Makes sense and the out of state % is about what I thought. The low state funding # is what I never knew/would have guessed.
Just looked up University of Washington and found some interesting factoids about University of Washington’s budget:
Tuition only 8% of budget, direct state funding 5%, government grants from both federal and state are 18% for “research enterprise”, 4% designated donor funds, a huge 48% from the University of Washington health system and auxiliary activities (like parking etc) are 12%.
Generally, if your student receives merit beyond your EFC, student and parent plus loans will be offered to pay the balance. If they qualify for federal work study that may still be included.
There are cases were kids are getting funds back for their living expenses based on merit and need based grants/scholarships combined. Examples - Alabama and USC (South Carolina).
True, but it’s fair to include student self-help in FA packages (IMO of course).
Student self help can include work-study, earnings from summer jobs, and the direct student loans (so $27K max over 4 years).
I agree it’s not reasonable to include any loans beyond the direct student loans and consider that as meeting full need. The vast majority of schools don’t meet full need anyway, so we are talking about the relatively few that do, or the ones that get close on average.
Of course, when colleges define “need” differently, “meet full need” can be just marketing.
Consider colleges A, B, and C with $80,000 list prices, where A and B “meet full need” (based on their definition of “need”), but C does not. A student applies for FA at all three and gets:
College
Need
FA grants
Net price
A
$60,000
$60,000
$20,000
B
$20,000
$20,000
$60,000
C
$50,000
$40,000
$40,000
In this example, “meet full need” college B ends up being more expensive than college C that does not “meet full need”.
We certainly experienced a wide variety of aid packages at schools that meet full need. One that D really liked packaged in a private loan (I think maybe an institutional loan through a partnership lender?) in addition to the federal loan. As a result, she turned that school down. She ended up at one that didn’t package in any loans, which made a big difference.
Agree with a lot of your points. I basically made it a part time job to research all of this, and it was not straightforward at all. Both of my kids were admitted to a number of Meets Full Need colleges (most were need blind, but some may have been need aware) and the financial aid awards varied significantly. We had a more complicated situation that made NPCs inaccurate, so there was a lot of guessing involved. I can’t imagine how much more confusing it would have been if we had more need aware schools on the lists.
I think I get what you’re saying, but I still think it’s confusing to call it meeting your full need. The loan is me paying, if not today, then someday. I understand a family has responsibility, I just would call it something else, because it can be confusing about what is offered, especially for a kid who is new to this.
I couldn’t agree more that many FA packages are confusing, which makes it hard to compare across colleges (one way to do so is to create a spreadsheet and drop in all the costs, making offers apples to apples). I hope that standardization happens and schools comply…@kelsmom do you know if a bill passed to require that, or where it might be in the process?
In the big picture though, college costs are more expensive than many families can afford, as we have talked about here and on many other threads.
The standardized letter format is available, and it’s constantly changing. It’s only required if the school signed the Principles of Excellence agreement. I used it in addition to my institutional award letter. Here is information on the current letter: Financial Aid Shopping Sheet. There is a link to FAQ at the bottom. To be honest, I thought it confused my students, but the current format is better than what I had to use several years ago (I was required to list Pell in the options, even though I had grad students - but that has since changed). I think that the Department of Education will probably mandate an award letter format at some point in the future, but I couldn’t guess when that will happen.
Too bad it keeps changing and isn’t required. And, that template isn’t the most straightforward to be sure.
For many of my students, I build a spreadsheet with costs and then FA components so they can enter line by line info as it comes in and easily compare across colleges…so looks like I will keep doing that! Some of the FA info they receive is really difficult to understand and pull out the relevant pieces.
It sounds like your method is a good one. I used to do a cost comparison when talking with students I hoped would choose our school over others. I had a spreadsheet listing tuition/fees, dorm costs, and any “free” money awarded (scholarships and grants). I’d just plug in other schools’ awards students shared with me & look up costs online. By ignoring all of the costs that aren’t actually billed by the school & any loan/work study awarded, it was relatively easy for the student to directly compare costs. I found that many students were looking at the wrong things. For example, they would tell me that they got a half tuition award from another school … and I could often show them that our school was less expensive, even with a smaller award (and sometimes even with no grant or scholarship).
all kids who are academically qualified cannot even gain access to their state’s flagships in many cases, much less get low tuition. There is also a capacity issue. And constrained resources are rarely affordable.
Some schools do not include retirement premiums (pre-tax) and I think none/few include primary home equity and already saved retirement funds. One thing that might help you is age. No idea your age but if you’re on your last kid going to college…
The oldest parents age can greatly discount the amount of income they expect to go to EFC. My DH is 60 with our twins about to start college and one already in college. It lowered our EFC a lot (not enough to get financial aid) so maybe this will help you?
We are a donut hole family. EFC much greater than what we could actually realistically afford between savings and current income. Merit aid at privates and an out of state public gave our kids choices beyond our state university where we could afford tuition or room and board but not both.
We know others who are struggling financially to get through the state U while living at home and commuting or doing online options.
It’s the state universities that need to be funded for their state students.
Hi and thank you very much for your message.
We have a mix of public and private schools on our two daughters lists. When we received our first financial aid package it was from a private. And we couldn’t believe how expensive it was! The net price calculator had shown a very high figure but the actual cost of attendance was even higher, by $6000.
Luckily a financial aid officer met with us by Zoom to explain how they figured out their award package. In doing so we realized we had filled out one category wrong, namely our retirement contributions.
It is a brutal process but I can’t complain since we had such a good luck with our first three. However most schools are unaffordable.
We have two schools for each girl that are affordable, even if barely. One of them is a state school. We’re pushing for an honors program there.
Agreed. It’s an issue - and one with no easy answers. Our state flagship (UMass Amherst - where my son is a freshman) is about $32k per year, all in. To us it seemed like a good deal (when compared to his other options which were $70k+) but for many kids $30k might as well be $80k.
I have a question. Probably controversial, but relevant to this discussion.
While most of us can agree that paying for college as you go in nearly impossible. Who can extract $35k-$80k per year from their post-tax income? What happened to the concept of saving up for college? It doesn’t seem to be part of the conversation anymore. Compound interest is a wonderful thing! I know some families can’t save a dime but I also know many families who didn’t save a dime while taking annual trips to Disney and Hawaii. I am curious how people feel saving in advance should be part of the calculation when considering need? Does anyone feel penalized for saving up?