Same here. We’re getting ready to pay D20’s spring tuition bill this week, and thinking about doing this for TWO different colleges next academic year makes my head hurt. Fortunately, we’ll only have one overlap year with S23. I applaud those of you with several kids. I’m feeling the pain with just my two!
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I am right here with you. One twin is NMSF and happy to go with one of his big offers, but the other…ugh. Net Price Caluclators so far were WAY off. The school I was most optimistic about financially has come in at $46k instead of the $19k the net price calculator indicated. That’s an immense difference. I feel sick to my stomach thinking about it, and its only January.
Congratulations! I think my S23 and yours have applied to some of the same schools - he’s interested in computer science with a focus on game design and overall human interaction with technology. Unfortunately CWR came into our radar too late for EA but he’s applied RD. Would love to know your son’s stats if you don’t mind sharing. He’s also applied to Northeastern and GA Tech for EA - we aren’t confident enough financially to ED anywhere.
On another fun note my son was accepted with scholarships to Loyola Nola! I’ve been following your comments about how your D’s experience there.
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Question for everyone. How are you all eliminating schools? D23 is very reluctant to cross off anywhere at this point but I feel like she needs to deep dive into a few schools that she likes and that are affordable to get a good idea of course offerings, etc. Are you all whittling down a list or do you plan on sitting down with a spreadsheet at the end of it all?
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Haha, my kid is also accepted at LoyNo with a scholarship - I think it’d be great if a half-dozen CC 2023 kids ended up there!
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He has a spreadsheet… actually several spreadsheets. We also plan to arrange a few school visits to admitted schools. Unfortunately he won’t be able to make a final decision until spring, since some schools’ notification dates aren’t until mid to late March (UW, UCs).
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Those net price calculators are awful. We did the calculator for several schools and the FAFSA calculator, then the actual FAFSA came back (no bio dad info to confuse things- except that they now count child support and child support ends when the child enters college, but there is no where to put that) FAFSA concluded we could afford an EFC of more than our total household income per year! Yes, that’s right. Partly that is because our income just went down by 35%, but even at the two year old tax returns they use, they wanted our entire income after payroll taxes, income tax, and health insurance. Then they send that EFC to all colleges so we have to try to convince each one that we won’t have child support and our new income is less than the EFC by a lot.
The schools’ calculators were also off. This is because the estimators have one vision of where your assets should be (i.e. in your house or retirement not liquid and living in a cheap house by choice), what your assets should be for your income (we save even at very low incomes), an original two-parent household, etc. It is frustrating, to say the least. The calculators aren’t rational for us, but dealing with financial aid offices and chancing it each year to be solved isn’t something we can risk. So we go for merit even if it isn’t best fit.
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D23 applied to 16, the vast majority of which are not releasing decisions until the second half of March. After that, she will decide based on which one fits best! She does have copious notes on each (they each cover her areas of interest a little differently)and also has a comparison list for a certain EC she is hoping to continue in college. I doubt she will have more than a few that accept her , considering how competitive it is. It is unlikely she will have more than 1-2 acceptances among her top 8ish out of the 16. As a result, the decision will be narrowed significantly for her—which should make it fairly easy to decide.
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It was two years ago but we had 17 acceptances.
We started doing some head to head - and I’d point out, all your favorites are 6-15K kids so why is UGA or UF still on the list etc.
If you can say - like the eye doctor - do you prefer 1 vs. 2 it’s easier than looking at 15 simultaneously.
If you come across a few battles that have a clear victor over the other, you can then eliminate that lesser and it might winnow off a few.
Of course our very first cut was finances - I set $50K a year as a target and all schools could get us there (hence we applied) but all did not get us there.
So any schools that ended up over cost target came off right away - that was dad’s rule.
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I have a spreadsheet with about 50+ columns in it that we’ve used to develop the list. For the schools that my S23 has applied to we started to add things about program requirements, AP credit, etc. I found with my D19 some of the intangibles on what she liked/didn’t like came out during some of the accepted student days. In the end we had about 4 schools where we did deeper dive, mapped out +/-'s etc.
For my S23, I thought we were going to end up applying to about 12 schools but added in 6 more over the holidays (some because they sent a fee waiver, others had similar profiles and offered potential merit, and one for the heck of it as he was able to recycle the supplemental essays from another school).
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Money.
Full stop. If D23 liked them enough to apply to them, they’re in the running. If they don’t offer enough to make them competitive with their competition, they’re out of the running.
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We were in the same boat with ED. Just too risky and we knew he would get some decent merit from a few schools and felt the need to comparison shop right to the bitter end, including appeals if needed. He will be studying Psychology (end goal PhD in clinical psych) but considered computer programming a few years ago-has a 100 in AP Computer Science right now so it’s just something that comes easy to him. But psychology has always been his passion so that is the path he wants to study.
As far as his stats/background, he has a 4.0 unweighted GPA with AP and advanced classes, a 1450 SAT (750 Math, 700 Reading) is a National Hispanic Merit Scholar (as per PSAT) and has USA Gymnastics Academic All-American designation. He’s a level 10 gymnast (doesn’t plan to continue in college) and is in advanced band (drums/percussion.) He has good volunteer experience including pediatric urgent care, Youth Engaged in Service (community events) and Bridges from Borders (teens interview and tell the stories of refugees and immigrants who live and work in the Buffalo area.) In addition, he plays drums for the music ministry (weekly masses) at University at Buffalo Newman Center. He has some leadership in band and gymnastics. I think his academic references were strong and he also received a personal reference from a friend who has 4 children he has helped with, including one who has Dwarfism.
When does RD come out for Case Western? Northeastern EA is supposed to be released by the end of January but the waiting is tough! He is only waiting on Northeastern & Pitt (he applied to Pitt 11/30 so guessing he will hear by the end of January?)
That’s awesome he applied to Loyola! Did you visit? Such a fun city and campus. My daughter was only supposed to visit Buffalo for a week but was stuck with us until 12/31 due to the blizzard and flight cancellations. I was thrilled but I could tell she was anxious to get back to NOLA life. Lol.
Best of luck to your son!
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Just a random question:
Some outside scholarship applications request a transcript be included. Can my son just request a personal copy of his transcript from his high school or does he always have to request the guidance department send to the organization? Thanks.
You have my sympathy. That’s very tough. Our situation isn’t quite as rough as that but still frustrating. We lived overseas and my husband was not a citizen before we came home to the US so our savings was never in an official retirement account. I actually never knew that was a thing until I found out about what you put on a fafsa with my oldest. At that point, we started putting savings into an IRA but you can only put in a much each year. I never had the opportunity to have a pension or 401 K and we will have limited social security so our savings will be most of our retirement.
When D18 was applying, I contacted her two most likely colleges and explained our situation and that increased our fa by two thousand dollars, which was nice but D18 was much better off at the instate public where merit covered the cost of tuition.
Then D20, thankfully, ended up at a school with a groundbreaking fa program which was just by chance because her only criteria was close, and it was the closet public college to us. But D23 can’t go there. The campus is very tiny and the surrounding area is high crime. She loves to take walks and ride her bike and is outside whenever she can be, so we have to take that into account.
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@AmyIzzy - My S23 had submitted a few himself and they were all accepted. He’s able to download a PDF copy from his schools website that seemed to work
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We are pretty much on the same page. I am quite sure his 3 “reach” schools (Fordham, Northeastern, Case Western) will end up $10K more than most other choices. We aren’t going to rule them out right away (there might be reasons to justify one and some allow for a few extra scholarship applications so will let that play out) but my son seems pretty firm on keeping undergrad costs low (he’s my practical kid) and a few may end much lower than our target budget if he gets lucky, so I’m sure he’ll give those extra consideration. We were lucky enough to visit most of them (or do virtual visits) so he told me he could see himself happy at any of them and most check off important priorities on his wish list. I tried to get him to apply to Alabama (very nice merit for NHMS) and other generous schools, but if he didn’t feel it was the right fit, he was stubborn and would not apply (but also provided a good rationale so I really couldn’t argue it, especially since we have financial safeties in the mix.)
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DS knew in advance that all the OOS options would be dependent on budget, so I anticipate that by early March he’ll have a better idea which of those are feasible. (Currently has one viable option, so I’m not sweating it.)
He won’t hear back from instate options until March. If he has choices to make instate, I’ll be pleased.
I helped create a spreadsheet, but right now it’s just a waiting game, with plans to make last minute visits in April to his top choices.
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Have you reached out to the school to ask them about the discrepancy? It might be there was an error on their part or they may honor the NPC amount if you saved it and show it to them if there were no significant differences between the figures entered on the NPC and the actual financial aid forms. (Then again, they might not, but $27k/year is worth the ask, IMO.)
If a kid hasn’t mapped out what their coursework at a school would look like for 8 semesters (or however long the program is), I would definitely have them do it. Are there interesting courses that fulfill the distribution requirements, or is it a matter of picking between unpalatable options? Do they feel as though they get to explore their area(s) of interest sufficiently (whether that’s in their major/double major or dabbling across a variety of fields)? If they’re interested in studying abroad, can they make it work with their major/program requirements? Although there are many purposes to college, academics are the biggest reason why college exists, and students should make sure that the academics are really going to work for them, semester by semester.
For instance, I know of people who ended up eliminating all schools that limited classes to four per semester, because they didn’t get to explore sufficiently. Or there were people who eliminated schools where there was a significant charge for every credit hour taken over 15 (thus, making it much more expensive to overload to graduate early or explore additional fields). Others, however, far prefer the four class/semester routine and would hate schools where the expectation is five or more classes/semester. Alternatively, it’s great if your college offers a semester in Rome, but it’s pointless if you can’t make it work with your program.
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Exactly! This is just what I meant. There is a simple template for where assets should be in FAFSA and what they don’t count leans toward a typical upper-middle-class pattern in certain communities, not people who have been overseas, in unusual circumstances, or who save liquid assets specifically because annual income is very low. After having it happen before that we were in a dire place due to job loss, there is no way we will not have two years living expenses on hand again. Same with housing- people in high cost housing don’t have to count that equity in FAFSA, but when they retire, they still have that equity! It’s all wealth, but some doesn’t get counted according to patterns typical in certain communities.
The CSS does better with this by counting everything, but that is where the bio-dad situation gets us. For Child 1 (2017) we just learned to go with merit only, but her first year at the public she attended on merit, she got a Pell Grant for one year. (That was during the very bad time.)
I tried the FAFSA with Child 2023 because the calculators made it seem worthwhile, and then I got the ridiculous results this fall. As you found, explaining things to Financial Aid offices doesn’t get anywhere. I just wanted to commiserate with the parent who posted before me about how the calculator was off by so much money at their top choice. Another parent the other day also pointed out that his assets were considered “too high for income” at one school to get the money. The process is very frustrating for many people who don’t fit the mold. I am aware and thankful I am lucky in that both my children were positioned for merit, though Child 1 much more than Child 2.
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His high school may have a system like ParentVue or some other portal where he can download a copy anytime. Read your guidelines carefully. Some scholarship apps require it come straight from the school with GPA and rank on it. One we did was not that picky, and I used the unofficial copy.
This might be a quirk of our school’s system, but when my kid downloaded his transcript, we found that while the unofficial copy did include his letter grades for each class, it did not include a calculation of his overall GPA or give his class rank. To get those numbers on it, we had to get a copy from his guidance counselor.
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