Was thrilled to be accepted into a top 10 school via ED. Before applying, I was unsure about the cost and the net price calculator assured me I would receive a good amount of financial aid. This plus the school’s claim to meet 100% financial aid prompted me to go in ED. Now, after acceptance. I recently received the actual financial aid and was surprised (and a little disappointed) on the actual cost. The financial aid offered was between 1/3-1/4th of what was estimated in the calculator. I know CoVID could account for the much lower financial aid but I expected maybe a 5% fluctuation. I’m slightly disappointed given that the estimated cost and actual cost were quite off so I was wondering if it’s still possible to negotiate financial aid even in Early Decision?
Do you have any things in your financial aid documents that might make the NPC not so accurate?
Are your parents divorced? Do they own a business or are they self employed? Do you own any real estate other than your primary residence?
The answer to all of those questions are no. We tried to fill out the unofficial NP calculator info as close to the actual forms we submitted for financial aid.
Sorry I mean the NP calculator was technically the official calculator of the university, I mean that we tried to make it as close to the official financial aid form submission
How long ago did you receive the FA offer? When do you need to commit? Do your parents have significant equity in the primary residence? If so, did you input your estimate for the present value of the house accurately in NPC?
I would suggest you contact the financial aid department…have them go through your aid application and see if they will explain why there is such a difference between the NPC and your actual aid.
But I do have one question…is there any chance your parents did a retirement rollover in 2019? If they did and you used the data retrieval tool, unless you indicated so, the rollover was included as income.
Also, check your financial aid application forms and make sure there are no errors on them.
The FA offer was a little over a week ago; we also already submitted the housing and enrollment deposit. As for the equity residence, I’m not sure the answer to that question, but I do know the time between the NPC and actual FA form submission was roughly a month gap. We also used the NPC this week to double check if we submitted any wrong information and update but the estimated costs was still roughly the same as the first time we calculated.
Did your parents do a retirement rollover in 2019? Please ask them this question.
And did you check each entry on your financial aid application forms? There could be an error there.
If the school’s actual FA offer is between 1/3 and 1/4 what the school’s official NPC was and is still showing you, and you are confident that all the data you provided/entered is correct, I would bring this up with a school FA officer. That’s a huge discrepancy, and not something I would expect to see when dealing with a “top 10 school” that promises to meet 100% of need.
Edited to add: this all assumes that the NPC figure is fairly large (like $10,000 or more), and therefore a 66% to 75% reduction in actual aid offered is a big deal. If the NPC figure is $4,000 and the actual aid offer is $1,000, well, that’s not a big deal.
As a starting point…
A school’s Cost of Attendance (COA) MINUS your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) as determined on the FAFSA = Financial Need, or how much need based aid you can get.
I thought all of the top 10’s met full demonstrated ‘Financial Need’ using this formula as a base. Setting aside the CSS profile for a second, double check the stated EFC on your FAFSA. If the school’s calculation has you paying more than that EFC, there may be an error somewhere in the school’s calculation, or, the school has determined you have a higher EFC than the FAFSA suggests, possibly based on your CSS profile.
CSS profile schools considers the other assets that may be available to pay college costs and may reduce your financial aid such that you are paying substantially more than the EFC per your FAFSA. The previous poster is correct in that it is often home equity that ends up affecting aid. Take a look at this website’s calculator and run it for your school using your parents home equity…the extent to which a school expects parent to leverage their home asset to pay tuition truly varies. I am not sure if this calculator is 100% current (https://www.edmit.me/home-equity-financial-aid-calculator). Some schools cap home equity, some don’t. Good Luck.
If OP’s school uses home equity as part of its EFC calculation, that will be baked into the school’s NPC.
There is pretty much a 100% chance that OP’s “top 10” school does not use FAFSA to calculate the school’s EFC. FAFSA would have been used to determine eligibility for federal aid like a Pell grant and a direct subsidized loan, but that’s it. OP’s FAFSA EFC will mean very little here.
This OP didn’t mention their Fafsa EFC, did they? Their issue is that the NPC and actual aid are not the same.
What is the dollar amount difference? Is it $2000 or $20,000?
Your defintion of T10 may be somewhat different, but the colleges with ED programs that may have a claim to be T10 are Columbia, UPenn, UChicago, and Duke. Does any of these schools require enrollment and even housing deposits this early?
The amount is roughly a $20,000 difference annually
There must be some serious misunderstanding in order to explain such a large difference.
Yes, I am completely aware of that, but the EFC is a starting point and I was trying to make it easy for the poster to understand. I know people who never looked at the EFC on their FAFSA to see that it shows their EFC is $70K, and then are surprised that they don’t qualify for ‘need’ once they add in their CSS. As it rarely gets better once you add in CSS info (unless there are extraordinary circumstances)…it makes one double check for errors…what’s the difference between what they input into the school’s NPC vs FAFSA? The top 10 aren’t giving merit, so it’s not like adding in your 36 on the ACT or your GPA on the NPC is going to reduce that net cost.
Duke does not typically require a deposit at all for ED, just a confirmation of acceptance. No housing done yet either.
For CSS Profile schools the difference between NPC inputs (assuming it’s accurate) and FAFSA are likely dramatic. Some things that Profile will include that FAFSA doesn’t: non-custodial parent income/assets (plus their new spouse if there is one), current home equity (market value less debt) and investment property/farmland.
FAFSA is primarily used to qualify for Federal Financial Aid. Some FAFSA only schools may use it to disburse institutional aid, but AFAIK there are no FAFSA only schools that meet full need.
Yes again I completely understand. But I have found that all it takes is one misstated item on the NPC for it to be wildly wrong, which is why I suggested at least looking at the FAFSA’s EFC to see if they can ID the source of the disconnect. If FAFSA’s EFC shows $70K, there is only the slimmest chance it’s going to get better based on a NPC or CSS…Wishing the poster good luck.