<p>D and I finalized late application choices last night after taking into consideration costs suggested by net price calculators. I ran the npcs again after she went to bed and got a shock.</p>
<p>In two cases, the grant aid offered during the summer when I first ran the npcs dropped way more than could be expected by COA increases or changes in my wealth. In fact, my income, net worth, investments haven't changed at all, and our combined salary is way less than 200K.</p>
<p>In one case, grant aid dropped from 30K to 16K, and in another from 22K to <13K. In the latter case, the npc noted that "YOUR net price may be overstated!" No kidding. It was 43K, plus the D's end was another 5500 loan and 2500 work.</p>
<p>I ran the npcs on the other schools and they didn't change at all or not significantly. Has anyone else observed this phenomenon?</p>
<p>are you sure that you put in the same info both times?</p>
<p>ould be expected by COA increases</p>
<p>This is going to happen every year. as a matter of fact, the COA that is used now on NPCs is for the current school year. Fall 2014 will be higher.</p>
<p>Maybe schools have made adjustments after they realized that their NPCs weren’t accurate based on real results.</p>
<p>well, I’m not sure because I didn’t print out the original npc for each school. Drats! But the figures that I have for all the other schools didn’t change but a couple thousand, and the EFC for ALL the schools was 27 to 34K in the original npcs. The EFCs of the two schools in question jumped from 32K to 43K and from 28K to 42K! I have phone calls in to the two FA offices and I’ll let you know what they come up with.</p>
<p>I believe some schools update their NPCs annually. The one you did during the summer was probably for the current academic year. As mom2 noted, the cost of attendance for 2014-2015 won’t be set until summer 2014. The figures you are getting now would be a closer estimate than ones from the summer of 2014. </p>
<p>The reason some schools didn’t look different is likely that they have deeper pockets. In addition some schools change grant awarding policies from time to time. You could be seeing this as well.</p>
<p>And lastly…these NPCs should be viewed as decent estimates only.</p>
<p>thumper, agreed with all that. but the cost of attendance did not increase by 10K. the aid decreased by 10K. that is not a factor of COA. nor is it a factor of deep pockets; one school has about $2B and the other over $5B in endowments.</p>
<p>I think that a change in grant awards could be at fault, but, wow, what changes!</p>
<p>Maybe the NPCs are asking for more data than what they asked for last summer? </p>
<p>For the schools that seem to be giving lesser grants, are they “meet full need” schools? If not, maybe that’s why. </p>
<p>or maybe now they include student loans in their FA pkgs while before they didn’t? (didn’t we recently hear that some schools were abandoning their “no loan” policies for students’ whose families earn more than XXXXX?</p>
<p>Does your D have financial safeties? Those are schools that you know 100% that you have all costs covered and will accept your D???</p>
<p>The COA didn’t increase that much. BUT the schools may have changed the awarding criteria for need based grants. As an example…maybe last year, students with family incomes under $50,000 got $10000 grants, but this year it’s $40,000. If YOUR income didn’t change from $50k down to $40k, you would NO LONGER be eligible for that grant.</p>
<p>I NEVER said that the COA had increased that much (although it likely increased from last year). I said the policies for awarding need based aid might have changed, and therefore your aid would be less.</p>
<p>The COA issue is a separate one that mom2 brought up…and she is right. This is an added issue. Most schools increase the COA by about 3%-5% per year. The COA for 2014-2015 has not been set yet. </p>
<p>Schools update their NPCs at varying times also. It is possible that SOME of your schools (where the cost didn’t change much) updated on June 1, while others updated September 1.</p>
<p>My guess is also that the colleges in question have changed their grant policies especially if these are colleges that do not guarantee to meet need. The colleges have been discounting for a number of years now through the use of grants and “merit scholarships”…it would not surprise me if every year there are a few that take a fall back position. Hopefully you’ll have some good choices come spring that meet your affordability.</p>
<p>thank you, all. if there are grant policy changes afoot at these schools then it could mean changes are in the works elsewhere since these are leaders among LACs and mid-sized comprehensive universities. these are not good changes for people of my household income and they are pretty drastic changes. They can kiss my child and an awful lot of her peers goodbye in that case. They did not shift the burden to loans in the case of the LAC–there are no loans before or after the change; nor did they add to the loans in the other case; nor increase work study in either case.</p>
<p>It could also be that a new algorithm has been applied incorrectly at these two schools, but I say that only because I don’t think it’s good business for colleges to increase their net prices to a certain slice of their customers by 50% and 32% in one year when they’re sitting on endowments of this size that are growing. </p>
<p>The first people I spoke to at these colleges knew nothing of such changes of policies or algorithms. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have time to get clarification from the people they referred me to. I hope not to have to wait til next week for enlightenment.</p>
<p>One other question before I get a chance to talk to these FA people: have any of you sending first-time freshmen next year to college noticed an difference in what several months ago your net price calculator said you’d pay and what it says now you will pay at the same colleges you’ve been checking out?</p>
<p>That happened when my D2 applied a couple of years ago. The awarding of aid had changed from spring (when I first ran the NPC’s) to the fall when she was applying - 2 on her list changed their policies. Also interesting one school changed from FAFSA only to FAFSA and CSS. </p>
<p>I know this fall William & Mary changed their policy for out of state students from meeting 80% of need (on average) to a maximum of 25% COA in grants. The NPC there is very different now than when my D applied 2 years ago. The schools don’t always publicize these changes (this change was only found on CC not on the schools’ website).</p>
<p>It is a good thing you re-ran the NPC. I would think at this point they should reflect any changes in policy for 2014 applicants.</p>
<p>Schools budget annually, and aid policies definitely depend on budget. Hits to endowments, low enrollment, etc can affect the amount available to award for grants. In addition, awarding policies can change from year to year.</p>
<p>The NPCs are a relatively new thing, so I would not be surprised that they would show changes. Some schools might have glitches in them that they corrected. </p>
<p>The other thing is that things do change in terms of how much money schools are going to allocate for things. A few years ago, Pitt used to give out generous merit awards pretty much to anyone who got certain threshold GPA/test score and it wasn’t as high as what you need these days to even get considered for honors college and have a shot at merit money. Also the % of merit money has dropped drastically if one tracks the common data. This is just an example, so though I am using merit rather than need, it’s to demonstrate how these things can change. </p>
<p>Often when there questions asked about policies and which schools do what, I add the caveat that the poster should check current policies out at specific schools A school might decide to eliminate aid for International students, for instance. Or as a poster above, #11 is reporting, change OOS policies. You just never know what happens. My one son went to a school that hit a real dry spell in terms of money while he was there. The market drops really hit their endowment hard, along with some other issues, and yes, there were cuts in a number of things. This can happen at any number of schools for any number of reasons. </p>
<p>I’d love to see a thread tracking NPCs vs actual packages for school, or some chart, or something. a running list. I think we started something of the sort.</p>
<p>I wondered about this also cptofthehouse. I wonder if schools were a little too generous in their NPC’s at first and now they are being adjusted. I would suspect that schools felt that they need to be accurate in their NPC’s but there is only a finite amount of money to give. Before you could adjust after you’ve accepted students but now there is this pressure with NPC’s.</p>
<p>I spoke to one of the FA advisors at one of the schools. There was no change in the logarithm or the school policy. He could not explain from what I told him what might have happened to cause this large discrepancy. He took my numbers and ran them from his end and said repeatedly that the original EFC was “much more realistic” than the new one. I was so relieved to hear this (it means D will be able to apply to this school) that I forgot to ask him if he was going to follow up on the confusion. It was interesting to hear NEMom had a similar experience. I hope W&M grandfathered in the current students when they adjusted the calculator.I’ll talk to the other advisor next week. thanks for all your support.</p>
<p>hi, mom2, I have one daughter who applied to 7 colleges last year and got in only to large state university where she decided not to go. she is re-applying this year. does this help?</p>
<p>Jkeil, I believe WM did grandfather current students with regard to the POLICY of awards. </p>
<p>As an FYI, the NPC are accurate for incoming freshmen. There has been little evidence that they are accurate for anyone else.</p>
<p>But the WM change, as well as the UVA change in terms of no loans would have shown a very different NPC result from last year to this. VERY different.</p>
<p>You were wise to run those calculators again.</p>
<p>However, be alerted…the only really accurate financial aid award is the one your student actually RECEIVES from the college. It really doesn’t matter what the NPC says. The NPCs are attempting to give good estimates. There is really little chance that a college is going to award you additional aid because their NPC indicated a higher amount of aid than the actual financial aid award.</p>
<p>cpts comments regarding Pit are salient also. I’ve noticed since 2006 when I began this process through the economic downturn and sending three kids of that the gift money has tightened up alittle at colleges and more tightly connected to need especially at colleges that do not meet need.</p>
<p>oh, and I too think captofthehouse’s suggestion that we start a list that would suggest the accuracy of npcs at certain schools would be helpful, but what an enormous undertaking. Recently I’ve been pondering a hypertext of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, and I think I’d rather take that on!</p>