Is EFC per child or per family?

Regarding FAFSA and merit aid this is well know fact that FAFSA is required for many colleges to award any merit aid.

for instance from GT scholarships page https://finaid.gatech.edu/scholarships

“To be considered for scholarships awarded by the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid, you must complete a financial aid application (FAFSA) and the Georgia Tech Application for Scholarships and Financial Aid each year.”

I also read that if you do not file FAFSA for the freshman year, at some colleges you are locked out from any aid even if you financial situation changes and you will otherwise become qualified for aid in other years while in college.

I do not see any reason not to file FAFSA or CSS profile.

We had a similar situation though not as extreme as yours. My kid is at a top 15 public flagship for less than 25K a year. Our EFC is over the price of any college. There are other options if spending 150K+ a year x 4 years + planning for your other kid makes this difficult. And I agree no one is getting merit at schools that advertise need only. They may have had special circumstances but if you have that much accessible savings, I don’t think that talk would end well for you and would be waste of time and money.

No financial planner on the planet would recommend putting ALL your retirement/savings into 401K. It’s absolutely fair and fine to set a budget that works for you financially and stick to it. I’m sure your students will have many great options open to them.

Oh I totally agree. It is mysterious the way these schools market how accessible they are. The average student at Davidson AND Colby IS full pay. The average family sending a student to those schools has a family income north of 200K. I don’t know where they pull those numbers from but it doesn’t refer to most of the student body. And yes the OP is comfortable and has plenty of privilege in the world. But it doesn’t do your kids any favors to have yourself financially struggling with a sudden health care crises. A family retiring with > 100K income in a HCOL area is going to need a substantial chunk of money to retire safely. It’s good to both help your kids with college and responsibly plan for your future needs. Sometimes it requires some balance.

Deducting insurance and taxes from our income would make a huge difference in the numbers.

From our friends’ experience I found that in many cases the price you pay is negotiable. It is just matter of asking and how and who to ask. Our friends’ kid EDed to an Ivy League school and got accepted with sticker price. Parents went to the FA office and asked for a discount. They immediately gave them discount for the amount parents pay in premiums for their health insurance. It is not a lot of money (relative to this sticker price), but still a discount

Our other friends’ kid got accepted to a LAC. They are multimillionaires. They also asked for a discount and got one. I personally saw the letter from the college offering offering “discount” of more than $10k without any further details.

I feel that it is like paying for a medical care without insurance. At first you get sky high bill and if you ask the amount you have to pay is immediately dropped.

From GA Tech site you noted:

These are the criteria for awarding scholarships…and one of them is NEED. Financial need is one of the PRIMARY criteria at GA Tech for selecting scholarship recipients. You don’t have need.

This is only true for a handful of colleges if you are a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. It is very true if you are an international student. The small handful of colleges are very clear in terms of their restrictions in subsequent years. You don’t have to guess about that.

And adding…you can never be locked out of federally funded need based aid. So if your income dropped to $0, and you became Pell Grant eligible, you would get that award. No college can prohibit that.

There is no problem with you completing the FAFSA and Profile if you want to do so. As long as you understand you are not going to get need based financial aid, or any merit awards that consider financial need.

No way your friends called an Ivy and got a discount. Nope. And multimillionaires getting more money? It must have been a LAC that offers merit.

Your friend whose kid ED’d to an Ivy League school and was accepted without FA…and then asked for a discount …

Sorry, that’s definitely not happening. It is possible that your friend asked for a reconsideration due to a special circumstance, and the school agreed. If that happened, it wasn’t immediate. These things take a few weeks. Nobody gets immediate discounts just because they ask.

And multimillionaires are not getting “discounts” to LACs unless it’s merit based.

“They immediately gave them discount for the amount parents pay in premiums for their health insurance”

Universities often allow a waiver of university insurance if the student remains on the parent’s insurance.

It is often an opt out request. All 3 of my kids had an insurance charge on their university bills. They submit a wavier with proof of insurance and and the amount is removed from bill.

No. Some colleges (not many, relatively speaking) require a FAFSA for merit aid eligibility. It sounds like you might not have a good handle on the difference between merit aid and need-based aid.

Discount they got was not for students health insurance premium but for parents premiums. Parents have very expensive health plan at work, paying close to $10K in premiums a year and the Ivy league college dropped their sticker price by exactly this amount. Moreover it was the FA officer who asked about health insurance premium and offered dropping the sticker price by that amount. I am pretty sure it is one of the standard discounts they offer.

After the kid got acceptance letter the parents went to the college FA office and as they told us said more or less the following:

“We are not poor, we have a $1mil assets and our house is almost paid off. But it is very hard for us to pay $70K a year for one kid as we have two others to care about. We also pay $15K a year just in property taxes and face retirement.”

They did not say it was “need based” or “merit based”. Who really cares, they got at least some discount. I don’t know if they got this discount or be in the position to negotiate for it had they not filed FAFSA or CSS profile.

well, I might add, some folks are savers to get this much saved outside retirement accounts. That annual salary would be within the norm for two well paid professionals in NJ ( not really so crazy once you pay those NJ real estate taxes). For parents who have had kids in private schools the sticker shock isn’t there. But for those who have never paid for school previously it hurts to look at that number.
We do know a family with tens of millions whose child did get a merit award they never applied for ( they must have wanted that kid) but most people just pay the tuition and move on.

So…let your kid apply to colleges that are expensive, and don’t give merit aid…and then go in and ask for a discount. Maybe you will hit it lucky.

Either that, or you will find out that these stories are…poppycock.

to $10K in premiums a year <<<<<<<<

This is NOT expensive health insurance by any measure, are you US born? Do you normally run the family finances?


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They did not say it was "need based" or "merit based". Who really cares,<<<

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Well LOL, it matters. Again, are you the student?

No, this is employer provided health insurance and paying $800+ a month premium for employer health insurance is a lot.

I am a parent. No, I am not US born. And yes, I run all family finances.

If either of my twins is accepted I will share my experience in few months. Almost all colleges my kids are applying either selective OOS schools or Ivy league level schools with no formal merit aid.

You can’t go to an Ivy and tell them you’re wealthy but you “have other kids to consider” and “ you have high property taxes” and get a “discount”. Most wealthy people have more than one kid and have high property taxes. The college already knows how many kids you have and they don’t care about your expenses.

You have the assets to pay for your twins to go to college. You just have to decide if you are going to use some of those assets…or not.

And FYI…simple arithmetic…if a family policy really costs $30,000, and the family pays 30% of the cost (which is very common), then the cost to the family would be $9000 a year…roughly $800 a month. LOTS of families are paying that much. Colleges would go broke if they give everyone a rebate that matched their health insurance premium outlay.

I am not wealthy. You do realize that a police officer or a teacher retiring at 55 with $80k pension and health insurance for life is worth 3-4 million dollars. Does it means a child of such police officer or a teacher is not eligible for any aid?

I think you’re a little out of touch with the reality of the finances of the majority of the people in this country.

Schools don’t care whether you are a plastic surgeon, a police officer, or a plumber. You don’t get more depending on your career choice…that’s absurd. They will use their formula to calculate aid, and either you qualify or you don’t.

You earn over $350,000 a year and have close to 2 million dollars in non-retirement assets. That makes you wealthy…despite living in NJ.

My retired teacher friends wish they were worth 3-4 million.

The math is the math. FAFSA and CSS are designed to help the government and the colleges determine what you are able to pay. Many, many families do not like that number. My friend is a single mom with an ex husband who won’t help pay for college. She makes $30k per year and has savings in the lowish five digits. Her EFC was $40k. How do you think she’s supposed to pay that? It’s called loans. You’ve heard there’s a loan crisis, right?

The good news is that you’ve been successful and can afford to send your children to whatever school they want. If you don’t WANT to pay, that’s another story. You are going to have to expect to pay full price unless the colleges give merit based scholarships - scholarships NOT based on need.

Pretty easy to see if your kids’ schools offer merit. Just go to the financial aid websites of each school.