Net Price Calculator absolutely useless?

The financial aid awards were released today for my daughter’s top choice school, but our contribution is $22K more than the school’s NPC forecast. For a bit of perspective, that’s 10x our FAFSA EFC and about half our annual household income. The school (U of San Fran) uses the College Board calculator, the one with a ton of detail, to power their net price estimate, so it doesn’t make sense to me that with so much information their projected cost would be so far off! It is immensely disappointing because there is no way we can come up with that much. We were told that the EFC is usually accurate within $5000, which was a margin of error we could handle, but there’s no way we could swing $22K. Daughter is a well-above-average student compared to the school’s freshman profile and qualified for their second-highest automatic merit award, but the need-based grant aid offer was less than a third of the estimate in the NPC.

Has anyone else had this kind of experience with institutional aid coming in so far below the estimate? If so, were you able to successfully appeal the award?

Were any of the following applicable to your situation:

  • Divorced parents? Often the student or one parent does not know the other parent's finances accurately enough when filling in the NPC, so that the actual FA using the other parent's correct finances is very different. Also, FAFSA EFC counts only the parent the student lives with, while some colleges (including USF (San Francisco)) do require both divorced parents' finances, so the college's EFC can be much higher than the FAFSA EFC if the other parent has significant income and/or assets. USF also does not claim to "meet need" even with its own EFC definition.
  • Small business or self-employment income where there were significant business deductions? (Some colleges disallow these kinds of deductions.)

No. We have a really, really straightforward situation - married parents, only real estate is our home, W2 jobs. We own our home outright but we live in a low-cost part of Michigan and our equity is only about $65K, so I doubt that’s enough of an asset to work against us to that degree.

Are you sure the numbers on your financial aid forms were accurate?

Are you saying you FAFSA EFC was $2500? If so…what was on your Profile that would have added so much to your family contribution? (You did submit the Profile, right?).

Print out your Profile and go line by line. Make sure there are no errors.

When you did the NPC, did it break down the type of awards she would be given to cover the costs? When I did one at the school my daughter ultimately attended, the bottom line was "OOP…$0! Hurray! Then I looked at the breakdown it showed student loans for her AND Parent Plus loans for me. Boo.

It wasn’t totally useless though. I put in her scores and stats and it showed a second level merit award and I knew it was missing some other scholarships that she would be getting (Bright Futures and an athletic award) so in my mind I adjusted all the figures. When the real award came, the merit award was a third level award, so I called the school and found out it was using some old (and lower) ACT scores so she did get more merit $$ when the corrections were made.

If you didn’t make any mistakes and you have a copy of that old NPC, call the school and ask what happened, why there is no President’s scholarship or Trustee’s Grant or whatever the NPC said you would be getting. It may be a mistake or they may have eliminated the grant she would have received under the old year (some NPCs are a few years out of date).

I may be wrong, but I believe you can appeal your fa award/ask for more. You won’t necessarily get any more but it’s worth a shot if you think they will give you more.

I’m going line-by-line over everything now, but I haven’t found any errors yet.

Our FAFSA EFC was $2104 when she first applied and has since dropped with a recent correction because our dependent 21yo decided to go back to school. I know USF isn’t a full need school, so we did expect to pay more than the EFC even though the NPC returned a lower number ($1400 parent contribution - an entirely manageable amount even if it was off by a couple grand, which is why I encouraged her to apply.).

But the two other schools she’s gotten acceptances and aid packages from, both of which also use the College Board-driven calculator, were within $100 of accurate. So we were completely floored when USF’s offer came back tens of thousands more expensive than their NPC estimate.

I would give the financial aid office a call. It’s worth asking about the large difference between the NPC and the actual net cost.

I do have a saved copy of the old NPC. It assumes D will borrow the full federal loan limit for dependent freshmen, but that’s the only loan on the aid projection. I don’t imagine we’d actually qualify for enough Plus loans to make up the difference - husband is in building maintenance and I’m a seriously underpaid reporter still chipping away at my own student loans. No one in their right mind would lend us/let us cosign for $80K+!

The difference in the offer is almost entirely in one line - $14900 in institutional need-based grants compared to the $39500 estimated on the NPC. That seems like a really major change to make without updating the calculator, but I’m starting to suspect that’s the most likely case.

Yes, well this is the Federal Government so they would let you sign for the $80k. And it is not co-signing, on the PLUS loan it is a loan to the PARENT, not to the child. Qualifying is based on your not having defaulted on previous government loans or having filed bankruptcy. You are right NOT to take Plus loans, but I think you’d qualify.

That’s it. You have to find out why this changed when the rest of your financial aid application didn’t.

Yeah, I’m going to call in the morning to see what I can find out. Well, in the early afternoon, considering the time difference. It is really frustrating not being able to do anything about it tonight - they published the awards right at 5pm their time, so by the time we looked everything over it was too late to call. There’s no way we’re taking on that kind of debt for her education, especially since she’s planning on going on to grad school, so unless we can get a significant change on appeal she’s just going to have to settle for a different, more sensibly priced college.

But I’ve never heard of a NPC being that far off, so I wanted to see if anyone here had similar experiences and, if so, how it worked out for them. I’ve been lurking around here forever but it took this level of stress/anxiety to get me to actually post!

USF does not guarantee to meet full need because it often times does not. That’s the problem with statistics. THeir overall accuracy in terms of composite dollars might look good, but if you miss out on a large chunk, even if you are a rare case, it affects you heavily.

You should run the NPCs and print them out and call the fin aid director, and directly go over the numbers with that person. Being so far off on one student, might motivate some changes in your package. I can understand why you are upset.

Well, calling the financial aid office was just as useless as the NPC. The entire answer I got was “We don’t know why it was so wrong, there’s nothing we can do about it, the awards are what they are.” Oh, and “No, there isn’t a supervisor or anyone who can answer any of your questions available. Have a nice day.”

This whole process is absurdly frustrating at this point.

Seems like USF’s FA office has trouble doing its job in more than one way (including making the NPC match its actual FA policies and responding to questions about FA). That definitely leaves a bad impression about USF compared to other schools.

It certainly does. I’m usually the picture of calm - my career involves dealing with a lot of semi-informed, uninformed and deliberately misleading people and I usually maintain a certain degree of zen about it, but it is harder when it comes to something my daughter wants so much!

The woman I spoke with did give me a name and email address of someone else to contact, but only after I asked her directly who might be able to answer the questions I asked. No phone number, of course… as though that information isn’t readily available on the university website.

This is not making me want to fight the uphill battle to make USF happen, but my daughter really wants it so I’m going to find my chill and give Mr. Assistant Director a call in a little while. Wish me luck!

The answer you received is unprofessional. Pick someone in the chain of command & email them: https://myusf.usfca.edu/sem/student-financial-services/staff . Explain your situation and share the response you received. I would lose it if my staff responded that way to a request for a reason for such a huge difference in expected vs. actual awards. Even if the end result is that you don’t get more money, at least you will know why. But there is always the possibility a mistake was made, and I am sure the school doesn’t want to lose a good student over a mistake.

Some NPCs are better than others. I like the ones that actually estimate merit and/or need based aid as part of their total. Not all calculators do this.

Problem is that estimates are just that. I’ve been surprised that they are as accurate as I have been reading they are here. I remember several years ago with my last college bound kid, that there were some disappointments when kids that were truly likely to get some nice merit awards did not. It did help those who did not get the awards that they were “likely” to have gotten them given their stats or that “most” students with their stats got those awards.

When applying for financial aid, one should cast a wide net with a variety of schools, and with more apps than usual, unless you can get a sure fire financial safety that your student would accept in the bag early in the process.

@cptofthehouse This was supposed to be that safety! She did apply to a lot of schools and is batting better than 500 on her acceptances so far, and we thought we were doing well to have a safety she was so excited about. We just didn’t count on the NPC being THAT far off, especially after the other two acceptances we’ve received so far came with aid packages within a hundred bucks or so of their estimates.

One of her acceptances is from a school that meets full need so we do have a solid backup plan, and because she plans to go on to grad school she’s just as adamant as we are about choosing the financially sane undergrad plan. But she’s interested in a sort of odd combination of majors, environmental biology and Japanese, and USF is rather uniquely positioned in the quality of their programs in both areas without being super-selective, so the disappointment with this one is particularly acute. In fact, I think she was more upset about the lousy aid offer from USF than about not getting into her “dream” school (Wellesley, which we knew right along was a stretch even for a very good student).

@Cam52792

Have you called the financial aid office yet to ask about this large difference. Usually someone there will explain.