<p>Mini, I have said that the FAFSA EFC is objective -- and that is the part that would have been the same at every college your daughter applied to -- unless a particular college used "professional judgment" to make an adjustment, in which case a subjective determination would be applied against the objective standard. But the FAFSA is a set formula and no matter who the person is or where they come from, the numbers come out the same. And even the use of "professional judgment" to make adjustments is governed by specific laws and regulations that dictate exactly what a college may or may not consider. </p>
<p>As far as I know, no private college that claims to meet 100% need actually promises to meet the objective FAFSA EFC. They all employ their own individual practices to determine "need" and to structure their packages.</p>
<p>COFHE schools do NOT use the same methodology, so there is no reason to expect COFHE schools to come out the same. COFHE is a merely a data-sharing arrangement. See: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/cofhe/%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/cofhe/</a></p>
<p>You may have COFHE confused with the 568 group, which is a different but partially overlapping consortium of colleges that have agreed to abide by certain standards with financial aid determinations, which they call "consensus methodology" - but by no means have they agreed to standardized aid packages or to treat all factors the same. Since they agree on some, but not all, factors that come into play, there is no particular reason to expect that they will offer similar aid packages. (It's more of a PR/marketing thing) See <a href="http://568group.org/%5B/url%5D">http://568group.org/</a> </p>
<p>When a college claims to meet "100% of need" but uses its own methodology, then obviously that college is neither objective nor honest about its claims -- that's just marketing geared to people who do not understand how financial aid works. Obviously, there are a lot of well-to-do families who find college costs daunting and who do not understand the financial aid process who are under the impression that "EFC" means the amount of money a family actually pays to go to college --- but that simply isn't what the system does. </p>
<p>There is only one "system" -- the FAFSA methodology -- and that is used to calculate eligibility for federal subsidies, which is an objective standard. It is going to be the same everywhere -- you don't end up with a bunch of different FAFSA EFC's for different colleges. </p>
<p>The individual aid practices of private colleges is not a "system" - it is a competitive marketplace where each college develops their own policies and practices. The CSS Profile does not determine either an aid amount or an "EFC"; it is simply a data-collection service for the colleges. The College Board also sells the colleges user-customizable software that can be used to crunch the data -- but since each college can make its own adjustments to the algorithms used by the software, the data is going to lead to different results from one college to the next. </p>
<p>I personally do not see the difference between the process by which one private college allocates "need" based grant aid and another allocates merit money.. In each case it is simply a private college deciding how to allocate its own institutional funds. </p>
<p>I don't even have a problem with the concept of merit money going to wealthy students, because from what I can tell any kid who has the credentials to win admission to a so-called "100% need" private college is also going to qualify for tons of merit aid at colleges that are a little bit farther down the totem pole on selectivity. So all the parents in the Newsday article have to do is a little homework to find out which colleges will give their kids the merit aid. If their kid doesn't meet the criteria at college A (say, a 5-figure income), maybe she will meet the criteria at college B (such as a 1500 SAT score and a 3.8 UW GPA). </p>
<p>The Ivies will start giving "need based" aid to families with 6 figure incomes the day that they need to do that to keep their incoming class filled with desirable students. Right now they don't have to do that -- for every $150K earning family that thinks Harvard tuition is too high and who opts to send their kid to some other college on a merit scholarship, there are probably a dozen $125K earners who are eager and willing to pay whatever it takes to get their kids to Harvard. Colleges hire enrollment management firms to figure out exactly what the income vs. expense breakpoints are, and how much they have to offer students from particular demographic profiles to secure their attendance. I'll bet the 100% need schools have the enrollment management people run the numbers in the same way the merit schools do; they just label things differently. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the $60K free-tuition offer at Harvard was developed in response to that sort of analysis.</p>