Correct. I also do not have a mortgage. And since I am salaried employee as my wife is we really do not have much flexibility or options.
If you have no mortgage in a high cost of living area, then either you are renting or you have a lot of equity in your primary residence.
The FAFSA doesn’t ask anything about primary home equity…but the Profile does ask. The equity in your primary residence will be considered by some of the colleges your twins are applying to. The amount varies from some %age of your (high) income to nothing.
It’s very possible that the Profile calculation will yield an even higher family contribution per the schools, than the FAFSA did.
And yes, schools that use home equity in their calculation for need based aid DO think you can use that home equity to borrow against to help pay for college.
I know I did CSS profile. I provided FMV of my house as well as the value of our retirement accounts.
Since CSS profile does not have EFC I don’t know if would be higher or lower than FAFSA EFC. It is also specific to each school. CSS does ask way more questions and takes into account more data that FAFSA completely ignores. For instance, some schools asked to estimate my income for 2019 through 2021. it is hard to do but I estimate it 30% lower then for 2018.
Some CSS profile questions like home equaity and potentially retirement accounts work against us, some may be beneficial to us like high cost of living, projected lower income.
@Al73 I think most people in your situation don’t bother with the CSS. We didn’t. We also own our home. We knew filling out CSS wasn’t going to be in our favor. And we didn’t really want to give up more info than we had to about the details of our finances. Your income going down will not affect what you will pay. You have too much in savings and your income is already very high.
We pay over $11,000 in health insurance premiums for our family a year and make nowhere close to that amount of income.
It is a reality that health insurance and college is pricey in this country.
Lots of students work hard in high school, not many can afford all of the schools that they can get into.
But there are lots of good schools they can afford, instate and/or with merit.
Fellow responders,
consider that a great deal of the push back from the OP and the friends’ insistence that they got a discount could be cultural. I have non-US born/raised in-laws. To admit that one paid full price for a college would be interpreted as a failure by other members of the family. They’ll assume you are not a shrewd negotiator, your children are not as smart as you say they are, or both (probably, both!) And so, to maintain position in the family and image, you say you got a scholarship or negotiated a discount because this school that doesn’t give merit aid wanted your kid so bad…
Basically, take what your friends, family, and neighbors say with a huge grain of salt.
Ahh, lying and deception in an effort to maintain social status. How unfortunate, in so many different ways.
Would you think that a Mercedes is better than a BMW? Just because there is a ranking list out there that says so?
What if to you a Mercedes is better? Or a Honda? A good reliable vehicle can be worth more than a luxury car.
Just because on some list GT is ranked higher than Rutgers, doesn’t mean that the BME program at Rutgers isn’t at least as good.
As others have said, BME will require grad school. So that is an added cost. Or she might change her mind.
Rutgers is an excellent, well-respected institution.
Haven’t read the whole thread, but if your kid applied EA to GT and wants to be considered for the Presidents scholarship (which is NOT need based, its a Stamps scholarship) you have to complete the CSS Profile.
Last year, our health insurance premium for four of us was more than our mortgage payment on a large house. Thank God DH is on Medicare now and our two kids are almost out of the nest.
I’ve never seen a CSS PROFILE expected contribution less than a FAFSA EFC, though it is mathematically possible. The one time that I know ,it should have been lower, the school jacked it up to a FAFSA EFC because they had a policy that their institutional EFC could not be lower than FAFSA EFC.
That there are two students involved automatically makes each EFC higher under PROFILE, because they give each sibling 69% of the calculated EFC rather than half as the FAFSA calculations do. I do not see the institutional numbers coming out better unless, they qualify under some special initiatives colleges are putting together for families at certain high incomes. Though OP does exceed those thresholds, that they have twins might make a difference in the parameters set as they are for one student. In college.
Who is the “they” here?
I thought at first, this was posted by a naive student.
OP: You obviously can afford to send your kids to any college, so what is the ‘real’ question ?
Financial aid is for families who genuinely have need, and not for millionaires, who choose not to pay/
Top colleges do not need to negotiate with anyone, as there are tons of students willing to be full-pay.
Also, many families choose NOT to be full-pay, and their kids go to in-state or merit schools.
Why do you think Alabama is so popular on this forum ?
You need to come up with a plan quickly, if your twins are applying to college now.
Also, just because a college costs almost 300k, does NOT guarantee that their graduates will get high paying jobs. Many many ivy grads work in non-profits or low paying jobs, either by choice or options. Kids attending in-state colleges snag great internships too.
You need to decide NOW how much you want to spend for college and let your kids know ASAP.
It is heart breaking to hear from kids who get admitted to Top privates, and then their parents tell them they cannot g do not want to pay 75k.
@A173
It is perfectly reasonable to not want to pay the costs of an elite undergraduate education, regardless of income.
I agree with other posters, that you will probably be in for a rude awakening in the Spring if your children have acceptances to elite schools that only offer need-based aid.
My advice would be to figure out how much you are willing to spend and let your children know right now what that number is. Every spring there are stories here of hardworking, high-achieving children who are angry, hurt, disappointed, and feeling betrayed because their parents encouraged them to apply to to elite schools then refused to pay the full COA after they were accepted. Give them some advance warning. Also, do include some merit-based options so there is a choice other than Rutgers, fine as that school may be.
Profile schools typically split the total family contribution 60%/60%. Not 50/50 like the fafsa.
So if the total family contribution is $200,000, each kid would likely have a family contribution of $120,000…more than the fafsa shows.
@Al73 I just entered this thread and only got through page 2 so far. I understand where you’re coming from because I too live in one of those bubbles of affluent areas where people think that $360k in income and $1M in assets is not particularly high. But you have to separate yourself from that bubble and ground yourself.
Ponder this: Median 2018 household income in the United States was $61,937—meaning one-half of U.S. households earn less than that. Median net worth is $97,300. Median net worth for families headed by someone with a college degree is $292,100.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/09/us-median-household-income-up-in-2018-from-2017.html
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/whats-your-net-worth-and-how-do-you-compare-to-others-2018-09-24
I have to note, there is seldom almost unanimous agreement on issues posted on this forum. This thread is me where just about everyone is in agreement.
Did your daughter apply early action to GA Tech? If so, she will be automatically “considered” for their Stamps award. This doesn’t mean she will receive it…but she will be considered. BUT as @jym626 noted, her application must be an EA application for this automatic merit consideration for this one award…which does not have a need component (like apparently other GA Tech merit awards do).
We have no idea the strength of your daughter’s application, and whether she is even a competitive applicant for these selective schools you have mentioned. But you seem confident she will be attending one of the schools you named.
“”We decided to put off discussing the cost until we know where my twins will be accepted and what cost for us will be.
We also decided Rutgers as one safety school is fine, both twins are OK with going there. They do not have a clear dream school, they are OK with any school they are applying to (each is applying to 10 or 11 schools).
Once we know where they are accepted and what the cost for each school for us will be, we will discuss comparably what is worth what. GT is not the same as Rutgers for BME, it is #3 in rating while Rutgers is not even in the 5th dozen. But it is another question if paying quarter million dollar premium for GT over Rutgers is worth it…””
ok, glad to hear that both twins accept that Rutgers can be their financial safety if necessary. I hope they truly understand and believe that …or perhaps the one twin will think you’ll be so impressed if she gets into XXXX school that you’ll do cartwheels and pay. Just something to think about.
You’re looking at GRAD school rankings for BME, not undergrad. very different situation. Do you realize that???
That said, this country has many biomedE engineering programs…many are univs that have med school associations, but some do not . it’s like saying that Susie is ranked #5 as the prettiest New Jersey female, and Tanya is ranked #100, therefore Tanya must be average looking. lol. Tanya is probably still drop-dead gorgeous!
Im sure that Rutgers has a very fine biomedE program. if you want another low cost biomedE option, look at UAB’s biomedE. UAB has an excellent med school (my son went there. And even tho your dd has no interest in med school, the fact that UAB has a well-ranked med school would strongly suggest that it’s biomedE program is also strong. And there’s an int’l airport within 10 minutes of campus. She’d get a large merit scholarship there.
I’d look at U South Carolina as well for BiomedE. also lots of merit there as well.
“They” are the calculators at CSSProfile. And there is a typo because I believe the standard percentage is 60% not 69%. So whatever the usual institutional EFC would be for a single student is usually 60% for each student if you have two in college at same time.
FAFSA uses 50% when THEY do their calculations. “THEY” is referring to the FAFSA calculators in this last context of this post
have you ran the net price calculators on Rice’s, JHU’s, and GT’s websites?