Are NPC numbers accurate? Often CC posters ask applicants to run NPC to check the financial aid they could get from colleges. From my experience, it’s not actually very accurate for certain colleges. Sometimes it’s way off. So what is your experience?
It depends on many factors, some attributable to the particular school and some attributable to the applicant and his/her family finances. Also, as always, garbage in = garbage out.
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We found them quite accurate. However, we are not divorced and do not own rental property, a farm, or a small business. I was careful to put in accurate data.
I know a few people who do own farms and their results were not nearly as good as ours.
Where one daughter attended the NPC was exactly right on, and did correctly predict merit based aid. Where the other attended would have been affordable without any merit aid, so that when we got unexpected aid it was a pleasant surprise.
Our oldest applied to a couple of schools where the NPC predicted it would not be affordable. The NPC was accurate.
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When the parents are not married, this can happen at colleges that want both parents’ finances (as opposed to just the custodial parent finances). Sometimes, the student or custodial parent fails to include the non-custodial parent finances, getting an unrealistically optimistic result. Other times, the student or custodial parent does not know the non-custodial parent’s finances (and the non-custodial parent will not tell them), so they make a guess that is probably inaccurate.
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My D attends a school that meets full need and the NPC was off by less than $100. Nothing complicating our finances (divorce, additional real estate, own a business, etc).
My brother and I both found the accuracy to vary quite a bit. Some schools were spot on, others were significantly different than their NPC calculators had predicted. There was no overlap between the schools the kids were applying to (total of 44 schools.) So, I think it’s very important to ensure your kid understands the budget and, if loans are involved, the impact of his/her decision on their financial future.
Further, even kids with low GPAs can get scholarships and merit aid that isn’t obvious from the NPC. My nephew (GPA 2.8, no ECs) was unexpectedly awarded significant grant money from several schools while others came in at $20k over their NPC calculation. So, in my opinion, as long as your kid understands that money will be a significant factor in the choice of college, it can sometimes be worth applying to schools that are above budget. Conversely, they should also understand that schools that look good from an NPC standpoint, may not actually be affordable.
We found every NPC to be accurate, +/- $1,000.
Edited to add our finances are very straightforward, no rentals, no divorce, etc.
Why are you asking this question? Is this about a transfer student?
Things that can make the NPCs less accurate….divorced parents, parents who are self employed or own a business, parents who own real estate in addition to their primary residence. They are not accurate for international students.
Also, the net price calculators are updated annually. Right now they are set up for students starting in fall 2021. So students starting in fall 2022 really need to do the NPC again in late summer or early fall as they will be updated…and yes, policies do change.
Also, the net price calculators are set up for incoming freshmen, not transfer students.
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I found the NPC to be accurate as long as I adjusted for our situation. One daughter was an athlete, so even if the NPC said she’d get need based FA, I knew she couldn’t accept that with an athletic scholarship. The NPCs also didn’t always include the state merit aid, but I knew it was there.
At the school my daughter did attend, the NPC included merit aid estimates (we had to input her gpa and scores). This proved beneficial when we got the merit award, as it was lower than the NPC. Found out the admissions office didn’t have the latest scores and it would have cost us money if we hadn’t seen the NPC estimate and made the correction.
Thanks to everyone who posted here. I am married and we own some rentals, but that information is included in both NPC and CSS profile. So the NPC numbers should theoretically match the aid we got from the schools. What we found out is an offer from one private school is very close to the NPC number, but 2 other top schools offered way more than the numbers. That’s why I am curious about the accuracy of the NPC.
In the latter case, you might think you had to pay more or it was out of your budget, but in reality you could afford those schools. Will this cause some kids to lose the opportunity?
Yes, it’s about a transfer.
Yes, I ran for fall 2021 and they are for the same school year.
Why do you think it’s only for freshman? It asked for the grade the student is in (including college class), so it is for college student as well.
I never saw the merit scholarship part so I guess it’s school-specific.
The NPC are very different at different schools. Some ask just a few questions and may not be very accurate. At the schools my kids attended, there was merit aid for certain gpa/score combos, so that merit info could be included in the NPC. Other merit aid that had to be awarded couldn’t be but we knew if it was going to be earned (Florida bright futures, a department award, a sports award).
There is common conventional wisdom around these forums that:
- Transfer students get worse merit scholarships. (appears to be commonly true, but not universally true)
- Transfer students get worse need-based financial aid. (less supported by evidence, though it could be true at some colleges)
- Net price calculators are not meant for transfer students. (may be true for some colleges, but it is not clear that it is the most common case)
The above forum conventional wisdom is commonly overstated as if it were universally true, even though the applicability is not universal.
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What college is this? What are the financial aid policies for transfer students? If aid forms transfer students is “limited” then buyer beware. The net price calculators should be viewed as estimates only. The financial aid package you receive is the only real deal.
I know it seems not right that NPCs don’t give a penny for penny accurate net cost for students. But really…they are estimates of your net costs, and can be used for guidance.
@ucbalumnus your points are well taken but also are not uniformly true. There are plenty of net price calculators where the self employed or business owners in particular get wonky results.
This parent has not given sufficient enough info to know whether his results have the potential to be NOT accurate…and I’m not suggesting he do so on this open forum.
In addition, reportedly, there are some net price calculators that are way off.
That’s a really good question. As we tweak S22’s list, some schools are getting moved from the “probably apply” to the “maybe apply” column (and vice-versa) based on the NPC numbers we’re getting.
Some appear quite unaffordable for us, but I hesitate to strike them from our list given the (albeit infrequent) pleasant surprises reported on CC. For context, we’re mainly looking at T40 schools.
When preparing your college lists, how strongly do you weigh the NPC results?
When preparing the list, we didn’t really rely on those numbers to make decisions. We picked only 5 schools (for transfer) and ran the NPC. The numbers were all similar and within our budget.
From my limited experience, one T-20 school is very close to, though a little better than, the NPC number, 2 T-10s offered pleasant better FAs (12-20K). So my theory is higher ranked schools may give more FAs. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why they ranked higher. 
When I first started looking at colleges, I didn’t know much about FA except loans, so there were some schools I said “Forget it, no way” and moved on. As I learned a little more about all the combinations of need based and merit and state programs, we added a few more schools into it.
The school one daughter ended up attending was off the list immediately when I saw the $52k COA. Then I started learning more about merit at the school, some grants, some state programs and I said ‘okay, maybe.’ By the time she actually started, it was cheaper than a state school.
Don’t rule out schools until you know they are unaffordable, but be prepared to walk when you find out they are.
So do a students other credentials (jobs, letters of rec, volunteering, activities, leadership, awards, etc) not play into merit scholarships at all?
Not all NPCs include merit in the calculations. Some do if it is automatic (based on score/gpa).