How much will having a 2nd child in college impact our EFC?

Paying for College
21

My daughter went to Florida Tech and graduated as a Civil Engineer (smallest department in the school, I think). It was a good choice for her because of the athletic opportunity and the finances worked much better for us at FIT (at the time, BF wasn’t paying full tuition). She got BF, the Florida resident grant (now about $4000 I think), merit aid and a couple of other FIT grants (those change all the time and the ones she got are no longer given); if your son is an Eagle Scout or in robotics, there are bonus grants.

Honestly, Florida Tech was a little too geeky for her. It was fine academically, but socially she would have preferred UF or UCF. She was very young so FIT was perfect as a freshman but after that she would have liked a little more excitement. I was good with the lack of excitement! Most of the kids seem happy working on rockets and robotics and cement canoes.

I think the opportunities at Florida Tech are really great. Students are all doing the work they want to, especially in aerospace, and the big companies are always recruiting. Lots of internships and co-ops. There are a couple of students with the astronaut scholarships (and of course many astronauts including Buzz on campus), many working on the jet car teams, all kinds of projects for NASA and the plane manufacturers. The senior seminar projects are really impressive.

FiT wins for location - the beaches are really nice, NASA is right there, there are a ton of jobs and internships minutes from campus. Once I was at a game and as they were playing the National Anthem, a rocket launched from the Cape. Talk about the rocket’s red glare (although it was really white).

22

University of Chicago meets full need for all. They have a very very short Chicago form, but primarily use the info on the FAFSA.

@cptofthehouse

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ow does your son like the program thus far? Does he feel there are many opportunities for research and internships/co-ops? Florida Tech’s proximity and relationships with NASA, the emphasis on hands-on work/research, and the ability get into AE work as early as freshman year are all part of the allure for FT. How does UF compare?

@AeroEngParent He likes it. He really doesn’t start taking core AE classes until next Fall, with classes like Aerodynamics, Compressible Flow, and Astrodynamics. Most of your classes, the first two years, are core engineering classes.

Most of his “productive” time is spent between classes and his involvement with the Gator Motorsports team (GMT). On the team, he’s an Aerodynamics Engineer. They design the shape and aerodynamics of the vehicle (via software modeling), as well as construct most of the surfaces. He hasn’t gotten an internship yet (he’s a sophomore), but is still looking. It’s tough before your junior year, as many internships are targeted at juniors and seniors (they are recruiting tools). It’s easier to get a co-op, but they require working Fall and/or Spring terms. He does have friends who are sophomores that will be doing internships this summer, but most don’t get their first until after their junior year. To be honest, that’s the case at most places, these national companies have the same policies, at UF, FT or GT. Smaller, local companies tend to be flexible with offering internships to freshman/sophomores.

One of the benefits of being on a design team, is that he get to meet with recruiters from companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Cummins, etc. (who recruit interns from UF’s design teams, especially the Motorsports team).

Undergraduate research is available, but a student has to talk with the professor about joining their lab. Below is a link to the research that’s available within the Mechanical and Aerospace department. It’s a long list. Some require that you’re a junior or senior, others take freshman.

https://www.eng.ufl.edu/graduate/about-us/undergraduate-research/research-projects/mechanical-and-aerospace-engineering/

Next year, my son will likely be a system lead (Aero) with the GMT, and it will take all of his free time. The following year (his senior year), he’ll pull back and let someone else be the lead. At that point, he plans to ask/join one of the research projects.

Your son could follow this path or take another. He can go right into undergraduate research or get involved with one of the many student groups on campus. My daughter (Industrial Engineering) spent her time with leadership roles in her women engineering sorority (and ended up working two summer internships, junior and senior year).

Good Luck!

24

Regarding your original question - our EFC for one was reduce by $8,000 with two in school. That number applied to each student, not divided by two. (Boo!)

  • Student #1’s school’s policy is to not increase need-based aid for a second student entering college since that is not “an unexpected event, like a job loss or severe uninsured illness.”
  • Student #2 is expected to received no school need-based aid unless it comes from her major department. She received a small amount of work study. We will be paying crazy OOS cost for her program. (It is where she needs to be and we as parents can see this.)
  • For us, EFC has no relation to what we are paying for next year. It was very close at student #1’s school for years 1 and 2, so at least we had that.
  • We will do much more research for Student#3 when she build a college list in two more years. Based on her stats, etc, she should have some good options.
25

Also going back to the original question - Unless it has changed in the past two years, CSS profile schools will only reduce your EFC (that they calculate) by 40% when a second child start school.

If you have two children at CSS profile schools that use similar methodologies, that would mean you would be expected to pay 120% of your EFC. I’ve seen somewhere that the reduction for three children in school is actually worse, and that with three CSS profile schools, you might be expected to pay 135$ of your EFC.

It was a cause of huge concern for us when my oldest was looking at schools.

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Yikes! This is not how I thought this worked with the CSS profile. We are meeting for a one on one with FA at an admitted students day - I’m glad to have a better understanding of this before going in.

27

Be aware that Profile is a reporting vehicle only – it is not a formula. Each school that uses Profile will determine on its own how reported data is used. So you should press for as specific an answer as you can get to the question of how will siblings in college impact my child’s need-based aid here.

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@BelknapPoint thanks for the advice. This is my kids top choice, but it is looking too expensive. We were thinking that when S22 goes to college we would see some substantial savings that overlapping year. Good to be prepared.

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But those schools (GT, UF, and Florida Tech) aren’t CSS schools and do not give a lot of need based aid. Honestly, I don’t think the FA offers will change at all.

If your second child also goes to Florida Tech, they’d each get a ‘sibling award’ of $2500.

30

I thought GT was using the Profile now.

31

For the original question, why not run the college’s NPC with scenarios for various numbers of college students in the family?

32

Do run the NPC with the scenarios as @ucbalumnus suggests. However. also talk to the college financial aid officers as to how they handle halved EFCs when a second child goes to college while that first one is still at their school. Surprisingly, the answer to this is not what I’d have accepted. Many schools will take that second child into account in giving that initial financial aid package, but are not so fast in changing that package one they have that student.

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“For the original question, why not run the college’s NPC with scenarios for various numbers of college students in the family?”

I have. But GT is one of those schools that has only a very basic NPC on their website to meet the letter of the law. Very few questions asked and I just didn’t have much confidence in the accuracy, which is why I wanted to ask the question here.

34

So…was there a difference with two kids in college on the GT net price calculator? The school doesn’t guarantee to meet full need for all…there might not be a difference…or much of one.

35

“So…was there a difference with two kids in college on the GT net price calculator? The school doesn’t guarantee to meet full need for all…there might not be a difference…or much of one.”

Yes, about 6k difference. Certainly nothing to sneeze at…just very different than what I expected having started off down this path with some of the “meet full need” schools in mind. We were still willing to consider GT and the price difference if it was for 2 years, but 4 years of these numbers would just be irresponsible.

36

I don’t think what you are finding about GT is unusual. We were living in north Florida when my kids were applying to colleges and no one they knew went to GT (or other Georgia schools) because they just weren’t a good deal when compared to Florida schools, and that was back when BF only paid about $3000. Kids went to Alabama and Mississippi State, but not to GT or UGa because the financial aid wasn’t there.

If your son wants to work a lot while in school or do co-ops and internships, I’m sure he could make a lot of money to help pay for future years. That might be part of his decision, whether he wants to contribute to costs.

37

Pick the cheapest school and go to that one. Any on your list are fine.

Source: been 'round this block before. Done a bunch of aerospace stuff, then retired from it.

Btw, to that end, DON’T major in aerospace. MechE majors can work in Aerospace; doing it the other way around is a lot harder.

Most kids graduating from my school with AE degrees are unemployed or forced into other areas of engineering.

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Also not really sure that NASA is the employer to aspire to, but I digress. I don’t have too many positive things to say about the aerospace industry anymore.

39

You need to talk to the financial aid director and get the school policy on what happens IN THE FUTURE when there is a second student who enters college. It may not be the way the NPC splits the costs, when there is a sibling in college when the application is made. They are two separate situations.

40

@CourtneyThurston thanks for your reply. I remember your comments from a thread my wife showed me about another family in a similar situation - it was a high school senior deciding between GT (paying big dollars) and full tuition at (I think) UAH. We discussed your comments in that thread with our son.

Your comments about not majoring in AE is advice we’ve received from a few other people. I was a little surprised considering the recent resurgence in the field, but I understand it. My question is, is your feeling that the space industry is unable support all the grads out there when the industry contracts, or it’s just a bad choice overall?

To be specific, our son tends to stand out even among great students. 790 math SAT, 5’s on AP Calc BC, AP Physics 1 and 2, he took Calc 3 and Differential Equations (DE), etc., and he’s cruised pretty easily through all of it. With the space industry on the upswing, I feel like he will have a chance to get himself established in his career, and then I’d like to believe he’ll ultimately have the performance to weather the ups and downs in the space industry down the road. But this isn’t my field so it’s all guesswork.

After basically having to tell him GT just isn’t a viable option, I hate the idea of now trying to talk him out of majoring in AE, but ultimately I want to give him the best advice possible. Thanks.