@happymomof1 : We can afford the offers, but some will be tighter than others and with two others right behind our senior, I am more concerned about two issues. 1. The lack of solid information to develop and execute the plan that fits our family’s financial circumstances. We don’t have a complex financial situation, be we do need to plan and I’m not willing to “mortgage” my future and retirement to accomplish the goal of an undergrad education for three kids.
2. Figuring out the value for the dollar like a consumer does with any other service or durable good, before spending the time and application fee on that school, not after, seems like a reasonable request of this industry. We can all shop for appliances online or in the store, find out the cost, installation cost and time of delivery up front before purchasing and compare other offers. I think this post high school education industry keeps things less transparent to make their numbers work for them, not us. Don’t think I could run my business this way and keep customers!
so just for giggles and to see to check the accuracy of the NPC for Northeastern, I ran our numbers through, again, to see what the NPC got for us vs. my son’s actual offer. The NPC says his offer should be $25,907 after loan of $5,500 and work of $2000 or $33,407 net price before.
The actual offer he got was for just over $40k before loan/work and just over $35/year after.
That’s a 17% difference. Multiply that delta times minimum of 12 years of college to pay for and it makes it tough to plan with any accuracy.
The accuracy of this calculator and I expect other for other schools, seem designed to make themselves look good so you will apply, then, surprise!, the reality is quite different.
I’ll check other schools NPCs as the offers come in. I would love others to do the same and post results.
My D and I found no real rhyme or reason with either merit or need-based aid. She applied to 19 schools and offers were all over the place. We have extenuating circumstances, a bio Dad with (my estimate) EFC somewhere around the $32K mark or more but non-contributing other than mandated child support and my (now ex) husband who owns his own business. My household EFC is around $6K. NPC couldn’t be counted on to be accurate.
Daughter applied to 19 schools, one ED to a FAFSA school (denied), admitted to 14 I believe. Of those schools, I’d say a dozen had COA at $65K ±. The end COA range for us at those schools ended up being anywhere from $12K - $40K. Most offered a combination of grants/scholarships/merit. No one tied her GPA to money. I would say those schools ranked in the LAC list (2014) 30-40% gave her the most money, generally bringing COA to a median $25K, the ones at 20-30% came in around $30K. A couple came in under, a couple over. All provided work study and loans as part of their package.
I do have home equity of $300K and a small 401K (under $100K). Daughter’s stats were 2100/31/4.0UW/IB diploma/GS Gold Award, no other significant ECs.
How to figure end COA before considering a school? Sometimes it can’t be done. Thus, the chase for merit. I’ll be honest…it cost nearly $5K to visit, test, apply to all these schools. That was returned in the first semester, something I was gambling on.
My three kids’ statistics are no longer relevant. My youngest is a college junior, my second is in medical school, my oldest is married and teaching.
Here is what IS relevant:
We are in our late fifties. Our mortgage will be paid off in a couple of months, and because of good planning, my youngest’s last two years of college were paid through a 529 and part of my husband’s GI bill. The one in medical school is independent and got a full tuition scholarship to his medical school. He is taking out loans only for living expenses. All three kids are blessed to have no undergraduate school loans, and we took out no loans under our name.
WHY is that relevant?
This fall, we were gobsmacked - my husband was diagnosed with a nasty, nasty form of cancer.
The future is not a given for anyone.
No expensive college on earth is worth it if you are counting on future earnings to make it work.
@eastcoascrazy So sorry to read about your Dh.
The FAFSA EFC is primarily driven by income.
With an EFC of $33k you would be full pay at public schools, some might give merit for high stats.
I knew when my D applied in 2014 that the school she wanted to go to for her major cost about $30k for tuition, fees, room and board.
Our EFC was $10k and we needed merit to be able to bridge the gap.
She was able to get enough merit to make the school affordable.
I had researched several schools that would give merit for her stats.
She could have gotten automatic full tuition at Temple (no longer automatic, competitive merit now), Ohio State offered $18k, Duquesne $23k merit.
The merit landscape is ever changing and it is getting harder to get the bigger awards.
Schools such as U Penn only give need based aid, but won’t base that need on FAFSA only.
There are LACs and catholic colleges that give merit and need based aid which might come in at an affordable price.
Their net price calculators usually give a good estimate.
Could you live on the $122k income and use the $47k pension to pay for college?
So you want to know, before you waste time applying or sending any financial data, what a school will cost? I honestly don’t see how that would work. Figuring out the formula for each school, even if published, would be worse than figuring taxes over and over and over again for each school. And mistakes? Read the financial aid board (What? I have to include the 529 values of accounts with my other kids as beneficiaries?). You’d have to know which business deductions get added back in, etc. if you want a simpler system, well, i’ll just point to all the politicians who want us to be able to file taxes on a postcard. Doesn’t take much before they realize those systems are not good policy. They disproportionately punish the poor and can’t encourage what society values (for example, giving to charitable organizations that do service work more cheaply and efficiently than the government would). Colleges operate the same way. Formulas may differ for people of different income levels in order to provide service to the lower income because that is something the institution values. Yep, it can be frustrating when you just want to treat College like any other purchase.
@eastcoascrazy thank you for sharing such wise words. I am so sorry you have had to learn this in such a way but glad to hear your children are doing well with the choices you all made together about how to finance their educations. I wish your husband peace.
@chipperd the truth is that none of us can plan in detail for the next 10 years—not for health, finances, or what will happen to the colleges themselves. Just put away what you can, tell your kids to do their best in school, and learn as much as you can about the process so that when it is time you and your children can make good choices.
I think @ChoatieMom has it about right—-college is going to cost everything you are willing to pay, so decide what you are willing to pay.
We knew we were not willing for ourselves or our kids to take out loans, we would not give up our 401k match, our giving to charity, or our home equity. We were willing to do without new sofas, new kitchen countertops, and expensive European vacations, among many other things. This gave us a budget of about half our EFC and rendered net price calculators irrelevant, as well as ruling out every meets need school for our kids, and they were strong students with high test scores.
Our kids’ list started with our local, commutable state university. The cost was easy to detrermine and merit money was clearly spelled out, it was an admissions safety. For a weaker student academically it could have started with community college (DH started at community college and finished with a graduate degree and a high paying job so it can work). We added another state university, a state school in another state (WUE program) and some privates with competitive merit we we felt was achievable. Older D got a competitive full tuition scholarship at a tech school and has had a great experience. She graduates soon. The other wanted an LAC so she applied to a bunch with competitive merit, understanding that she could get none of that. It was a stressful way for her to apply-tons of essays, lots of waiting, and wondering if, after all the work, she’d end up at a state school anyway. The process dragged out into the beginning of April, and ended with one LAC offering her the hoped-for competitive scholarship and another rejecting her for a full ride in early April. She’s very happy where she’s at but has said that, in hindsight, she would have been fine at our state university as well. Both have been getting fantastic educations and plenty of opportunities to grow and learn. No regrets.
In a year we will be in the middle of this process with our son, and music auditions and the mystery merit money that goes with it will be in the mix. It’s a frustrating process. I really think the best thing you can do is to decide what you are willing to hand over financially and go from there.
@chipperd - If you find significant differences between the results of the NPC and the actual aid packages, then that is something you could address directly with the financial aid offices. It really, truly is OK to ask what you did wrong in your data entry so that the results were so far out of line. If your financial situation is one that the NPC formula should be accurate for, then clearly something has gone wrong.
However, my guess is that your specific situation is not covered by that formula, so all you can expect from it is a ball-park figure, which everyone knows can be way off.
There are scads of places out there with pretty transparent financial aid practices. Many public institutions are pretty straight about the fact that they offer up nothing more than the federal aid. It appears that your family is focused on private institutions, so your experience is simply not going to be all that information friendly.
Perhaps it would be a more useful list of anecdotes if situations where the NPC and the actual FA were significantly different were listed, and whether the family financial situation had anything other than W-2 income with relatively small amounts of typical investment income (and if divorced or separated for a college that requires both parents’ finances in this situation).
@chipperd - in my kids’s app years, this was the best purchase I made: https://www.amazon.com/Paying-College-Without-Going-Broke/dp/1524710695/
@chipperd, you want one solution to the NPC issue and there just isn’t one. The Department of Education requires the NPC but there is no standard to how good they have to be, what information needs to be considered, whether they have to give merit and need results.
I’ll tell you when they are all 100% accurate - when they are giving you nothing! All the NPCs said my kids would receive no need based aid and for that first year, that was correct.
There is no one formula. You have to do the research for every school. You can ask on the school specific forum if the NPC for that school worked. For my kids they did except for one kid I needed to add in outside awards (state) and her athletic grant. I needed to know that even if a school put need based school aid in the NPC, my D couldn’t accept it with her athletic award. The NPCs are only a general outline of what might be there.
WPI has been working for over ten years to increase the female to male ratio. This article is from the Alumni magazine, see https://www.wpi.edu/news/wpi-weighs-backlash-against-women-tech-movement. Evidently this makes a difference at STEM schools where the male applicants always outnumber the female applicants. They believe that mixed project teams improve the project team results.
@mommdc : The pension is included in the income
@ordinarylives : It seems you agree that the current system would be so labor some to figure out, that it’s not really worth the time. Someone mentioned Harvard charges 10% of income but below a certain threshold, it’s free. I can see come type of open, transparent progressive situation working out well with a floor and a ceiling.
@chipperd This article from The College Solution does a really good job of explaining the issues you might encounter with net price calculators. http://www.thecollegesolution.com/why-you-must-use-college-net-price-calculators/ It may be helpful as you analyze things for this year and future years with your other children.
I think the most difficult situation may be the students who get merit money but still need financial aid. Some parents think the merit will cover their efc but instead the merit gets stacked with the financial aid so it is the school that really benefits from the merit scholarship. Typically a student does not get the predicated financial aid from the NPC and then gets to stack their predicted merit scholarship on top of it.
As another poster stated, come up with your drop-dead number that you are willing to pay and then work backwards from there in terms of where to apply and what to expect. Our number was $25K per child and we didn’t qualify for much aid with an efc of $54K (due to the ton of home equity we had and the condo we had to buy for my parent to avoid her being homeless and therefore could not sell to fund college). The college list had a mix of schools that guaranteed merit for our children’s stats, those that offered merit but no guarantee and those which cost $25K. As my son said “my mom got a ph.d in merit scholarships the summer before my senior year with all the research she did.” Child #1 was class of 2010 and back then colleges were better about stating merit was guaranteed for certain stats as well as I think giving out merit in bigger numbers compared to now. Ohio State rose to the top of his list because the National Buckeye Scholarship was guaranteed to OOS who were in the top 40% of the class and with a SAT of 1800 (can’t remember the exact number but it wasn’t a tough one) and the amount was $15K which brought OSU down to our $25K number. He got another guaranteed scholarship for his PSAT because he was NHRP and then entered a scholarship competition (Morrill) which he shocked us by winning another $60K (which reminds me, have your DS look to see if there are any dept. or competitive scholarships given by the college that he can apply to now to help with the gap). Four years later when child #2 was applying a lot of the guaranteed scholarships were gone so we had a different approach. Both kids will graduate with no loans at colleges that they loved and we were able to fund our retirement during that time. I constantly asked questions about scholarships from admissions and financial aid. I took schools off the list when they started to approach our unaffordability level. You really just have to put the time in. NPC’s that don’t ask a lot of questions are not good predictors. Play with the NPC’s adding in different numbers to see what numbers pop up. I would delete my mom’s condo and saw where the numbers changed at each college.
Also as others have said, you never know what will happen in life. Unfortunately for each of our children we had a major tragedy happen to our family during the month they graduated which significantly affected our financial ability to pay for college. Child #1 ended up getting a full ride from Ohio State so he was good. While we were in the stadium seeing him get his diploma, our phones rang to tell us that the water supply line in our home had burst and our home had been significantly damaged to the tune of $550K. It was two weeks before child #2 graduated high school. Despite having a lot of insurance, we had to use a lot of money saved for child #2’s college to finish fixing our house. Our college plan always included a “what if” scenario so fortunately child #2’s major of engineering meant she could earn a lot through summer internships and she used her earnings to pay for school.
Be sure to include your son in all your research and discussion. It help our children understand the entire picture and made them realize what we could afford and what we could not. When child #2 was applying, she was asked a lot why she wasn’t applying to any ivies (since her h.s. is really ivy focused). She said that she didn’t apply to any college that would create a financial burden for her or her parents and that there were lot of other great options. At the time she was the only student applying to her college from her h.s. (Georgia Tech), but now there are ten students from her old h.s. applying to GT since they realize for the money it is a great school. A school’s popularity swings which I think also affects affordability. Northeastern has gotten very popular so in turn merit and financial aid numbers have gone down.
Chipperd – what do you think about the color coded chart I posted at #28?
At $170k annual income (which means a lower AGI), it tells you your EFC is going to be $35k annually. Gulp.
Seems pretty accurate. And that would tell you what schools you need to look at. So go elite for your high stat kid to get a lower EFC and more need aid. Or aggressively shop for merit at the usual suspect privates (Tulane, Miami, Case etc.) or publics (Bama). Or go in-state public.
I think you are better off to start with your budget per kid per year first. Then look at schools second. If you start with the desire-able schools first, you often wind up with a kid getting into lots of schools that are unaffordable.
Thoughts?
@northwesty : We don’t make 170k, the 122k agi includes the pension. I don’t see a color coded chart here. sorry