Per the title, I’m concerned with understanding the offers my D22 received / will receive for financial aid and projecting accurate 4-year costs of attendance for comparison.
We had much lower family income in 2020 vs. 2021 due to COVID and made that fact clear in multiple places of our CSS profiles. My question is how much weight is each year given in the calculation of the need based aid we received for 2022-2023? The extension of this question is if schools include 2020 data, how can we best go about getting an estimate of aid for sophomore year and beyond?
Mom and I are divorced so the cost calculators are not very reliable, in our experience. Each school also uses a very different equation for including her non-custodial income and/or that of her new spouse, so these figures are all over the board. We’ve received from $0 to $30,000 in need-based aid for this upcoming year.
Is it reasonable to ask financial aid offices to provide us with projected sophomore year info, or are they too inundated with requests this time of year? Just trying to figure out the best way to go about this, so if anyone has had similar experiences I’d appreciate their insights. I was unable to find another thread that directly addressed these questions. Thanks in advance.
Income in 2020 will be the primary driver for need-based aid offered for the 2022-2023 academic year. If the 2021 income is higher, you can reasonably expect less need-based financial aid for the 2023-2024 academic year. How much of a change will depend on each school, because evaluating Profile data is done differently by each school that uses Profile. The best (really only) way to get an estimate of institutional need-based aid for sophomore year and beyond is to start a conversation with the staff at each school’s financial aid office.
The schools won’t give you an estimate of aid for any upcoming years after the one for which you submitted the financial aid forms. You will need to apply again for aid for future years…forms available October 1 each year to do so.
For need based aid, each year is a new financial aid year. There are just too many variables that can change from year to year. Adding to this…you are divorced…what if someone remarries? That will change the metric too.
In addition, need based financial aid awarding can be income dependent. For example, some schools award certain %age of aid for earners under a certain amount…but if you go over that, you could face a reduction in aid.
If you really wanted a firm number that would not be income dependent, merit aid would have been a good thing to chase down. That is not income dependent.
If your income for 2021 was significantly lower AND remains lower, you can apply for a special circumstances consideration at the college. You would need to contact each college to find out their process for doing this. Some colleges don’t do this at all. You will need to provide documentation of your reduced income, and most schools will expect that this reduced income is still the case.