“Need” is what the college says it is – not what the parent thinks it is – and none of those 100% need ED colleges agree to meet the FAFSA EFC. My d’s financial aid award at the 100% need college she attended (after an RD admit) set a family contribution +$10K over and above the FAFSA EFC. And it was a significantly stronger award than a package received from another 100% need college.With my kids I’ve seen significant differences in the amount of money offered to purportedly meet full need.
I’d note an added wrinkle – my daughter was Pell-eligible the year she applied, which qualified her for extra grant money (both from Pell and from an Academic Competitiveness Grant) – but she only became Pell eligible because of a professional judgment adjustment the college made to our FAFSA – there is no way I would have known in advance about that possibility. So just to keep things simple that our FAFSA EFC was $5K, and after financial aid, college A cost $15K and college B cost $25K. If hypothetically my daughter had made an ED commitment to college B (which at the time had a somewhat higher admit rate, so might have appeared to be a better strategic choice) – then that choice would have cost $40K over the course of 4 years. Let’s also say hypothetically that I was mentally prepared to pay $20K a year – so being asked to pay $25K would have been a stretch, but not a completely unreasonable stretch. (After all, I was taking PLUS loans to cover my own gap…it’s not as if I had to come up with the full difference out of pocket). It would have been a very touch choice to make in December or February without knowing what my D’s options would be in April.
I’d also note that college B’s award put a significantly higher work-study burden on DD – I think college A expected her to earn $1500, whereas college B expected a student earnings contribution of $5000.
Anyone who thinks that they are fully protected with an ED application to a 100% need school simply doesn’t understand how financial aid works.
I’d note that in our case, my daughter preferred college A, so we didn’t appeal the award from college B. But if it had been the other way around – if my daughter’s top choice had been college B – then after I learned from college A what they had done with the professional judgment adjustment (based on information gleaned from my tax return) - we could have taken that award back to college B and requested that they re-evaluate the package in light of the adjusted FAFSA. Maybe they would have, maybe they wouldn’t have. But in my hypothetical situation, that would have been information that I could have used to potentially save thousands of dollars per year.
The situation may be different for -0- EFC families --those who truly are low-income and whose income puts them at the level below which assets are even considered.
But for the middle class who have home equity and other factors complicating their financial situation, it just doesn’t work that way. ED is potentially a very expensive proposition - and unfortunately, it often deprives the family of even the knowledge of how much it has cost them. There is a difference between “doable” and “affordable” – especially because none of us knows what the future will bring.