<p>“I am simply wondering how much the average family pays for private college tuition.” MOM, I have been tring to figure out the same thing. I’ll share with you what I’ve learned. Colleges do very. If you have a hook the give more. I think I’m middle class $71000 income. EFC about $11000-$12000. Would take everything I could save in a year. It kind of seems to me that for every $5000 your income goes up or down increases or decreases your contrubution by about $2500. I know someone is with a calculator now to correct this, but this is what it seemed to me. From the offers we got so far it seems that they want me to pay $11,500 and have my D borrow $5000 -$10000 a year. Not a bad deal if you have the money for a school that costs $50000. Some state schools offer lesser amounts because they already are less expensive. University at Buffalo with a $5000 scholarship comes out to be about $12000. So I’m guessing its going to cost $10000 a year for this middle class EFC give or take with some additional small scholarships. As for comparing some of her school choices RPI, Clarkson, Bucknell,Lafayette,Lehigh seem to have students that seemed more into school that our University at Buffalo student population did. I think UB is nice but state school population that we saw seemed to be less enthusiatic and have larger class size. We may end up their and I’m sure it will be fine. My D is just hoping to be with a group of students interested in what their working on. Hope this helps. This is just what I’ve found. Also we are a family of 4. Let me add she all "A"s in HS in Honor and AP classes. There are some LA schools that will give more money than some other schools. Just need to find them that offer wht your child wants.</p>
<p>“EFC about $11000-$12000. Would take everything I could save in a year.”</p>
<p>To be realistic, colleges don’t expect all of EFC to come from current earnings; they expect part of it to come from past and future earnings. That may be one reason why EFC seems high to some families. Yes, some don’t have savings, and can’t get loans, which makes it even harder to meet EFC. :(</p>
<p>Eleanor, congrats on your D’s $5K UB award. My son graduated from UB. One can get a great education there. I was impressed with the courses that I checked out there. The math and science courses all seemed as rigorous as any. My current senior has also been accepted but no award. Still the in state cost makes it affordable to us. We have capped our contribution at $35K a year (including PLUS which we will be taking). He has several alternatives at this price range and is still awaiting news from several other schools. He has been accepted to two great LACs but with no aid , so they are out of range.</p>
<p>Thank cptofthehouse, Good to hear about UB. We are looking at the engineering program. My D felt that the program seemed geared more toward their grad program. She wants to be more hands on in undergrad after she gets through the basic classes. Any thoughts on this?</p>
<p>Vossron, Your point (they expect part of it to come from past and future earnings) is well taken, but is simular to the save for retirement when your young and you will be rich when you retire. The problem with this some times is that many don’t have much disposable income thoughout their life. And as for borrowing from the future, parents would need to start paying back the loans 60 days after they are disbursed. Than affecting what they could save. It’s a catch 22 situation.</p>
<p>That is a problem with any school that has a strong graduate program. The emphasis is always on the grad students. UB’s engineering program has an excellent reputation and I was impressed with the number and types of kids who were able to complete the program. The hands on part, I can’t say. Of the schools you listed, Bucknell, Clark and Lafeyette are the ones that I’ve heard have a lot of hands on opportunities. But a female in engineering is going to have some great internship chances, I would think. </p>
<p>I did not know much about UB until my son decided to go there for theater. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they have such excellent departments. That there are graduate departments makes the research and extent of the discipline much greater than in those schools where they are limited in facility and number. That does balance the graduate school emphasis. Having gone to a major graduate research university for my undergrad, I can tell you that for the top students, the sky is truly the limit in such scenarios, but the personal attention in the early years is terrible. If you need nurturing and a lot of help, it can be tough since the grad student will often be your contact person, not the professor. And there is the dreaded foreign grad student who understands little of how an American college works, no idea of the curriculum, no training and broken English and a bad attitude to American undergrads. Those are the trade offs. </p>
<p>Good luck to your D whatever she chooses. From her choices, it seems to me that she could handle the challenges that a school like UB would have and take advantage of the limitless opportunities that having a grad dept in engineering would offer.</p>
<p>Thanks for all your thoughts, UB sounds much more interesting.</p>
<p>FAFSA and the other methodologies do make certain assumptions that are to the disadvantage of those who do not fit into them. One of them is that current income has been at that level or at gradually increasing levels to get to this point over time. A family who has indeed had an income history of that sort can be expected to have savings of the sort that is anticipated and has the capacity to borrow the remainder of the EFC and repay it in anticipation of continuing this pay scale.</p>
<p>The problem is that the theory does not fit in reality and has increasingly been not working given this economic climate. Also job stability is not what it used to be and such assumptions are no longer wise to make. So the snapshot of one year of income can be distorted in terms of family financial history and future. </p>
<p>The other problem is that EFC is rarely met anyways. I don’t know a single school that will guarantee to meet full need as defined by EFC particularly with loan caps. It just doesn’t happen. Loans are too often offered with no regard to whether those getting them should even theoretically be able to repay them. In my opinion the EFC should have some sort of breakdown on what this theoretical number should be in terms of savings, current income contribution and loan amounts to give some sort of guidance in the balance expected. Instead, most schools that use FAFSA EFC just gap the student and offer parent or co signed loans to meet EFC.</p>
<p>“I don’t know a single school that will guarantee to meet full need as defined by EFC particularly with loan caps.”</p>
<p>There are few: [Which</a> Colleges Claim to Meet Students’ Full Financial Need? - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2011/02/16/which-colleges-claim-to-meet-students-full-financial-need]Which”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2011/02/16/which-colleges-claim-to-meet-students-full-financial-need)</p>
<p>A handful do it with no loans. The “loan caps” would correspond to Federal student loans, somewhere around 10% of costs, indeed granted automatically. Each school determines EFC according to formulas they each choose, usually (or often?) one of the Profile options.</p>
<p>Is there any FAFSA-only school that meets full need with only Federal student loans?</p>
<p>Schools that claim to meet full need but require more than Federal student loans to do so are making an illegitimate claim, IMHO. Can someone point to a school’s web site that makes such a claim?</p>
<p>Family income of $50,000 last year; will be about $35,000 this year (unemployment benefits ending). Expected family (parents and child) contribution in offers received so far ranges from about $5,000 to more than $13,000. I blame the assets. Our daughter has an account from grandma and we have some money and a house.</p>
<p>i got 26k from U of Chicago. my efc ~ 70k. but family medical expenses last year was 90k maybe thats why they were so generous?</p>
<p>jnm123, sorry I’m just responding to your question (I thought I subscribed to this thread!). My son has applied to mostly private LACs on the East Cost in Virginia and Pennsylvania. He also applied to state schools (we live in VA) so that we’d have financial safeties. However, we’ve found that the numbers are almost identical. I think (and I bow down to all of you who are so darn knowledgeable about all of this) that private schools are just more able to meet need. He certainly has NOT applied to Top Tier schools because he’s not that kind of a student. You mentioned tiers and I’m not sure what “tiers” he applied to – not the most competitive, probably not competitive at all. The only thing he brings to the table in addition to his 3.5 GPA is a lot of service hours, leadership, and he’s a pretty competitive tennis player (NOT Division 1, though). He was awarded a few scholarships based on service and leadership.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, there are several (Emory, for example). Some colleges are even no loan (Vandy, which has enabled it to rocket up its test scores).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wake Forest does (or did). They recognize that they have a problem are trying to raise their endowment to cover the private loans with grants. Dunno how their fund-rasing is going, however. Wake even used to footnote the private loans-as-meeting-need in their Common Data Set.</p>
<p>Emory does not ask for custodial parent information? I think it does. I know it does. Emory uses FAFSA only? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>sry, I didn’t understand where you were limiting EFC to that as defined only by Fafsa. Profile schools also use the term Expected Family Contribution – yes, it may be different than what is calculated by the feds, but the nomenclature is the same.</p>
<p>btw: I don’t know a whole lot about UC’s Blue and Gold Plan, but it appears to give out all grants to low-low income in essence capping loans at zero. UC if fafsa-only. I believe UV’s Access program is similar, but UVa does require a few more finaid docs than fafsa. UVa doesn’t use Profile, however.</p>
<p>*I don’t know a whole lot about UC’s Blue and Gold Plan, but it appears to give out all grants to low-low income in essence capping loans at zero. *</p>
<p>That’s not what I’ve seen. I’ve seen Calif residents with EFC 0 having Staffords and Perkins loans in their FA packages…and work-study. Blue and Gold just guarantees that if your family has below a certain income, your fees (aka tuition) will be covered thru some kind of combo of grants. So, with Cal Grants, Pell, UC grants, student loans, work-study, etc, costs get covered (or nearly covered).</p>
<p>* Profile schools also use the term Expected Family Contribution *</p>
<p>Maybe some do, but many don’t use the term “EFC”.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response, Terig. My D’s are either in college or in grad school so my ‘search & sort’ days are over! But it seems to be true from reading posts on CC in the last year or so that the moderately-selective privates–OK, call them Tier 2, in the 75/125 rankings for what it’s worth–are offering more in merit $$ than maybe 5-8 years ago, when I was out there looking. A good bang for your buck, where the student and/or parents come out with maybe only 50K in loans rather than 150K.</p>
<p>I don’t know any schools that meet full need that use only the FAFSA and cap their loans. I read somewhere that Chapman does guarantee to meet full need and uses only the FAFSA and there are some school that do pretty well that way, but nothing like the list of school that are the leaders in generous financial aid over all. Those schools do use a supplemental financial aid app, usually PROFILE.</p>