<p>You guys are tremendously helpful. Any feedback appreciated on the following scenario:</p>
<p>My D applied to a school after we THOUGHT it was on the 100% needs fully met list. Turns out, I was using a list from Lynn O'Shaunessy (College Solutions) and should have done better homework. The school is actually 97% of need met per CollegeData and other sites. </p>
<p>We have 48K AGI and are PELL recipients at $2,450. I understand that the following is considered a generous aid package (but that, of course, is relative). </p>
<p>My question is more about how this breakdown constitutes meeting need (are we the 3%?):</p>
<p>The tuition, room and board for this school annually is: 53,640.</p>
<p>I do understand, from reading this board, that the school is gapping, that is normal, and attendance at this school is not affordable for us. We are letting it go (with sadness, but it is what it is). I'm just trying to understand WHY it is so I can better explain it to my D, and I also have one right behind her...basically, I don't understand, with outcomes like this, how the school can be considered 97% of need met with packages like this. (do not feel untitled - just trying to gain understanding).</p>
<p>It means on average, the school meets 97% of need. If this is a school where many wealthy students apply, “need” might be fully met with a merit award and a direct loan. All of those students have 100% of need met and are skewing the average.</p>
<p>Another possibility is that the need met stat is for enrolled students. Those who are facing big gaps are less likely to enroll, again making the aid picture look better than it is.</p>
<p>Need can also be met with loans. I see they offered you $8500 worth of those. </p>
<p>When you read that an average of 97% of need is met, that is an AVERAGE. </p>
<p>If this school used only the FAFSA, then it does not meet full need for all students. There are no FAFSA only schools,that guarantee to meet full need.</p>
<p>This school does NOT meet 97% of need for ALL students. They don’t. That is an average. Some get less and some get more.</p>
<p>It looks like you have a gap of about $11,000 to fill in just for tuition, room, board, fees. You need to add to that any other expenses you think you might incur…travel, and other personal expenses. Also, $650 in book grant might cover a years worth of books…but it might not. </p>
<p>If the school uses the Profile, then it looks much more deeply at your finances than just your AGI.</p>
<p>I misspelled “entitled” and thanks for your replies … I am starting to get it. </p>
<p>Yes, as stated - it’s not affordable, so it has been dropped from consideration. We do not have the 11K - plus.</p>
<p>The school is FAFSA only. I did not know, until pretty recently, that there are no FAFSA-only schools meeting full need…I get that now.</p>
<p>The problem with the schools meeting 100% of need, of course, is that most require higher stats than she could have produced (for most). Also, it’s much harder to get into them and they are farther away than we can travel. A quandary for sure.</p>
<p>Thankfully, she will have a couple of more affordable options in the mix. This school happened to be a really good fit in all ways otherwise.</p>
<p>This Muhlenberg article is wildly helpful, BrownParent … because I suspected the “preferential packaging” part, but have never seen it laid out in writing like this. I believe this is definitely what has happened with a couple of my D’s schools in that she did receive large merit/aid, but it was tiered in terms of where she stacked up stat-wise.</p>
<p>The 97% of need met stat is ONLY for students who chose to ATTEND the school. So, likely the student body is a lot of affluent kids who have low need.</p>
<p>Also…that stat is NOT saying that 3% dont have their need met. It means that of the students who enroll, when they look at THOSE students’ need, then 97% (on average) was met.</p>
<p>It is VERY hard to meet need for Pell Students since their need is HUGE. So, likely the Pell students get pkgs like YOURS, so they go elsewhere and their FA stats never make it to the reported numbers.</p>
<p>when you have student body that is mostly affluent then need may be less than $10k per year. Give that student a $5500 student loan, some work study, and you’ve nearly met need…without giving ONE DIME of school money.</p>
<p>Of course, all of the students who have a need of less than $5500 will have 100% of their need met. lol</p>
<p>The common data set (CDS) for each school will give you more info on how many kids actually receive financial aid, and how much they receive, but the most important consideration will still be how your kid stacks up against the rest of their applicants. If your kid is pretty much on a par with the others, then why should they pay her to attend? On the other hand, if she’s head and shoulders above the school’s other applicants, they’d have a real incentive to make her attendance affordable.</p>
<p>First of all, it’s really difficult to assess that 97% figure. Schools that guarantee to meet full need tend to define it themselves. School A’s definition of need can be quite different from School B’s and 100% of need met at school A could well be less than 97% or eve lower than School B’s. And that’s just on average or or all. Take that to an individual level, and it really is haywire. I wish the college data would force schools to post what % of need they tend meet with NEED defined by Fafsa EFC instead by each school’s particular definition. You probarly have NO idea what this school would define as NEED for you. You just know what the package is that they offered your daughter and for all you know, that could well be a full need met package by with NEED defined by them. Schools that do not use the FAFSA EFC to define need do not tend to show their gapping between what they define as full need and what they offered to you.</p>
<p>Also a school can say that they offered 97% or what ever of need on average by meeting 100% of need for those kids who only have a little need, and then balancing it out with far less need met for those with bigger need. Kid 1 with need of $3K by their definition? They meet his need fully. The same with 9 more kids with very low need. Kid 10 has a $50K need, and the school can not meet it at all and still say 90% of the kids get full need met, and also use averages in terms of kids not dollars. </p>
<p>But though it can be painful, and you now are personally feeling it, not just reading it, some of these schools that are not 100% in meeting need are well worth the try, because if they truly want the student, or if the student is lucky enough to fall into the right spot at the right time, such a school can give some individuals incredibly goo aid. You really don’t know until you give it a go. I know a few kids who got their absolutely best packages from NYU, and they do NOT guarantee to meet need, and gap big time a lot. But not for those kids that won that lottery. You can’t win if you don’t play. But everyone should have those financial/admissions combined safeties in place. </p>
<p>While the 97% need met is an average, keep in mind that meeting need means different things to different families: you may have families like yours who have a great financial need. You may have families whose full need is met by taking out a $5500 loan.</p>
<p>Yet another example of how “percentage of students with need met” or “percentage of need met” can be very misleading when comparing colleges.</p>
<p>Note that there also technical definitions of what can be used to “meet need” in Common Data Set reporting. For example, subsidized loans can be counted, but unsubsidized loans cannot. But the biggest variation is that each school can define “need” however it wants, and have whatever (within reason) expected student contribution it wants.</p>
<p>Running net price calculators before applying is typically more helpful than relying on claims of “need met”.</p>
<p>You might look into what the “self help” expectation is for that school. Some 100 percent need schools include a self help section that is about the amount a student can take out in federal loans each year as part of their aid. The positive is that the schools we’ve seen that do this also credit any outside scholarships towards the self-help portion first. The negative is that the aid package isn’t debt free. I believe there are only a few “100 percent need” schools that do not include loans and usually only for those with extreme need.</p>
<p>That self-help portion pushes a school that “should” be affordable out of possibility for some families either because they will not accept any debt period or they were going to need the student loan offered to help cover the EFC portion.</p>
<p>That school already packages self-help or student contribution as noted in the first post:</p>
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</p>
<p>Total of $11,125 in self-help or student contribution is included in the offer. This is on the high side of what colleges realistically assume students can handle in loans and work earnings.</p>
<p>That means that the $11,479 not covered by the offered package is expected to come from the family (which is rather high for a family with AGI of $48,000). Total net price is the sum, or $22,604.</p>
<p>The most generous-with-financial-aid schools typically have a self-help or student contribution in the $4,000 to $5,000 range, which they may cover with work-study rather than loans.</p>
<p>Yes … it seemed high, based on what I’d read or the research that I could do…we definitely feel we need to contribute as much as possible and our kid needs skin in the game too. But $11K-plus is high when they put it out there that they meet need well … not in our case. And our other packages are also returning Pell awards of $2,480, but this one did not … and I don’t understand that either…I am going to call tomorrow, but I"m sure the point is probably moot, because, as pointed out, my kid may be in the lower part of their acceptances (even though she received 18K academic merit)…</p>
<p>ucbalumnus… that is not always the case… which is why I asked the OP. We had a school package loans with awards… subtract that from the total and then split the remaining cost between D and ourselves labeling D’s portion as “self-help.” That made the parent total close to our EFC but obviously, with the loans, self-help and parent total combined… it was totally unaffordable (and thankfully from a school at the bottom of the list.) I supposed they were expecting that D would earn her portion through work prior to school as there was no more loan to be had to cover it.</p>