My efc is 20,000 and it seems a little high.

Paying for College
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thumper, the asset protection for a single parent is only about $9-10k. Sadly, singles get screwed. Zmanlane, if your mother buys the house now, that money would be ‘gone’ for next year but if you already, her assets are assessed on the date you filed.

If you are looking for a good deal, I think you’ll find your best deal in Florida. You have the prepaid, and even though you have a 2+2, i’m pretty sure you can upgrade the community college years to a full 4 year. You’d also have bright futures. If you go to a private school, you’d get a FRAG grant of $3000. If you pick UCF, there are a number of scholarships.

I think you’ll spend as much time on your sport at a D2 school as at a D3, you just won’t get any money for it. My daughter loves the structure of playing on a team, the required study tables, the scheduled workouts. She also loved the scheduling help from the coach when a class she needed was full. (Amazing, but a spot opened up that didn’t conflict with practice!) She doesn’t have to work because the athletic scholarship takes care of the amount I think she should have to pay.

We did look at some D3 LACs and most expected us to pay about $20-25k (EFC similar to yours) Yes, that’s for everything, but you have to find a school willing to meet your need, with or without loans, above your EFC. The schools in Florida, even the private ones, were a better deal. There are LACs/small universities in Florida that have tennis teams if that’s what you are looking for - Flagler, Florida Southern, U of Tampa, St. Leo’s, Rollins, Stetson and Jacksonville, and you’d get to use Bright Futures and FRAG.

You and your mother need to decide if $20k per year is worth it at an LAC. I think it is too much to pay 1/4 of your salary on school, but she may be comfortable with that amount.

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@madison85 Some of the lacs i’m looking into meet the full needs for financial aid. And what I mean is when they calculate your efc do they include the other expenses like transportation, food, etc or is it just room & board and tuition. Hope I am making sense lol.

@twoinanddone thats what my mother is thinking. I’m looking into going into engineering and UCF seems to be decent at that. Would suck to have classes with 300+ kids in them though.

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You aren’t using the term EFC correctly so it is hard to understand what you are asking.

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@madison85 I though efc was what the college expects you to pay. And I wanted to know that when they calculate your efc is the final number including additional fees or just the tuition and room and board? am I still using it wrong? I must be really confused lol.

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EFC = expected family contribution as determined when you complete the federal government’s FAFSA.

It often bears no relation to the amount the college requires you to pay toward Cost of Attendance (COA).

This can be due to many factors including being gapped, or the school nor meeting full need, or the school determining need under a different (non-FAFSA) institutional methodology.

Try using the Net Price Calculator (NPC) for some of the colleges you have in mind and post the results in this thread.

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These are after gift/aid @madison85
Ohio Weslayan- 21,000
Grinnell-18,000
UCF-18,000 (without FL pre-paid)

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So there’s your numbers! Discuss with your mother. Your mom says she can afford 12k-13k year.

Are those numbers WITH or WITHOUT the 5.5k Federal loan and/or Work-Study?

Grinnell and UCF could potentially be affordable. (UCF most likely with the Florida thing) Ohio Wesleyan might be pushing it a bit.

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@ctesiphon Those are without work-study and the federal loan. Thanks everyone the help.

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I think you are not getting a good number from UCF. That is full price for everything, and you haven’t considered any merit aid, any Bright Futures. If you have scores and gpa high enough to get merit aid at LACs, you’ll probably get some kind on merit from UCF. You are comparing full price at UCF (or any of the other Florida publics) with the reduced prices at the OOS colleges.

Really look at if those schools are worth it for engineering. There are a lot of good choices in Florida. You could play club sports if you pick a D1 school and don’t want to do D1 level commitment sports. You could go to a smaller engineering school. If you want smaller but public, UNF is very good.

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Do you qualify for BF? If so, what level?

Would UCF give you any athletic scholarship money.

Ok…When a school says its COA is X, then X= tuition, room, board, books, fees, travel, and misc expenses.

Your EFC goes towards that. BUT…some schools gap and some use CSS Profile to figure contribution.

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ZMan…the cost of attendance includes tuition,moves, room, board, personal expenses, and travel (sometimes travel).

HOWEVER, if your EFC is $20,000, you will not receive need based aid to cover the EFC. Need based aid covers the cost of attendance MINUS the EFC. And most schools do not meet that need in full. You will be paying at least $20,000 to attend college. And your need based package could include the Direct Loans.

Division 3 schools cannot give athletic scholarships. Being recruited there could help you in admissions ( and if you really have a 1660 SAT, you need this help at any highly competitive LAC). It might give you preferential oackainging in your financial aid package…less loans and more grants for example.

But being a recruited athlete is not going to reduce your family contribution. And most of these school include a student contributio also which increases annually.

I hope you have some affordable options on your application list.

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Thanks guys for all the help. Really cleared a lot of things up. As for ucf yes that’s the price I out it in many times. It states I get 2k I’m merit aid. And it’s coa is 20000