I’m so confused about the functionality of the net price calculator. I ran it for Earlham College, but (correct me if I’m wrong) Earlham is one of those schools that seems to offer merit aid to everyone who gets in. I think this may be true for many of the CTCL schools, and my S applied to a few others. Yet even though merit is offered consistently, it doesn’t feature in the the NPC at all. Does that mean I can subtract the merit amount from the COA it’s quoting me? It’s actually giving me a ridiculously high amount of school-issued grant aid (something like 36k)–surely the college doesn’t give out that much grant aid?! Is this “grant aid” a combination of merit plus need-based aid or or is merit really not factored in to this yet? Has anyone gotten in to the CTCL schools and NOT gotten merit? If not, why wouldn’t schools simply advertise lower tuition? This whole thing is starting to seem like a farce.
No, most of the time if the school gives institutional need based grants and you then get merit, the merit will replace part of the grant.
If the net price seems affordable you can apply, but won’t know exactly how much grant/merit you might receive.
For that reason it is a good idea to apply to some schools that give automatic merit for certain stats, that way you might have some affordable options.
How does the NPC result compare to your EFC? If the final number is much lower than EFC, there is merit aid in there. Another clue that merit aid is included is if the NPC asks for test scores and other academic stats.
Yes, Earlham seems to discount heavily.
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?150455-Earlham-College
Thanks. So let’s say the NPC was reporting 36k in institutional grants, and the student is offered 24k in merit aid. Does that mean we can reasonably expect to receive $12k in need-based aid from this school? We have a low EFC and our financial profile is complicated by divorce/noncustodial parent…I just have no idea what to expect re: need based aid and my S didn’t have the stats for any/many full-need-met LACs. We’ve all got our fingers and toes crossed for something other than a huge state school, but the first LAC to give a full financial package (not including merit, student loans or federal grants) only offered $4,400 in institutional grant aid, which really surprised me. This was a FAFSA only school and our EFC is less than $4k. We’re expecting the first in a series of need-award letters Feb. 1, but the anticipation is driving me nuts.
Ok, I just found a chart at the Earlham website and figured I’d post it here for anyone else who may be interested. The numbers are a few years old, but this looks promising–I somehow missed this earlier.
I believe that divorce is one of the conditions that skews the NPCs. They are not as accurate in your case.
At many colleges…if a student receives merit aid…it reduces the student’s financial need…and therefore need based aid is reduced.
A small number of colleges will stack merit and need based aid…but most do not. It sounds like you are hoping your kiddo will get BOTH merit and need based aid…and this might not happen. That is a question to pose to the college.
In most cases, you will be expected to pay at least the fafsa EFC…so what was THAT (you don’t have to tell here…but keep that in mind).
Advertising lower tuition is a worse marketing strategy. Getting a grant makes people feel special.
I ran the Earlham NPC a few times with my D’s financials but with different scores and stats. It does seem like the scores have little to no effect on the aid, so that it may be true that applicants will get similar amounts if they have similar financials. They might just say “20K scholarship and 10K grant” for one with higher stats, and “10K scholarship and 20K grant” for another with lower stats. But the total may not be very different.
When I did it, the NPC gave a $35K grant on what is essentially a $14K EFC, which ended up making the cost pretty close to what some “meets full need with loan” schools have done in their NPC. If you have a $4K EFC, you’d probably need even more than $35K to be affordable. But it sounds like they are comparatively generous.
@thumper1 I don’t mind revealing–I did so above and our EFC is super low. I’m a high school teacher and a single Mom–it is what it is. I suddenly had an epiphany about this whole thing last night and I remembered seeing a post on here at one point by a Mom who was really miffed that her kid’s merit was reducing his need. For me, it doesn’t matter because we are very low income. I now see that it may be likely my kid will get a lot of aid (label it what you like) as long as the school can afford it and wants him to enroll. This will be partially subsidized by kids who are paying 25 or 30K a year. This is similar to how poor kids get 100% need met at the tier one schools where many are paying 60k. The difference is–families with money will pay a little less (thanks to merit aid) and low income families will pay a little more (owing to the student’s stats not being superstar-level).
As someone pointed out elsewhere, the whole merit aid thing is really a ploy to lure middle and upper middle kids away from the name brand schools. I guess some LACS just do not have the resources or the desire to take on high-need students…I know they all have their limits. The early low-ball offer my S got from Willamette almost makes me think they don’t want him to enroll (or don’t think he will). @NerdMom88 Yes, I’ve heard that’s true with divorce and the NPC which is partly why I did not much bother to do it early in the process. However, some of the schools my S applied to are FAFSA-only so I don’t think the non-custodial parent info will be considered. That’s why I ran it for Earlham but did not bother for Lawrence or Wooster, who use the CSS Profile.
Why DOES it take so long for families to hear back about need based aid? It seems simplistic, but are they really waiting for full-pay families to commit? So they get a better idea what they can spend? It seems like most people wouldn’t actually put down a deposit until after accepted students days etc. I actually thought that if we had need that a school could not even get close to meeting (Willamette) they would simply not accept. However, I’m afraid that is not the case.
Why does it take so long to hear back? Because the financial aid offices are preparing awards for MANY incoming freshmen, and they send them at the same time.
Sometimes for early action acceptances …which are not binding…the financial aid packages won’t be sent until the same time as regular decision ones.
But really…you do NOT have to commit to an EA school until May which gives you the chance to look at multiple net prices.
Re the net price calculator. Unless the NPC specifically ASKS if you are divorced or asks the number of adults IN the family…it won’t be accurate. It will assume you are a two parent family.
Yes, I thought about that @chzbrgr --I believe you are correct about the marketing. I realize they are very busy processing all of this stuff…actually now that I am thinking more deeply about this I am realizung we are NOT talking about # of enrolled freshmen, but # of applicants requesting aid. I guess I was more curious about the difference between Willamette, who sent the full financial offer with the EA acceptance, and the first expected second response, which won’t arrive until much later. That said, maybe that’s a good sign? Who knows.
Until this year, you couldn’t even file FAFSA until Jan 1. Today is only the 10th. The schools are actually getting the award letters out much earlier than ever before. Some schools may not have changed their staffing or vacation schedule, and many did not change their priority filing dates so won’t know how many students are requesting aid until that priority date arrives.
A few schools did reduce tuition, and aid, a few years ago because everyone got merit. However, the experiment doesn’t seem to have worked very well to attract more students.
Ok, sounds like I need to take a chill pill, huh? This is my first rodeo of this sort and we filed FAFSA in October. He started writing essays 4 months ago…I feel like this has been dragging on for an eternity. Anyway, it’s all good. Deep breaths. In a few weeks I will have a lot more information at my fingertips.
NPC’s will vary. You have good, great and truly awful versions out there. Some will be using tuition rates for 14-15 (and I assume merit/FA from those years as well) whereas others will be much more current.
The NPC is one tool. Published stats based merit awards, or brackets of them by the school are another. The common data set (cds) is yet another, showing average award amounts.
I would not lump all CTCL schools together from a FA or merit perspective, some are quite generous in merit, some in FA and some in both. Others, in none! The cds will show you this. For merit the higher amounts will go to students who are in their upper quartile. For FA the common data set will tell you how much “need” is met or not. Pull it all together and you can have a reasonable picture of what you might be offered.
If it helps at all, my S applied to 7 schools, all EA, 4 are CTCL. We’ve acceptances at 6, merit at 5 (6th merit hasn’t arrived yetansnyhe 7th school hasn’t notified anyone yet$ but only 3 have sent the full final FA offers. We know at least one won’t be until late march. And that’s for EA.
My S is a mid or lower stats kid by CC standards, we did look at Willamette and didn’t see their merit as being as generous as others (for him) based on the NPC and cds, and as a result took it off the list. Granted there were other reasons but that was our read on merit there.
Based on my research Wooster and Lawrence should be better offers so fingers crossed for you!!!
Thank you, @eandesmom!! Yes, there are so many factors & I think for us the non-custodial parent stuff makes the NPC problematic. S got confirmation today that Lawrence will release a need-based offer at EOB on Feb. 1 and Wooster said they will notify by Feb. 15, so a month from now we will have a much clearer picture of things and will (hopefully) have a need to scramble and look for cheap flights so he can make 2 or 3 overnights. 