How accurate was the BU NPC for you?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Boston University
1

I know the NPC is intended to be a rough estimate at best, I’m just curious to see how close your actual net price was to your NPC estimate. I’m especially interested in merit and need based aid for low income high academic. Sorry if this was already asked.

2

If your parents’ only income is from wages and salaries, still married and the only property they own is their house, it is fairly accurate. As long as you complete it accurately.

3

Thank you, that’s exactly what I needed.

4

@TomSrOfBoston , our efc is nowhere near our npc results. And we fit your description above. Will it really be that grim? D has 1500 SAT and w gpa 5.0, uw is 3.8. She’ll be applying RD, so gpa could be 5.1 and 3.9 after first semester. Even if she were to get the Presidential Scholarship (I think that’s the one), it’s a lot. Any throughts/perspective? She’ll be applying for the honors college, Sargent, and the Trustee Scholarship.

5

BU is known not to meet the full need of candidates, but they prioritize financial aid on the basis of how much they want you. So if you rank highly, you might get your full need met. But don’t count on it and even then, you will be expected to borrow a significant amount.

6

The BU NPC calculation formulas have been updated sometime within the last two weeks. For us, the change is drastic, resulting in a net price that is $62k (yes) more per year than the previous results, while using the exact same inputs. I called the BU FA office this morning, they confirmed the NPC was updated.

Input stats:
4.0, 1350, 3+ EC’s, 3 other siblings (none pre-college, 6 total household), 29k income, 0$ assets (50k home equity), no other income or property

I expected the NPC results to change with formula updates, but not this much. The line item that appeared previously for need based aid (“BU need-based Scholarship”) doesn’t even appear on the new NPC results. All in all, it may be a non-issue because the current results are closer to what I read about here on CC.

7

@romns116 Are you positive you put all the figures in correctly this time?

8

Yes, tried it 3x. The CollegeBoard account saved the numbers, so I tried re-entering them just to make sure. Same result.

The only distinguishable difference was the absence of the need-based line item. All the other results are exactly the same on the dollar.

9

Now the NPC is unavailable. Maybe they’re still making changes and I happened to run it at the wrong time. I’ll try it again tomorrow.