<p>I am looking at a school where:</p>
<p>Students whose need was fully met=66%
average % of need met is 85%</p>
<p>I am trying to figure out what this means. Can someone clarify this for me. I am a bit confused, and I am trying to decide if this school is going to be worth our visiting. I am really trying to stick with schools that meet as close to 100% need as possible (very difficult task if one is not looking at Ivies).</p>
<p>The first number means that about 2/3 of the students got all of their need met. The other 1/3 were left with unmet need.</p>
<p>The second number means that on average, each student got 85% of their need met, so 15% of the average student's demonstrated need was not met. </p>
<p>Putting the two together, the 1/3 of the students with unmet need must have gotten less than 85% of their need met for the overall average to work out to 85%.</p>
<p>The hard part with schools like this is trying to guess whether your kid will be among the lucky 2/3 with full need met.</p>
<p>I've been looking for ways to search colleges based on % of need met, and I haven't found one so far. I have found a list of colleges that meet 100% of need, but that leaves out schools at 99%, 95%, and so on, which are also pretty good numbers. If anyone knows a search tool that allows for searching on this, I bet lots of us would want to know about it. The data is there in the Common Data Set, waiting to be searched.</p>
<p>Well, % of need meet is easy to find for a school you are interested in on the usnews paid site. It also gives the grant/loan breakdown, as well as aid for OOS and instate students at public Us. </p>
<p>Thanks for clarifying. I just got blury eyed and confused. This stuff gives me a headache. I am trying to eliminate schools where the odds of the school being financially doable (by our definition) are not good. We applied to schools with our older son where the aid was just not there. Fortunately he applied to enough schools that he still had options in the spring (more by luck, than my understanding fully).</p>
<p>northeastmom:
I am looking at a school where:</p>
<p>Students whose need was fully met=66%
average % of need met is 85%</p>
<p>I am trying to figure out what this means. Can someone clarify this for me. I am a bit confused, and I am trying to decide if this school is going to be worth our visiting. I am really trying to stick with schools that meet as close to 100% need as possible (very difficult task if one is not looking at Ivies).</p>
<p>.....northeastmom, Are you saying Ivies meet 100%?</p>
<p>"..........The data is there in the Common Data Set, waiting to be searched."
and please, where is this Common Data Set?</p>
<p>Well, Harvard, Yale and Princeton meet 100% of need. I really never researched them since my children are not applying to Ivies, but yes that is what I was saying (generalizing, and did not look up all of them).</p>
<p>NEmom - It certainly is a headache. By the way, you can also find the info you're talking about on the College Board site. Just put a college name into the "QuickFinder" box on the front page and it will pop up a profile of that college, then select the Costs and Financial Aid tab and you'll see a lot of financial aid statistics. In addition to the things you've mentioned, you can find a list of the college's criteria for awarding need-based aid.</p>
<p>AskMe02 - I don't think all colleges make their Common Data Sets public, but many do and I've been able to find them by Googling for them. But even if they don't publish them to everyone, I think that's the data that sites like the College Board are drawing from, so at least the CB and others have access.</p>
<p>I know how to find this info one college at a time, but what I really want is a way to query the database of all colleges to ask for a list of schools that have an average need met of, say, 95%. I can't find a way to do that.</p>
<p>Anyway, below is a list of colleges that (supposedly) meet 100% of financial need. I think I got it from the US News web site, but I'm not sure.</p>
<p>Amherst College<br>
Barnard College<br>
Bates College<br>
Beloit College<br>
Bowdoin College<br>
Brown University<br>
Bryn Mawr College<br>
California Institute of Technology<br>
Carleton College<br>
Claremont-McKenna College<br>
Colgate University<br>
College of the Holy Cross<br>
Columbia University<br>
Connecticut College<br>
Cornell University<br>
Dartmouth College<br>
Davidson College<br>
Depauw University<br>
Duke University<br>
Emory University<br>
Franklin and Marshall College<br>
Georgetown University<br>
Gettysburg College<br>
Grinnell College<br>
Harvard University<br>
Harvey Mudd College
Haverford College<br>
Lake Forest College<br>
Lawrence University<br>
Macalaster College<br>
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Middlebury College
Mount Holyoke College
Northwestern University
Oberlin College
Pitzer College
Pomona College
Princeton University
Rice University
Scripps College
Smith College
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Trinity College (CT)
Tufts University
University of Chicago
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
University of Rochester
University of the South (Sewanee)
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Wabash College
Washington University in St. Louis
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College
Yale University</p>
<p>askme02 wrote:
[quote]
"..........The data is there in the Common Data Set, waiting to be searched."
and please, where is this Common Data Set?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I believe Papa Chicken did some posts with links to Common Data Sets for a whole pile of universities a while back. Try using the search function to find them. I found them quite interesting when I stumbled on them once....</p>
<p>I'd be interested in seeing how many of the above mentioned schools that meet 100% of demonstrated need are FAFSA only schools.</p>
<p>Once you go to an institutional method for determining EFC, you can shoot the arrows (put out FA packages) and then draw the target (define EFC your own way). FAFSA only schools meeting 100% of need would be interesting to see, though!</p>
<p>goaliedad, probably none are fafsa only. I have read that if you are looking for financial aid, you should look for schools that meet as close to 100% need as possible. Of course, you need to look at how much of that is W/S and and loans, and how much is gift aid. I wonder how much looking at average gift aid helps in determining whether you are likely to get a decent package. I will say that schools that met 65% of need did give my son a lousy package, but a school that met 85% of need gave my son a better package than one that met 91% of need (the 91% need school gave merit aid, and the 85% school did not give merit aid, yet the 85% of need met school was a much better financial deal). I realize that these % are averages, and that need met is really how they calculate need (there lies the twist).</p>
<p>Calreader, thanks for the list. I have seen it before, but very few on that list would work for my kid. I have used the CB site for numbers, but USnews has even more info.</p>
<p>None of the 100% schools are FAFSA only. Some of them don't use PROFILE, but those schools just use their own financial aid forms instead.</p>
<p>It seems like looking at a combination of: avg. need met, amount of gift aid, criteria for need-based aid, and your kid's strengths in relation to the school would be a reasonable way to read the tea leaves. But I don't really know.</p>
<p>Most of the 100% schools are out of reach for most kids. That's why I wish it were easier to find schools that cover a high % of need even if it's not 100%. Maybe we'll just have to build up that list one at a time.</p>
<p>Thanks for the tip to the USnews info; I'll have to check it out.</p>
<p>We're looking closely at these figures as one of our kids narrows her college search, in order to more closely look at schools that offer generous need-based aid. From a fairly large pool of potential schools, we've been able to narrow down to only those that meet 95% or better of full need, and that offer at least 75% grant aid (and therefore less than 25% loans or work study). Then we've further narrowed the search by eliminating the schools that don't cap home equity at 2.4 or 3.0% of income (which would make a huge difference in aid in our case).</p>
<p>There are a lot of schools that meet that criteria, most pretty competitive. Among them (and still on our list) are Amherst, Boston College, Colorado College, Northwestern, Vassar, Wesleyan, Columbia, Pomona. In our experience, UCLA also meets those criteria (of course, they don't consider home equity at all since they are FAFSA-only).</p>
<p>sblake7 - How do you find out which schools cap home equity and by how much? This sounds like very useful data, especially for Californians.</p>
<p>I assume you mean 2.4-3x annual income? So does this mean that if you have 400,000 in home equity, and annual income is 100,000, they cap it at around 6% of 300,000 of home equity (=18,000/year available for borrowing, and towards your efc)? I am getting the 300,000 max. home equity toward efc by multipying 3x100000 (annual income).</p>
<p>CalReader:</p>
<p>Some of the colleges explain their method for capping home equity on their website, in the finaid section. For those that didn't, I emailed their finaid department, asked if they capped, if so how much, and using what method. Most replied.</p>
<p>I typed "2.4%" above, sorry, meant "2.4X" income.</p>
<p>There have been a couple threads here in the last year on this topic. Different schools use different methods, but generally they generally cap the home equity by taking at 2.4X AGI, and then subtract actual mortgage debt. The remainder is the equity that's assessed (added to other reportable parental assets in the formula).</p>
<p>It's a deal breaker for us if a school doesn't cap home equity in some way-- without a cap, our EFC would exceed the cost of nearly all colleges.</p>
<p>Here was a post of mine from a thread a few months ago that discusses in more detail.</p>
<hr>
<p>Not all Profile Schools cap equity (or, more properly, cap assessed home value). The 586 group schools (28 or so) have agreed to, and some other Profile schools are either capping home value or home equity. But the Profile formula doesn't include any provision for capping home value or home equity.</p>
<p>The consensus approach adopted by the 568 Group was to cap home value at 2.4 times income, and then deduct mortgage.</p>
<p>Read this thread from a few months ago:</p>
<p>And two of my posts from that thread below:</p>
<hr>
<p>It's not surprising that there's confusion over this point, even among the media. I've seen it described in media as "capping equity as 2.4 times income" several times-- but it's not that simple.</p>
<p>Here's the original recommendation of the 586 Group back in '01:</p>
<p>"Recommendation: Count home equity capped at 2.4 times income minus mortgage debt with professional judgment adjustments in individual cases."</p>
<p>BankRate got it right in their press piece:</p>
<p>"Under the new guidelines, the schools will count home equity, but cap it at 2.4 percent times income minus mortgage debt."</p>
<p>as did Smart Money:</p>
<p>"Last year a group of 28 elite schools, including Cornell, Amherst and Duke, agreed on common guidelines for determining need, which included capping home equity at 2.4 times income minus mortgage debt. This means that if you still owe $100,000 on your $400,000 home, and earn $80,000 a year, these schools will consider you to have only $92,000 in equity. "</p>
<p>The most recent official word I've seen on this is the GAO's report on the consensus methodology adopted by the 586 Group colleges- the report is dated September 2006 (see table 3, page 19):</p>
<p>"Home value is capped at 2.4 times income minus mortgage debt."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.568group.org/docs/gao.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.568group.org/docs/gao.pdf</a></p>
<p>And as I've said, individual colleges may have adopted formulas that deviate from the consensus approach adopted by the 586 Group-- best to check with the college you're applying to and find a FAO that knows his/her stuff.</p>
<hr>
<p>And from "Paying for College Without Going Broke" (Princeton Review, 2007):</p>
<p>"Let's take a family with income of $60K and a home valued at $200K, with a $100K mortgage. At schools that choose to cap the home value at 2.4 times income, the maximum value of this family's home would be 2.4 times $60K or $144K. The colleges will subtract the $100K debt from the $144K asset and decree that the family has equity of $44K...."</p>
<p>"However, let's take a family with a combined income of $60K, a home valued at $300K, and a mortgage of $200K. If the schools choose to cap home value at 2.4 times income, the maximum value of the house for assessment purposes is $144K. The colleges then subtract the mortgage of $200K. In this case, there is, in fact, no equity at all in the home as far as those colleges are concerned."</p>
<p>NE Mom:</p>
<p>"So does this mean that if you have 400,000 in home equity, and annual income is 100,000, they cap it at around 6% of 300,000 of home equity (=18,000/year available for borrowing, and towards your efc)?"</p>
<p>No, I don't think that's how most colleges that cap handle it. Rather, AGI X 2.4 = $240K assessed value for purposes of Profile calculations. $240K less actual mortgage debt = equity amount available for assessment (at roughly 6%). </p>
<p>But methods vary, and understandings among the folks at the finaid departments differ, so best to check with a college you're seriously considering to get the actual answer.</p>
<p>sblake, Thank you.</p>
<p>Thanks, that's very helpful to know about the schools that cap equity. I've been on a lot of financial aid pages, but I hadn't come across that before. Now I know that it's something to ask about.</p>
<p>In checking some recent articles on this (capping home equity topic), it appears that there are a fair number of colleges that simply cap assessed home equity at 1.2, 1.5, 2.4, or 3X AGI, without regard to mortgage debt. So best to check with each college, since this method can be more, or less, attractive than the method I described in the previous post (depending on your AGI and mortgage debt).</p>
<p>sblake, do you mean that if a home is worth 500k, and there is a 300k mortgage, and AGI is 100k, the school figures into the efc 100,000 x 2.4=240,000 (meaning you can pay 6% of 240,00=14,400, even if total equity in the home is 200,000)?</p>