<p>It is Fall of 2013, colleges for Fall of 2014 need to be determined NOW (already getting late), and an important factor in identifying the colleges that s/b in the list to apply for is PRICE. But I get the following message way too many times. My income is volatile having lost a job. I'd like to change the income number while relying on the solid up to date into on the colleges' sides.</p>
<p>grrr. The NPC tool's purpose is for families to select colleges to SEARCH and APPLY FOR - that is why I put this post in college search sub forum. Colleges need to have the NPC tool up to date for this to be meaningful.</p>
<p>"Important: Please read before proceeding</p>
<p>This calculator provides financial aid estimates for students enrolling as freshmen in the Fall of 2012. The results may differ in future years due to changes in financial aid or your family's financial circumstances."</p>
<p>The hard cold truth is that no college or university in the country knows what the costs will be for 2014-2015. In fact, many public colleges and universities will not know their final figures for Fall Semester 2014 until mid summer 2014. Most private institutions will have realistic figures for the entire academic year 2014-2015 sometime in the spring of 2014. That is why the calculators are set up with numbers from 2012-2013 (the academic year that has just ended) or with numbers for 2013-2014 (the academic year which is just beginning).</p>
<p>Do not use the NPCs expecting that they will give you precise cost estimates. Use them to screen for relative costs. For example, the NPCs will allow you to determine that A is likely to be less expensive for you because of financial aid than B is, and C is likely to be more expensive than both.</p>
<p>If you want a reasonable estimate for the full Cost of Attendance at A, B, or C (before any financial aid), add an additional 5% to 7% to the figures for each year from the year of the COA on the website to the year you would be attending.</p>
<p>If I simply follow the instructions of giving my most recent financial info, it will be dislocated worker, reduced lunch, etc, but next yr, god willing, I’ll have a regular job and then who knows what the price will be. </p>
<p>Yes yes, I am trying to put in two ends of the income spectrum for each school, the costco job and the cubicle job. I am finding this difficult since I don’t have the tax details of each possible income on top of the colleges’ out of date info. </p>
<p>Also, the npc software is not up to speed . I sometimes found running the same data through getting different answers for some colleges. It is not at the utility level of quality yet for software. I find myself blinking and double taking a lot. what tha</p>
<p>Check again on your data entry. For each set of figures, you should get the same results if run more than once at each college/university. If you do find a glitch, email them and ask. It really, truly, is OK to do that. They need to know that their NPCs are not reliably producing the same results for identical figures.</p>
<p>As for your tax situation with a “better” job, that would be something to do a bit of research on at the IRS website and your state income tax website. While you won’t necessarily be able to get perfect numbers given the variability in benefit packages, you certainly should be able to come up with a ball park figure.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>