one child is a college sophomore, the other a rising college freshman. Freshmen has received substantial aid. But the sophomore’s school will not tell us what they will charge us for him until way after we have to make a decision for the rising freshman. I am concerned that if we take the cheapest package for the freshman, the current school will just not give any at all, as they did last year and so we will get no benefit. That is, if freshman picks the lowest, but not favorite school, we may get screwed by the second school anyway. But if freshman picks her favorite and more expensive school and the sophomore’s school gives us no money we are in an even worse situation. Can anyone advise how this is handled with one coming in and the other one already in? Thanks.
is the aid your freshman received comprised of grants or loans? did you have to fill out the FAFSA this year for your sophmore? And did you have to fill out the Profile application for either college?
you should be able to estimate your EFC [ total estimated FAMILY contribution- not contribution for EACH student] and aid package by punching in all your numbers at the calculator on both college websites.
Okay, if the sophomore’s school gave you no benefit, why? Did you make too much? If it is a public school and you didn’t qualify for federal aid (pell, seog, Perkins), and your EFC (which you should know) is still above $6000, it’s unlikely you’ll get any additional aid for this coming year. If it is a private school which guarantees to meet need, it is a little harder to figure it out but you might be able to do it by looking at last year’s ‘need’ and seeing if halving it would bring you into the ‘needs aid’ group.
I wouldn’t base the choice on receiving more from the older child’s school.
I’d base the 2nd child’s decision off of what you’re currently paying for the 1st child (if not a little more to account for tuition increases). The 1st child’s school has no obligation to help you pay for the 2nd child’s school. You paid the first year for them knowing you’d have another child in school soon, so they could reasonably conclude you wouldn’t have accepted their offer unless you could pay it all 4 years.
Does the first school offer need based aid at all? Did you try running their Net Price Calculator to see if there’s any discount given for 2 students in school? I don’t know if the #'s themselves will be accurate because your son isn’t a freshman, but if you run it with 1 in school and get a diff. # when you run it with 2 in school, the difference may indicate the possibility of getting a little discount.
Your best bet is to call the financial aid office of your son’s school and just ask if they give any aid if there are other children in school. You won’t be able to get #'s, but they should be able to tell you if they always, sometimes, or never consider it.
If the current school does NOT meet full need…you might not get a nickel more of need based aid for that first student.
You have the package for the second one.
True story. Our first kiddo went to college. We paid all costs after his merit award (we were paying more than $30,000 a year in 2003). When he was a senior, his sister was a college freshman. He got $250 in grant aid, his school did not meet full need (his EFC per fafsa went from $44,000 a year to $22,000 a year).
The parents portion of the EFC is split 50/50 but there is an amount factored in that the student is expected to contribute. If you are dealing with schools that don’t meet need, I wouldn’t expect much to change from how your child was previously packaged. You can try running the NPC at a meets need school to see what you get with 2 students in college instead of one.
In the fall, your students will have to send a form from each school to the other verifying attendance to the other.
If the school uses fafsa, the family contribution looks to be 50/50. But for most profile schools, each student actually pays 60%. So the total for both kids is 120% rather than 100% of what it would be with one student.
But unless the school guarantees to meet 100% need for all students, this is rather meaningless, as the decreased family contribution might not net a nickel of additional need based aid at schools that don’t guarantee to meet full need for all.
Is the older child’s school FAFSA only?
What is your EFC for EACH child?
This isn’t perfect, but can you run the NPC on Child #1’s school’s website and put 2 in college and see what the results are?
If these are Fafsa only schools, then I don’t think aid is adjusted based on whether Child #2 gets a lot of aid.
I think you might be assuming that the sophomore’s school will work to make your freshman’s school affordable. They’re not really obligated to do that though. You should base the freshman decision based on what you can afford assuming that nothing changes with the sophomore school.
Is one school Yale (child #1)…and one school UPenn Wharton?
Are you saying that UPenn gave a lot of aid, but you don’t know what Yale is going to give? Please clarify so we can give more intelligent responses.
If you got NO AID from Yale when you only had one child in college, but suddenly when there are 2 kids, then UPenn gave a good bit of aid, then something sounds a bit “off” because Yale gives super aid. If you got no aid from Yale, then I’m thinking your income/assets must have been above the FA threshold (like maybe $200k income).
But …if you now will have two in college, Yale should adjust your aid assuming you don’t have income exceeding $250,000 a year…and have typical assets.
Perhaps you could contact Yale financial aid…if that is indeed school number one.
And if this is Yale. You didn’t get “screwed” last year in terms of aid. Yale gives need based aid, and if you got none, your income and assets must be pretty high.
If Child #1 is at Yale (no aid with one in college), and if Child #2 has been accepted to UPenn (and got aid with 2 in college), I can’t imagine that Yale would not now give aid to Child #1 since Yale is more generous than UPenn.
Verifying what some of the above posters said - our EFC was cut in half, but D1 is at a FAFSA only, does not meet need school. Even though the EFC was cut in half, the only difference in her package for next year was we could now get federal loans. Everything else was just lumped into an ‘award’ of a huge PLUS loan.
If your school ‘meets need’, then I would expect a change in child 1’s package!
What were you planning to do? Tell child 2 they could not attend their college choice? Or tell child one they needed to transfer to a less expensive option?
What I expected was that school 1 and school 2 would split the EFC. But Yale being school 1 and school 2 gave an offer to my younger child that caused us to pay more than a 50% split of EFC. And now other schools for my younger child are competing to have her and have given aid that is much more generous. So no I do not think 1 school has to help make the other cheaper. My concern is the opposite. It is that one school will not give aid because the other gave so much. That is not fair to the other school or to us. And again, I reiterate that you cannot make a judgement about whether I was screwed or not just by my income.
What I was planning to do was get an estimate from Yale of my current student’s fee so we could choose from the options for the younger one to make sure we can pay the entire combined tuition. That is the responsible thing to do. (She has tremendous options from Stanford and many Ivies, etc. so it is not that for her it is Harvard or Podunk.) As it is now I have to guess what our entire costs will be - which makes no sense as If Yale knows what it can offer my daughter it should know what it is offering my son.
Yale does not ask how much other sibling is paying for college.
This is the form you will have to submit by October 17:
http://www.yale.edu/sfas/finaid/pdf-forms/1516/1516KIC.pdf
If you submitted all the required paperwork for S1 Yale should be able to produce finaid package now.
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But Yale being school 1 and school 2 gave an offer to my younger child that caused us to pay more than a 50% split of EFC.
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CSS schools do NOT do a 50/50 split. They do a 60/60 split. And they don’t use the FAFSA EFC anyway.
Are you saying that Yale is child #1’s school…and Yale has accepted Child #2 as well, and has given an offer? If so, is that offer worse than other schools’ offers?
I would suspect that Child #1’s aid will come in about the same as Child #2’s if the school is Yale and you’ve already seen what Yale has offered for Child #2.
Can you clarify???
Wait! What EFC are you expecting to be split? The FAFSA EFC would not be split.
Since you paid “full freight” for Yale for Child 1, are you expecting that the $65k you paid for Yale would split 50/50 or 6060? (it wouldn’t be 50/50 because this is a CSS school)
However, the 60/60 split doesn’t necessarily work that way for full pay parents. It is possible for full pay parents to be full pay for 2 kids or 3 kids or X kids…if their income is high enough.
If you’re full pay for one child because, for instance, your income is $1M, then guess what? You’re not going to see any split at all for Child 2.
However, since you’ve seen the Yale aid pkg for Child 2, (what was in it???), then you can guess that the aid pkg for Child 1 will be about the same (unless the kids have income/assets).
Are you saying that Stanford or Harvard has offered Child 2 more money? If so, then ask Yale if they’ll match.
Yale would not do a 50/50 split, and neither do most Profile schools that meet full need.
It it typically a 60/60. Meaning…the EFC you had for one child…with two, each would have 60% of that as their family contribution, not half.
And it could be more for one child or the other depending on the student assets and income.