Net Price Calculator Depression - Any advice?

Paying for College
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<p>All, thank you for the comments you’ve replied with.</p>

<p>mom2collegekids, your post touches on how I’m trying to think about it. I’d like to get S1’s EFC down to about 25K (lower would be fantastic, but I’m north of 40K right now so I’m not optimistic). Then, when S2 enters college (while S1 is in 3rd year), I was hoping combined EFC for the 2 overlap years would be 40-45K. But your point a great one that costs keep rising every year - hard to fathom how schools can keep raising costs and not run out of demand.</p>

<p>My S2 is a good student but won’t have the same board scores or even course rigor as S1, so I feel like the time is now to really figure out how to maximize the opportunities so that we can reasonably afford S2, and 4 years further down the road, D1.</p>

<p>Can anyone comment on whether Fin Aid offices are willing to talk to you about this when you arrive for an info session and campus tour? Or do they only engage in detail of numbers once S or D has formally applied to their school? </p>

<p>Good luck to all in your children’s searches!</p>

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<p>About half the 25 top rated (USN&WR rating) national universities have merit money. So look on the web sites and see if their top awards will bring you down to $25K. Many will not, as they may just be half tuition awards which still are not going to bring you down there. When it is absolutely impossible to get to where it is affordable to send your kid to that school, then there is no sense applying there. If you feel that the school is worth borrowing for (your kid will be able to borrow $5550 and some each year) and therefore, going over the $25K mark, then go for it. </p>

<p>Fordham and Hofstra will give out sizeable awards, and the SUNYs’ sticker prices will be under you cut mark. SUNY Buffalo has some full ride merit awards and one can go far there as the departments are excellent with graduate level courses available for those who can take them even at ug level. </p>

<p>It depends upon the school as to what Fin AId offices are willing to do. CMU will do a preread. They guarantee to meet full need for ED applicants. But bear in mind that at the types of schools you are considering, and for many schools, Admissions and FIn AId are two separate departments and often do not coordinate except to give each other essential info. Admissions tends to give out the merit money to lure in the students they most want irrespective of need. Those awards are communicated to Fin AId and they simply subtract them off the need, is the way it works.</p>

<p>Take Lafayette College with their prestigious Marquis Award. $25K, is it? I;m not sure. But it still falls short of bringing your numbers down to $25K a year as the COA there is around $60K. If your EFC is $40K, your need would be $20K and that Marquis Award, their top scholarship, will bring you down to no fin aid other than those student direct loans. But with those loans, your son’s cost there would be about $30K a year. Is that worth it to your for Lafayette? Only you can answer that. </p>

<p>The NPCs might differ for the very top schools like HPY who may not use PROFILE (or use the numbers a different way). BUt then, the chances of acceptance to them are very small.</p>

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<p>Hi, I just wanted to drop in and add some sympathy for the position you are currently finding yourself in. Most middle-income families get a big shock when they first run the NPCs – we certainly did as well. Those family contributions assume that you are paying out of past (saving), present, and future (loans) earnings. For many, circumstances, make that impossible. The calculations don’t perfectly reflect everyone’s situation, obviously. </p>

<p>And the next shock for those of us in that 30K- 40K EFC range, is that scholarships often don’t help to reduce the out of pocket cost, because they are used to reduce your need first. Many schools will reduce the “self help” portion of your child’s financial aid package – the loans and work study – but then they would reduce the grants, rather than reducing the family contribution. Only if the scholarship exceeds the difference between the full cost of attendance and your EFC, would the scholarship actually reduce what you pay out of pocket. That is why posters above are saying you need to find a school that will give your son BIG merit scholarships – they need to essentially replace need-based aid for you, as they don’t stack.</p>

<p>There are a FEW tippy top schools that offer outstanding need-based aid to families with incomes in the low six figures. You might try the NPCs for schools like Harvard and Princeton if your son would have an interest and any chance of getting in there. But those are what are often referred to here as “lottery schools” – you can be a perfectly qualified candidate and still get rejected – in fact most perfectly qualified candidates do get rejected. </p>

<p>Beyond those schools, you need to be looking not at the best schools your son could get accepted to, but those schools that will offer him a lot of merit aid and still provide an excellent education, possibly an honors college where he will find his academic peers, and other possibly unique opportunities. That’s a big mindframe shift for a lot of us, but once you get your head around thinking about things that way, there is a lot of information available here to help you find specific schools to check out. </p>

<p>The good news is that with his high stats, and likely NMSF status, there are lots of schools where he would be guaranteed large merit scholarships, and others where he would have a good chance of being awarded large merit. You are smart to look at the finances in advance, and avoid both your son and yourselves getting your hearts set on a school that is unlikely to be affordable. The other thing you should do is sit down with your son and be frank about what you are willing and able to pay per year, and to the extent that he is apply to schools where a big enough scholarship is not guaranteed, try to keep an arms length emotional relationship until you know what they’re going to offer him. </p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>You have two issues:</p>

<p>Your costs for S1 will not go down when S2 goes to college, because if you’re paying $25k per year for S1, then THAT ALREADY IS THE price for TWO in college. Does that make sense? So you need S1’s costs to be low (about $20k or LESS) FROM THE GET GO.</p>

<p>My S2 is a good student but won’t have the same board scores or even course rigor as S1, so I feel like the time is now to really figure out how to maximize the opportunities so that we can reasonably afford S2, and 4 years further down the road, D1.</p>

<p>I’ve seen this happen before. Parents will send Child1 to a school that they can “just afford” on “good merit” or “good FA”, but then when Child2 comes along, that child can’t get the merit or FA that is needed to afford his expenses.</p>

<p>Some parents just let Child2 commute to a cheap school. However, for some families that’s distasteful because Child2 may be a good student, but just doesn’t have the top scores that Child1 has. And, you want them both to have a full college experience. </p>

<p>We were kind of in that position with our two kids. When S1 was a junior, we knew he’d be a NMF. We weren’t sure how S2 would test because he had always been a “good test taker,” but not a super one. We thought that we might end up having to pay full-freight or near-full-freight for S2. We have a very high EFC, but we have rentals, and we’re weren’t selling them to pay for college. Plus, we knew both would do some sort of grad school later and we wanted to help with that.</p>

<p>…and, we wanted both boys to have the “full college experience” since they were both serious students.</p>

<p>So, S1 did take the huge NMF scholarship. In the end, S2 did score very well and he, too, got very large merit scholarships. We lucked out, BUT it easily could have gone the other way. </p>

<p>So…if that’s where you’re coming from, then you may need to strategize to make sure that both kids’ college educations are funded. :)</p>

<p>However…if S1 gets into HYPS, then those 4 schools give SUPER aid. Your family contribution for S1 may be around $25k. Don’t know what you’d have to spend on S2, but those 4 schools do give super aid.</p>

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<p>Enjoy…what you are trying to do is get your son’s net COST down to $25,000 a year. If your FAFSA EFC is in the $40,000 range, colleges will expect you to pay that amount UNLESS you child receives merit aid in excess of that amount.</p>

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<p>This forum is very insightful - thanks to all contributors and glad I signed up for it.</p>

<p>mathmom, I smiled while reading your post. Harvard and Princeton were actually the first two schools I ran NPC for; they seem to use their own, simpler template vs. Collegeboard version. H & P each came in between $25-30K EFC; cause for a deep breath but reason for hope. The obvious challenge as everyone has stated is how competitive it is to gain admission at those schools, so exploring other options is a MUST. We have some savings but not a huge annual income, and job security what it is (isn’t) these days, it’s scary to thinnk of draining too much of savings. </p>

<p>Then, I went to the next wave of schools mentioned in my original post, and the EFC exploded for all of them to 40K+, forcing me to question if I’m using the calculator right and thus leading to my original post.</p>

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<p>Assuming you have a low six-figure income, you probably are using them right. :-o Costs of education are staggering, and they expect families to really stretch in all directions to do it. It doesn’t always make sense, and so finding schools that will offer a great experience and big merit $$$ is definitely worthwhile.</p>

<p>What does your son think he might want to study, and does he care what part of the country he does it in? What other criteria do you or he think he would be looking for (or appreciate) in a school?</p>

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<p>Harvard and Princeton…and Stanford, and a handful of other very well endowed and highly competitive colleges…have extremely generous need based aid even for students whose family incomes are in the $150,000 a year range. These schools are the EXCEPTION when it comes to financial aid. Even many schools that guarantee to meet full need for all, do not offer need based aid to students with this level of family income (which would typically generate a FAFSA EFC in the about $40,000 a year range). Looking at what HPYS do really cannot be compared to the vast majority of other universities.</p>

<p>You did the calculators correctly in all likelihood. </p>

<p>The only caveat…if either parent is self employed or owns a business, the family owns real estate in addition to the primary residence, or parents are divorced, then the NPCs will not be particularly accurate.</p>

<p>The other thing that shocks many families…the formulas really don’t weigh your cost of living. So if you happen to live in a high cost of living area, with expensive real estate, this will not reduce your family contribution.</p>

<p>You aren’t the only one in this situation. Many families with incomes in the $150,000 range are not comfortable paying annually what the financial aid calculators expect them to pay.</p>

<p>But something to remember…colleges figure that parents will support costs with past earnings (savings), current earnings (income) and future earnings (loans).</p>

<p>Also, as noted upstream…if you can really pay $25,000 a year, you should be able to find instate options which will meet that price point.</p>

<p>And if your kid is really a competitive applicant for HYPSM, he could likely garner merit aid elsewhere that could soften the financial blow.</p>

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<p>Higher education is very expensive. No matter what amount of EFC you have (unless it is zero), it is always higher than what you want it to be. The sad thing is, the EFC is usually the minimum of your contribution. The actual amount is usually higher. There are need that not met and any loan would be out of your pocket too sooner or later although it is not included in your EFC.</p>

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<p>Since the NPC formula looks at past earnings (savings), it seems like consideration should also be given to outstanding debt like home mortgage. Annual household income is below $150K, but based on what’s been explained, I’m guessing savings (not 401K but cash/investments) is playing heavily into EFC. It makes me wonder if lowering savings by pre-paying mortgage will materially impact the formula - probably worth running a what-if calculation. I’m very averse to it, however, for reasons of liquidity and a low, fixed mortg int rate.</p>

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<p>It’s worth running a few NPCs both ways. But most of the schools that require the CSS Profile in addition to FAFSA take home equity into account anyhow, so it may not make any difference whether your assets are cash or home equity. And most schools that require only FAFSA don’t meet full need.</p>

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<p>Enjoytheday, yes, paying off the mortgage will reduce your savings, and for FAFSA will lower your EFC, since primary home value is not included in assets. Also, some schools who do use PROFILE, also will allow primary homes value to be excluded, and many schools that do will cap the home value a 1.2X or 2.4X or other multiple of income. So, yes, it ould pay off by as much as 5.6% of the savings so transferred per year.</p>

<p>But it depends on which schools your student has on his list. Most schools don’t meet full need anyways. Life is not just all about school aid. To pay off a mortgage and then not have access to that money easily, which can happen when HELOCS shut down as many people discovered may not be a optimal move to make. Gotta look at the whole picture.</p>

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<p>For FAFSA purposes, assets are assessed at 5.6% towards your EFC. Let’s say you have $100,000 in assets above your asset protection allowance (that varies depending on the age of the older parent, I believe). That $100,000 would mean an additional $5600 that you would need to pay. You would STILL have $95,000 left, and that does not include any interest that account is earning.</p>

<p>Is it really financially that beneficial to pay off your house? Do the math. You will not have home mortgage interest for tax purposes. For Profile schools, you may find that the home equity IS tapped, and you also will not have a liquid asset. </p>

<p>I’m not sure all of these financial gymnastics are worthwhile. Your net gain could be very small.</p>

<p>Also, regarding the student contribution…this WILL increase every year…just saying. Some colleges expect students to contribute.</p>

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<p>For NMSF, Fordham and Northeastern have good FA. DS applied early to both – they are not binding – and was admitted. </p>

<p>Another safety was our main state university, the University of Maine, which has a nice honors college. Also somewhat in the affordable category: He was thinking of applying to McGill in Canada. I lobbied for Temple for awhile but he wasn’t interested. And then he was going to apply to some full-need schools, which we thought could be affordable for us and, if there were multiple offers, we could ask for a reconsideration of aid.</p>

<p>The whole process ended quickly in mid-December, before applying to other full-need schools, when he was accepted at Columbia early. The FA matched the NPC, which is less than what the OP would have to pay.</p>

<p>But before that decision and FA offer came in, DS had some acceptances in hand at places he liked and which we could afford.</p>

<p>So just make sure DS includes clear safeties which he’d attend and which are affordable.</p>

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<p>Thanks again all for sharing your thoughts and experiences.</p>

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<p>Even then, policies vary. For example, for students who would otherwise get need-based financial aid, Regents’ scholarships at Berkeley change the student contribution of direct loan + work study into additional scholarship or grant money, effectively reducing the net price by what the student contribution would normally be.</p>

<p>While it may be prudent to assume a “worst case” scenario that merit scholarships have no effect until they exceed the amount of financial aid grants that would otherwise be offered, there may be pleasant surprises at some schools which have more favorable policies than that.</p>

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<p>Isn’t that almost all colleges? (except when there are enough merit scholarships, which can arguably be considered student earnings or contribution)</p>

<p>However, colleges’ expected student contributions (in the absence of merit scholarships) do vary, which is part of the reason why two “meets full need” colleges can give very different net prices. The other part of the reason is that they calculate “need” differently.</p>