He can send the FAFSA to up to 10 schools. None of those schools will see if he sent the FAFSA to other schools (or where he sent them). If he is applying to more than 10 schools, he can do that by removing schools from the FAFSA after it’s processed and adding new schools.
Are you asking if he should wait until accepted, and chooses where he will be attending?
If so…NO NO NO.
The FAFSA will be available for filing on October 1 of your child’s senior year in high school. In most cases, it should be done as early as possible. The 2021-2022 FAFSA will use your 2019 tax return/income information.
But most important, your son should check each college’s financial aid site for required submissions and each college’s deadlines. Meeting the deadlines is extremely important.
@kelsmom can add to this regarding accuracy, and also discuss those forms of federally funded need based aid that have limited funding per campus.
@thumper1 is correct. For many high income families, there may be no rush to file because they won’t qualify for SEOG and they are sure they won’t qualify for institutional grants. But “you never know” … maybe the student might qualify for federal work study … and some higher income parents have been surprised by an institutional grant. So file in early October for next year. Being early may not be necessary, but then again, it may pay off.
Definitely pay attention to each school’s requirements (Profile? Tax returns? Institutional form?) and deadlines.
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I followed your advice, and Pomona sent me the first “rejection letter” of the season:
“Thank you for contacting the Office of Financial Aid. Unfortunately, due to school policy and regulations, we are not able to provide pre-reads for any families. Please know that you are welcome to submit all information, letter of special circumstances and anything else you feel would provide our review committee a better sense of your finances during the financial aid process.”
I was quite surprised as the “contact the FA office” is such a common advice on CC. From your experience, that’s not a typical position, is it?
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@ArtsyKidDad some schools give pre-reads and others do not. The only way to know is to ask
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. We did not complete the FAFSA for D1 after running numerous NPC’s…every school she applied to used CCS also and particularly for people that are frugal and have never taken a dime out of their primary residences in 20 years, home equity becomes a liability in the aid process (even worse if you live in high cost housing areas). Next year we have will have two in college and I’m trying to project if it’s worth doing FAFSA this year. Is there a definitive reliable list somewhere that shows by CCS school, what portion of your home equity will count as an asset towards financial aid calculations? I’ve used the calculator on Edmit before for various schools as a fast and easy way and it definitely uses different % based on the school entered (and the AGI). Thank you for your insight!
@ArtsyKidDad , some will talk in advance & others won’t. Every school is different. I suspect that schools are getting more requests for professional judgment these days, so their staff may be stretched even thinner than usual (financial aid offices are generally understaffed). The lack of a pre-read may cause you to discourage your child from applying, or it may not. Whatever your decision on that school, be sure to add in a safety school or two to the college application list.
@2ndthreekids, because every school has its own policies, I think the best way to know what aid might be at a particular school is to run the numbers through each school’s NPC. I am not aware of any lists that would be helpful, but some of our CC folks may have tips.
Someone (on a competitor website, so I cannot link here) researched about 100 schools on the home-equity matter and made a spreadsheet back in 2017. I have the spreadsheet, but it’s three years old.
The most reliable ways are 1) to run the NPCs, as @kelsmom said, and to 2) call the FA office of each college and ask how they treat home equity. Usually they’ll tell you.
According to the 2017 spreadsheet, these colleges do not count home equity at all (in 2017). Use this as a GUIDE, not final word. Because of COVID and increased need, they might have changed. Again, CALL. ASK.
Did not count any HE in 2017 application season:
Bard
Cal Tech
Cooper Union
DePauw
Elon (“usually” doesn’t use)
GW
Hamilton
Harvard
Illinois Wesleyan
MIT
Occidental, if under a certain income
Princeton
Santa Clara
St. John’s, Maryland (“usually” doesn’t use)
Stonehill
Swarthmore
University of Chicago
University of Virginia
Ursinus
Many others cap the amount of HE considered at a multiple of income. According to the 2017 researcher, here are some of those colleges:
Amherst (capped at 1.2X income)
Barnard (capped at 1.2X income)
Bates (capped at 2X income)
Bowdoin (capped at 1.8X income)
Bucknell (capped at 2X income)
Carnegie Mellon (capped at 2X income)
Colby (capped at 2X income)
Colgate (capped at 2X income)
Columbia (capped at 2.5X income)
Cornell (capped at 1.2X income)
Dartmouth (capped at 1.2X income)
Davidson (capped at 2X income)
Emerson College (capped at 3X income)
Franklin & Marshall (capped at 1.2X income)
Georgetown (capped at 1.2X income)
etc. etc. I won’t list all of them. You can ask me about any and I’ll check if they are on the 2017 list.
These colleges consider 100% of HE, based on 2017 research:
American
Babson
Bentley
Boston College
Brandeis
Brown
Emory
Fordham
Hampshire
Hobart
Holy Cross
Lawrence
Lehigh
Loyola Maryland
Northeastern
Northwestern
NYU (“case by case’ but mostly 100%”)
Pomona
Providence College
Sarah Lawrence
Tulane
Union College
UNC Chapel Hill
WPI
@BelknapPoint where do you find info about how colleges treat home equity?
The best comprehensive source I have found is the spreadsheet that I believe brantly is referring to above, linked through this website:
https://www.thecollegesolution.com/home-equity-impact-financial-aid/
(Click on “Home Equity Spreadsheet”)
But, as brantly mentions, the info. here is now three years out of date. So… CALL and ASK.
I heard from a single parent (another parent is totally out of picture) who owns a house in very expensive cost of living area with some home equity and $175K +/- annual salary. According to her, with no other college students, her EFC last year was mid-$30K and her student has received a $40K/year institutional grant from a Top 50 private college that requires CSS profile (full COA is $75K+/year). In the college website, their institutional grant will go up %, based on tuition increase in 2nd/3rd/4th year if incomes don’t change much. So, it seems like a full meet college.
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I have found several companies that offer net price estimates - edmit, collegeraptor, collegevine, college board as well as references to Naviance and college aid pro. Does you have experience with any of these to assess accuracy? I’ve tried the free options and the information is helpful, but I do get differences between the program and the college net price calculators. I’m not sure which ones are the most accurate or if I should just stick to the college NPCs. I do like the ability to identify which schools fall into a more affordable category. Any help or point to a comparison would be great.
I’m not @kelsmom. But really, the net price calculators on each college website are the most reliable. After all…they aren’t some third party in most cases. They are actually specific to that college.
Generally, you should use the college’s net price calculator from the college’s own web site.
In some cases, the college may use a template provided by a third party (the College Board template is a common one), but with the college’s specific calculations. Other colleges’ net price calculators using the same template are likely to give different results based on the other colleges’ specific calculations.
I agree that using the college’s NPC is best.
Part of the Net Price Calculator Improvement Act Would have helped in this area. The bill would have authorized the Dept of Education to develop a universal calculator that would enable students to answer one set of financial and academic questions in order to generate a list of comparable net price estimates for multiple institutions.
The questions in the universal net price calculator would have to be a superset of those used in all net price calculators. That would be a lot of questions, and could be unnecessarily laborious for students applying to colleges with relatively simple financial aid formulae.
The problem with that is that some schools include non-FAFSA items in determining institutional aid. So while it might compare schools in terms of possible federal aid and some institutional & automatic merit awards, it would not be as accurate as going to each school’s individual NPC. This is one area where one size fits all, does not.
Less than universal, but probably helpful to lots of students, would be if states or state university systems with campuses having similar FA methodologies (though some parameters could vary between different campuses) made NPCs that allow someone to show net price for all public universities in the state or university system in one set of inputs.