Net Price Calculator absolutely useless?

^some schools have “bad” NPC’s and hope they won’t get flak for it whereas families depend on these to be relatively accurate (when the situation is simple). Informing the public is the only thing that can make them do something about it.

Perhaps there should be a thread where people who have gotten FA offers list:

  • Name of college
  • Percentage difference in net price actual FA offer and NPC are.
  • Whether finances are simple (married parents or single parent at colleges that do not require both, W-2 income, ordinary levels of ordinary assets) or if there are complications (divorced parents at colleges that require both, small business or self employment, assets are large or include things like business, farm, rental housing, etc., income other than W-2 and small amounts of investment income, etc).
  • Whether actual FA and/or NPC include merit scholarships, and whether they match if they do.

Survey thread made:

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2133274-survey-how-close-was-your-actual-fa-net-price-to-the-colleges-npc-estimate.html

Glad that a thread has been started, @ucbalumnus
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Thanks @thumper1

I’ve always wondered how on earth NPC could be accurate for grants, when there could be a wide variance in the number of students accepted at given gpa/testscore threshholds. Many schools get low on the funds as the season continues and have to come up with some sort of merit within need and admissions management to make the funds stretch further.

The year to year change in academic and financial characteristics of an admission class at most colleges probably is not that great. So the college can plan for a given level of need-based aid and a budget for merit scholarships to create a formula that it puts in the NPC and uses to generate actual FA offers. It can choose a conservative formula to leave a budget buffer for overruns (greater need or wanting to offer more merit based on the actual characteristics of the admission class).

We did not qualify for financial aid with our youngest who applied to a number of schools early in the season. THe NPCs for merit for him were about 50% accurate but two of the schools had guaranteed merit awards for certain gpa and test score threshholds. But most of the other schools that had merit money, had competitive processes for the awards offered. No telling who would get them as so many factors went into the mix. How can one say whether a given kid is going the get the limited number of Presidential or whatever scholarships that are there?

It really is not a good idea for NPCs to include merit that is not automatic or almost automatic for the student’s stats.

I took the list of schools that got my son’s applications several years ago and ran their NPCs using figures that clearly take financial aid out of the picture and show what the guraranteed merit would be at those schools. Those schools with competitive merit money, such as Villanove did not include any merit at all. Fordham did,but the award shown was not as high as he got. Same with Tulane. So those schools appear to work in that fashion.

When NPCs first became a thing, I was very suspicious. If there is no guaranteed merit, they could be a turnoff if someone who might end up with a better package due to merit decides not to apply based on the package they see when doing the NPC. If there is no guaranteed merit but a school were to give a package that someone with a particular set of stats “could” get, it will be an issue for a student who does not get that sort of package. I think they are helpful, but NPCs are only so good. For me, including an estimate of merit that is not guaranteed is misleading.

To the credit of the schools that were on our list, the discrepancies were underestmates of merit money.

@kelsmom, I agree. We let S19 apply to 2 schools where the NPC was off just in case, because their figures were pretty far off the others.

We’ve gotten the offer from one state school that was as high as estimated. We are still waiting on a few decisions but 2 offers have come exactly as expected.