your time applying to schools that won’t likely accept you and won’t be affordable. </p>
<p>Like I said earlier, when the NPC results indicate full or near-full pay…BELIEVE IT.</p>
<p>When NPC results indicate lowish/moderate pay…BEWARE.</p>
<p>To be honest, SUNY Albany is a pretty good school, I’d look at that and their half-tuition offer. </p>
<p><a href=“BA Journalism | University at Albany”>http://www.albany.edu/journalism/</a></p>
<p>$17,810 is their OOS tuition rate. And, could you see if your parents would agree to put away some of the difference between the SUNY Albany tuition and what they agreed to pay up to? That would help you get started in a career, or maybe even take some courses in the summer at a higher-ranked school.</p>
<p>USC is 64K or so per year. Northwestern is 65K. Stanford is 63K. </p>
<p><a href=“http://college.usatoday.com/2014/06/09/the-10-best-journalism-colleges-in-the-united-states/”>http://college.usatoday.com/2014/06/09/the-10-best-journalism-colleges-in-the-united-states/</a></p>
<p>Pepperdine is 72K (wow).</p>
<p>But have you looked at UC Irvine? They seem much more reasonable (15K annual). If you are a senior, it might be late to apply though.</p>
<p>UConn (45K for OOS) or other large state schools likely have good journalism programs too. Hofstra is 9K per year:
<a href=“Accelerated BA/MA in Journalism | Hofstra University”>http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Colleges/SOC/JMSPR/jmspr_fiveyearbama.html</a></p>
<p>To give your parents a head’s up, I live near NYC where costs are very high, I support two elderly relatives one quite poor and I have multiple kids who are college bound including two with special needs, and our EFC is 35K yet the school my son is attending is only offering enough merit aid and loans to get to 45K per year. And we make 100K less per year than your parents do. We are taking loans from our home equity and also my son will have at least 60K of loans.</p>
<p>You could also look into the possibility of going to a lower cost school for two years, and transferring into a highly-ranked school. </p>
<p>Also, if you live in CA, and not too far north, remember the weather will be quite nasty in the Northeast compared to what you are used to. That may be a factor too. I would heartily suggest if you do think SUNY Albany would make the most sense fiscally and in terms of your education, you visit before you accept their offer.</p>
<p>If you end up somewhere you don’t want to go, that is just wasting money, no matter how “little” the cost is.</p>
<p><<<
SUNY Albany with the presidential scholarship.</p>
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<p>Have you already been awarded that?</p>
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<p>Most parents will not co-sign these loans. What school would you need those loans for? </p>
<p>What is your career plan and how much do you think you’ll be earning upon graduation?</p>
<p>Your parents will pay $30k per year. That is plenty. If you need a little more, then take a $5k student loan from the feds.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids Yes, but it’s only 1/2 tuition. No room and board. I see you on the Alabama boards so I figured that Id mention that I prefer Alabama more than any state school. If I don’t get into USC with a good merit scholarship, and if Northwestern isn’t affordable and all my other schools fall through, I would pick Alabama over Albany and Minnesota.</p>
<p>@rhandco I moved to New York during middle school (tough transition). I don’t live in Cali anymore. The reason USC means so much to me is because I am not all that close to my parents and the family I really love and am close to is in California. USC would let me be within an hour of them and that would mean the world to me.</p>