@ucbalumnus, most colleges, I am sure you are correct, What defines most, how do you know which are not?
Cost-free to students? I’m on board.
My son qualified for merit aid at a lot of schools. My dyslexic daughter hasn’t tested yet, so I don’t know if she’ll qualify or not. It won’t bother me if she doesn’t. Our situation is what it is.
I like having the NPCs. I’m not sure they’re always up-to-date, but they’re fun to play with. It would be helpful if they could generate an acceptance rate for each profile so parents can see both the financial situation and the possibility of acceptance. Something simple such as “last year, x% of students with y test scores and z GPA were admitted” would do. Or the results could include the chart from the CDS that breaks down the acceptances by test scores and GPA. An affordable net cost only matters if there’s a reasonable chance acceptance, and having that info. in front of them might help families craft better lists.
personally, i think it should be mandatory for all colleges to have their NPC’s updated to the incoming year so that there is a true number.
i just ran one. it asked for my 2013 info. it estimated for 2015-16. so not horrendously off, but i’d bet there was a tuition increase in there somewhere.
when you are stretching thin to begin with, it matters.
NPCs give a good idea, but they certainly can’t guarantee the amount of aid at most schools, particularly those that do not pledge to “meet full need”. The amount and type of aid offered will depend on the number of needy students admitted and where this student falls in that range.
As for merit aid, unless it is an absolute based on GPA/test scores, no school can guarantee the amount that will be offered. It is often a holistic analysis based on how much they want that particular student. At some places you can estimate likely merit fairly easily, but at many others it really depends on the profile of the class etc. There are threads in which people tell posters to apply to xyz school because they know kids that go merit aid in the past. Others will say that the bar has been raised considerably for merit because the school has gotten much more popular.
Admissions is reasonably, but not absolutely, predictable. Why would aid be more predictable than admissions in the first place?
Maybe parents should just assume they will pay the COA, and if they get any discount be happy.
It’s like cars. At most places, you don’t know what you will be spending until you haggle with the salespeople.
If you don’t like that model (we don’t) you choose a car dealer with a fixed, no haggle price…and you plan to pay it. These places often don’t take trade ins either. But you DO know the price…before you even go there
So…pick colleges that are within your family price point without any “haggling” (this would be aid). And you won’t have an issue…
Most parents that are not eligible for need-based aid but who can’t afford upwards of $60K per year have a financial safety - typically an in-state public. If merit money comes through, the student may have more choices. Those that don’t often are badly surprised in March and April. If parents can’t afford the full COA, they will typically be unhappy if they don’t get a discount (especially when people persist in pointing out that the vast majority of students are not paying full COA).
One reason that a large percentage of students at privates are attending at a discount is that many students who get no aid do not attend. If the percentage of admitted students who did and did not receive aid/merit was reported, I bet the number expected to pay full COA would be higher than the number that actually do.
Maybe we should treat colleges like purchasing a house. Submit an offer and have them respond within 72 hrs and then you’re under contract . But then that would not let people have bragging rights about multiple selective college admissions or how many scholarships they got.
As someone just starting the process, how inaccurate are the NPCs and the individual school’s resulting EFCs (as opposed to the FAFSA EFC which I know isn’t going to happen at any school not full-need)? I realize that the schools can’t hit a homerun with the little information provided on the front-end, but are they at least able to get us to second or third base?
@MotherOfDragons FWIW, I think you’re right, and I’m enjoying reading about some of the add-ons proposed. I’ll add my own thoughts to this pipe dream.
It would take some planning on colleges’, states’ and federal government’s parts to figure out assumed available pools of aid and funds for the next four years, but then they could divvy up each admittance year’s pool according to their mission or goals. We have this much to give to low income students, so we’ll admit some preset number with EFCs of $x,000, or reserve this amount to get those few super-special students on merit, etc.
Then if families are required to enter financial, GPA, test score, EC, and other info at end of junior year, colleges will know their pool of applicants.
The program could spit back out costs, aid and acceptance rates by early winter of senior year. Require students to commit by early spring. Add a late spring redeaux for kids with changed situations and colleges who didn’t quite fill their enrollment goals.
I think colleges could actually save on admissions in the end if done right. Family and student stress would be concentrated in junior year but removing a lot of the unknowns would help that. Having a short list to visit in winter of senior year would be nice, and if senior year grades don’t impact admissions too much, that would help with the visit season – high schools could allow a break for seniors just for visits.
What? You want the consumer/client/customer to actually know the cost of the product or service before they commit to buying it!!?? That’s an outrage! What kind of world do we live in when the servic provider actually has to be that transparent? Of course this is wrong.
There may be sarcasm in the above post.
@ucbalumnus While we agree on almost everything, on this I would respectfully disagree. The OP is looking for an answer on financial aid that will be final and 100% guaranteed. That would be impossible to do with any one algorithm (in fact the NPC is kind of that algorithm). There are too many people with unusual/extenuating circumstances and it is unrealistic for a computer to flag each and every one of them. In addition, as you noted merit scholarships cannot be determined until applications are reviewed and for many people that merit aid is a huge factor in the final decision. Therefore, I don’t think it is reasonable to ask for a 100% guaranteed financial package early and “on demand”.
@GoNoles85 An application is not a commitment to buy the service (attend the university). IMO an application is more of an inquiry.
@happy1 it would be an inquiry if you still had time to make other inquiries if the answer came back as no. Right now by the time you get an answer back from colleges, there is NO more time to apply to other colleges. You are stuck with your initial guesses.
And even if you apply EA (which most kids don’t), the answers from that round often cause a frenzy of more applications at the last minute-I saw it with D’s peers here over winter break. They were killing themselves with RD applications because the EA applications did not work out as expected.
So you get to dogpile the heartbreak of rejection or deferral on top of the anxiety of now having to wait for the RD round months from now, and hope fate is kinder to them the second time. It’s ludicrous that we all battle so hard to participate in a system that is so not stacked in our favor.
@MotherOfDragons I agree that there is an “expiration date” on when the inquiries can be made, but in no way is an application to one particular college a commitment. Believe me I understand the issue at hand, but from my discussion with a financial aid officer at a college, having a quick offer that is 100% guaranteed on demand for every applicant (to include any merit aid which is a deciding factor for many) is just not viable. The NPC is the closest that most colleges have come. The complexity and the many different factors which come into play make this process hard to manage for applicants and universities alike. That is why it is so important to cast a wide net. We may have to agree to disagree on this.
Maybe what IS realistic is improving the accuracy of NPCs. Having them account for divorced parents (that’s, what, half of applicants?) would be a great start.
And the move to prior-prior year financial info gives schools a lot more time to come up with those figures. Hopefully they are starting, this year, to get FA packages out earlier, as was the intent of the change.
Most families can’t even afford the COA of instate publics without help.
So no, for most, that would be essentially students that they shouldn’t go to a 4 year college.
oops too late to edit.
Typo fix: (forgot word)
From year to year, there must be variation in both the financial need and qualifications of the applicant pool. So, assuming a college has a budgeted amount of FA to dole out in any given year (and isn’t a super-rich school with deep reserves), how would it know in advance (before all applications and supporting info are in) how much it can afford to award each applicant?