<p>I just ran NPCs for 4 schools to get an idea of the effect of having a 2nd and 3rd student in college. When I added the 2nd student 3 of the schools were similar with an adjustment of $7538-$8079, and the 4th gave $14,100. When I added the 3rd student the adjustment dropped to a range of $2750-$3000 for all four--apparently a procreation penalty!</p>
<p>For those with experience with 2 or 3 children in college at the same time, do these results seem accurate? Thanks.</p>
<p>Are these fafsa only schools or do they require profile or their own financial aid forms? Are they all meets need schools? The parent contribution for fafsa will be divided equally among all students in college and each student’s contribution will be added to that. For profile/own form schools how they handle it will be different for each school and depend on whether the schools claim to meet demonstrated need or not.</p>
<p>The FAFSA formula will divide the parental part of the EFC by the number of children in school so that the overall figure for the parent(s) remains the same. Each child’s own assets and income are assigned to that child’s FAFSA EFC.</p>
<p>Institutions that use the CSS Profile and/or their own financial aid formula can do whatever they feel like. The most common information reported here is that while the federal formula gives each of two kids 50% of the parental portion, most CSS Profile institutions will apply 60% of the parental portion to each of those two kids’ EFCs.</p>
<p>Can you clarify?</p>
<p>With 2 kids, what was each child’s EFC at:</p>
<p>School 1
School 2
School 3
School 4</p>
<p>With 3 kids, what was each child’s EFC at:</p>
<p>School 1
School 2
School 3
School 4</p>
<p>Were these CSS schools? Promise to meet need? FAFSA-only schools? Any of them OOS publics?</p>
<p>What is your EFC for ONE child?
Is that the FAFSA EFC or the CSS “family contribution”?</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the speedy responses. Let me try to clarify. I somewhat arbitrarily ran Duke, Williams, Penn, and Dartmouth. I assume they all require profile? As far as FAFSA, at no point would we qualify for any Fed/State grants if that is what is being asked?</p>
<p>They were all College Board NPC, and the figures I was quoting are the “Estimated Net Price”.</p>
<p>So for example at Duke, estimated net price started at $32,800, then $24,800, then $21800. So for simplicity sake, let’s just say all 3 go to Duke. So the 1st year my contribution for 1 is $32,800, then when 2 of them attend, I would be paying $49,600, and when the 3rd starts I would be paying $65,400 a year? Am I interpreting this correctly?</p>
<p>Net price includes both the EFC and ESC. A trial run of the Duke’s NPC indicates that Duke has an ESC of $7,200 ($5,000 loan and $2,200 work).</p>
<p>So your Duke examples would be:</p>
<p>1: NP = $32,800 = $25,600 EFC + $7,200 ESC
2: NP = $24,800 = $17,600 EFC + $7,200 ESC (EFC for 2 = $35,200)
3: NP = $21,800 = $14,600 EFC + $7,200 ESC (EFC for 3 = $43,800)</p>
<p>So if each student contributes the ESC of $7,200 himself/herself, then the total EFC would go from $25,600 to $35,200 to $43,800 as you go from 1 to 2 to 3 at Duke.</p>
<p>Of course, other schools could calculate differently, and the interactions could be more complicated if they go to different schools with different financial aid calculations.</p>
<p>I just want to go over a few things that seem to be confusing here. Please be aware that the term EFC is something generated by FAFSA. A consistent formula generated the EFC and the way it works is that with multiple children, the parental EFC would be divided by the number of children for each child. In other words, the calculation for the parental EFC would be a figure generated by your assets and income, and the when applied to each child, the that figure would be divided by the number of children and then each particular’ child’s portion of the EFC would be added to it, based on what that child earned and has in assets. You are correct, in that this figure is not useful in many situations, because no school guarantees to meet need as defined by the FAFSA EFC. That number is just one to be used for eligibility for federal funds as well as other monies that use that figure. </p>
<p>Schools that use PROFILE and other calculators have their own formulas and most of these school have a basic minimum contribution a student has to pay regardless of EFC. I’ve seen kids with zero EFCs–their families are poverty line, and they still have to come up with, say $5-7K, maybe even more, even at schools that guarantee to meet need. Yes, even schools like Harvard expect kids to come up with some money on their own. Kinda hypocritical that some of these school brag that they do not put loans in the fin aid packages for any or certain income level kids, and then they have a minimum student EFC that pretty much has to be met through loans since the kid doesn’t have the money sitting any where and earning that kind of money over the summer is not easy or even likely and even downright not possible. So that fixed part of the EFC is going to skew the formula so you can’t simply divide by the number of students.</p>
<p>It’s even more complicated as the formulas are not simply divide by a certain number like the FAFSA EFC, in many cases, and one cannot extrapolate too many times, because the formulas can change at certain break points and situations. Really, these schools can dish out their money any way they so please.</p>
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<p>That would be the ESC or expected student contribution (often referred to as self-help on net price calculator results), not EFC that the family is expected to contribute. Usually, it ranges from $4,000 to $10,000; at the lower end, the expectation is that it comes from summer and school year work earnings (often, there is work-study eligibility offered), while at the higher end, both work earnings and student loans are typically needed.</p>
<p>Exceptionally, University of Virginia met need with an ESC = $0, but is changing the policy to have an ESC = $7,000 for future classes.</p>
<p>ucb-yes I was aware of the student contribution component but I don’t find it particularly relevant-it doesn’t matter how you dress it up, bottom line is the same. </p>
<p>cpt-thanks, I guess I have properly interpreted the information…they expect more than we can possibly pay for the 1st, and then it escalates from there. Great.</p>
<p>We did not notice any appreciable difference in cost for the two overlap years (2010-11) and this year. Yes the EFC was “split” and that individual EFC was < COA, but neither college did “anything” to take the sting out of two in college in the same year…the colleges all have different approaches.</p>
<p>I’m sorry that you are that situation. I will tell you that these days with the NPCs, at least the info is there up front.</p>
<p>Many years ago, a friend of mine with twin daughters was elated to be able to afford Duke. D1 was accepted there with an aid package that was barely affordable, but doable. D2 stayed local, going to a commuter state school. Life was good. Then D2 decided not to return to college, and what Duke expected the family to pay went up by an enormous amount. Made it completely unaffordable. With two in college, the expected parental contribution was about 60% of what it would have been with one in college, and the second student’s cost as nearly negligible. It caused a tremendous amount of trouble.</p>
<p>If a student goes to a school that does NOT guarantee to meet need, additional students in college could mean NO increase in aid at all.</p>
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<p>Exactly, fortunately I’m one of those people who plans for the worse and is grateful when things go “my way” but ouch 2 basically full pay tuitions during overlap years is painful…only 6 more payments to go before we graduate another one and we’re “back” to one college tuition and fortunately this one stayed in-state so it’s “only” $25,000 +/- a year.</p>
<p>So for simplicity sake, let’s just say all 3 go to Duke. So the 1st year my contribution for 1 is $32,800, then when 2 of them attend, I would be paying $49,600, and when the 3rd starts I would be paying $65,400 a year? Am I interpreting this correctly?</p>
<p>There is an assumption that at CSS schools that you do need to pay more (it total) when multiples are in school. maybe there’s an assumption that when the 2nd and 3rd students go, the family’s household expenses really start dropping, so the family should pay more? Or, the thinking is that a family should pay more when 2 or more are in school than when just one is in school.</p>
<p>As an anecdote, the 60% number has been tossed out quite a bit over the years…</p>
<p>momofthreeboys–with this Duke example it seems to come out that with 2 it was more like 75%, and then it dropped to 66% for 3. “Only $25000”, lol. I have ran the calculators so many times that I am becoming immune to the sticker shock, and $25,000 is starting to sound like a bargain school!</p>
<p>cpt-Yes, my oldest is a Jr. and I am so glad that I started this learning process a few months back. I just can’t image discovering what I have only after receiving acceptances. Also, you point out another nonsensical aspect to the FA mess…say for instance #1 goes to Duke, then #2 goes to community college for next to nothing and commutes, and #3 gets a full ride. Duke is still lowering my price although I am essentially paying nothing for the 2nd or 3rd–the amount you pay for additional students is irrelevant?</p>
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<p>Actually, it is relevant, since college students are expected to have more ability to earn money (especially with work-study eligibility to give incentive to employers to hire them) and borrow Direct/Stafford loans on their own than high school students are*. Now, if you do not want your student to have to work or take Direct/Stafford loans, then your AFC (actual family contribution) would have to be at least NP = EFC + ESC, rather than just EFC.</p>
<p>*Remember the days decades ago when college was cheap enough even without financial aid that many students were able to “work their way through college”?</p>
<p>you point out another nonsensical aspect to the FA mess…say for instance #1 goes to Duke, then #2 goes to community college for next to nothing and commutes, and #3 gets a full ride. Duke is still lowering my price although I am essentially paying nothing for the 2nd or 3rd–the amount you pay for additional students is irrelevant</p>
<p>I don’t know if all CSS schools handle this the same. I think that if one child is in a military academy (free), then that child doesn’t get counted. Don’t know if any CSS schools would expect a greater contribution if a second child had a free ride somewhere else. I agree, that having one child at a cheap CC should logically require a higher payment for another child at say, Duke. </p>
<p>maybe some here can chime in and report their own experiences based on having some kids with free rides and some at at full need CSS schools…at the same time</p>
<p>Thank you ucb–I am just getting a grasp on all of the lingo. I guess I shouldn’t have used the term “EFC”, which means something very specific. I am interested in the bottom line of what has to be paid. I am not ruling out employment or loans, but my husband and I will make that judgment call, and will determine any amounts rather than having colleges pull numbers out of the air. It just occurred to me however that many schools allow the ESC to be fulfilled to some extent with outside scholarships, in contrast to those scholarships only increasing EFC. Okay, I concede, the information might be relevant!</p>
<p>When my daughter was at Princeton a couple of years ago, they reduced our EFC significantly when her brother started at another school, even though he had a full tuition scholarship. They did still expect her to contribute about 5K.</p>
<p>Princeton is probably not very representative - they were in general quite generous with loan-free FA.</p>
<p>The change is smaller in the first year than in the second year because parents don’t pay college cost for the second child when he/she is still in 12th grade. When the second child is sophomore in college, the change is bigger.</p>