Need Financial Aid Guru to Explain NPC Variance

I input our information into the College Board NPC calculator and it came up with the below numbers as our net price for each school. The numbers input remained the same, yet the price for each school varies, even when tuition prices are similar. These are the results for me and D’s stepdad. D’s biological father will input his own information to obtain his share. I’m guessing the variance is due to how each school calculated need. Is that correct?

Are there schools who don’t count a stepparent’s income? D’s stepdad isn’t complaining but I’m curious.

Are there schools who don’t count home equity?

Here are the NPC results I received:

$52,806 Bryn Mawr
$46,759 Penn
$41,882 Smith
$45,100 Yale
$47,500 Brown
$35,430 Princeton
$50,850 Amherst
$46,319 Haverford

Yes, each college has its own formula and policies regarding stepparents, home equity, etc…

However, if these numbers do not include both parents’ finances after divorce, they will be unrealistically optimistic at those colleges that use both parents’ finances after divorce (which is probably all of this list, except for Princeton if the custodial parent is remarried, according to its own NPC at https://swebapps.princeton.edu/FinAid/finaid_form.pl ).

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2083835-faq-divorced-parents-financial-aid-and-net-price-calculators.html

@ucbalumnus ~ Yes, these numbers are just for me and my husband. D’s dad will input his own numbers to get his share. I’m pretty sure his calculation will say he can afford $25-35k which would likely mean no financial aid. Given the high cost of college, it seems worth it to submit an application.

Is Princeton the only college who doesn’t count a steppaprent’s income? I understand requiring a stepparent to contribute but I’m really surprised they count a stepparent’s income and contribution in the same way they would a biological parent. If one remarried a person with teenagers, this could end up being a big deal and it doesn’t strike me as reasonable.

Yes, use the NPCs on the college sites. There’s some queston whether the CBversion is fully updated to the individual colleges’ formulas.

You can’t just input your numbers, have the bio dad later use his, and expect those two runs to add up realistically. But the NPCs usually aren’t built for a divorce situaton (or self employment.)

And the stepparent is included because he/she makes up a chunk of the ‘household’ income and assets.

Princeton counts the stepparent but not the noncustodial parent if the custodial parent is remarried. See the link to Princeton’s net price calculator in reply #1.

The results you got don’t look surprising to me at all.

BUT be alerted…since you are divorced and remarried, and there is also a non-custodial parent, the net price calculators will only be a decent estimate IF they actually ask about your marital status, AND get info from the non-custodial parent where required. Otherwise…don’t really expect them to be accurate in your situation.

Yes…schools consider home equity in different ways. Yes, some schools consider non-custodial parent and some don’t. Yes, some schools count ALL of the parents and step parents.

If the college has a net price calculator of their own on their website…use that…but again…accuracy will depend on the breadth of questions asked.

Yes.

http://www.thecollegesolution.com/will-your-home-equity-hurt-financial-aid-chances/

But, btw, don’t overestimate home equity. It’s not what you’d hope to get or what a neighbor sold for.

You and your ex can’t do it separately. That’s not how it works. It’s integrated.

Your husband’s income counts because his income contributes to the household expenses. Without his income, you would have more need. For example, if you and your husband each make $100k, your household has $200k available to pay the mortgage/rent, insurance, food, transportation, etc. I guess you can view them as fixed expenses that would exist whether or not you were married. If you were not married to him, you would only have $100k available to pay all of those expenses, ergo more need.

Many colleges’ financial aid web sites do point to the College Board net price calculator, customized for those particular colleges.

However, always start at the college’s financial aid web site in order to get the correct net price calculator for the college (in some cases, an old net price calculator may exist because it was not taken down when the new one was made).

The issue is that his income means that your income isn’t solely paying the household bills…

Single mom earning 80k per year has a lot less to contribute to college costs because she pays all household bills.
Remarried Mom earning 80k per year with Hubby earning 80k per year is splitting household bills and therefore should have more disposable income to put towards college.

Then they would have multiple children in college at the same time and EFC adjusts for that. That said, many delay remarriage so that new spouse income won’t count.

It’s not reasonable to expect colleges to contribute to the household expenses of a married couple just because one of them is a stepparent either. Why should colleges give more money to a student who has 3 or 4 working parents than they give to a student who has only 2?

If the stepparent didn’t want to contribute then the student could look for schools that would be affordable based on just the mom and dad’s incomes. It doesn’t sound like your teen is in that situation. I’d set a budget and apply to schools you know will be affordable (based on total COA and the assumption of being full pay or full pay minus guaranteed merit), then add a few financial reaches. You may not be able to afford all their favorites, but most parents can’t. If you have 3 people with good incomes who are willing to pay, I think you’ll end up with some great options.

@austinmshauri You’re right that the stepparent dilemma doesn’t really apply to us. But I still don’t think it’s reasonable for aid calculations to include the stepparent’s share to the same degree as the parents, particularly in my example of someone marrying another person with teenage children. The college would base aid on the biological parents income, and perhaps calculate a stepparents income at a lower rate of expected contribution.
I mention this because I know of a situation where a woman with a modest salary, three teenage daughters, and a deadbeat ex-husband, married an engineer with a salary somewhat above hers but less than six figures. In a situation like this, shouldering the responsibility of college expenses strikes me as an unfair burden on the stepparent. If colleges based the aid on the mother’s salary alone and a smaller portion on her husband’s, that would make more sense to me. In any case, this isn’t my situation but I wanted to clarify my thoughts.

@UrbanMum

You really need to check each college for their policies. The fact is your family income is more because you are now remarried. You are implying that you should get more need based aid than other families with the same household income. That doesn’t make sense either.

Some colleges (that use the non-custodial parent Profile) do in fact use only the bio parents in the calculations. Some do this only if the bio parents have not remarried. Some count everyone. You need to check.

As noted above, the household incomes for both you and your spouse, and your former spouse and new spouse, are higher than they would be if you all had not married.

Colleges use “family income” and once you have married, the new spouse is a member of your family.

When you get remarried, you become part of a new household. Yes, there will be variable situations, some where it seems like the step parent is being punished, but there has to be a standard formula, or financial aid officers would have to pick through every detail of every family’s situation. The college sees no difference between the mother of teens who married an engineer with a significant salaries last year, and the one who married him when her children were all under 5 - they are still a household. Presumably, the engineer knew she had children when they got married - they are part of the “package.” Indeed, some choose to delay the wedding until after the kids are through college, for that very reason.

New houshold, yes. New family, yes. You don’t get to pick which kids you favor or not. You’ve formed a new unit. That doesn’t mean the bio parent is out of the loop. The deadbeat bio parent (and there are many stories on CC) is still evaluated for a share. (With few exceptions.)

This isn’t a tick list- Bio A $$, Bio B $$, Step A $$, Step B $$. You fill out the dang CSS Profile wth the details and it’s calculated by the college.

Rather than talk about a woman with a wealthier new spouse and deadbeat ex, think of the woman now not working, with the high income new husband. Should she be considered same as an unemployed single parent?

Since the majority of colleges are FAFSA only, the bio non-custodial parent IS out of the loop for the majority of college students, whether the custodial parent has remarried or not.

But the colleges aren’t the only ones being unfair to the single parent. The IRS is in on it too. The AOTC cuts off at $80-90k of adjusted gross income for single tax filers while married couples go to $160-180k, even if all that income is earned by one parent. A single parent can have 5 kids in college at the same time and get $0 in AOTC if the income is $90k, while a married couple can have 1 in college and get the full AOTC at $160k.

But it is what it is. If the stepparent’s income makes a CSS school unaffordable, that’s how it is. Many students can’t go to one school or another because they are unaffordable and thus have to search for merit, a cheaper school, a tuition reciprocity program or a money tree.