UMass Amherst is a flagship school; my high-stats daughter (which expected to pursue an English major) had applied there in addition to several other highly selective liberal arts schools, because she saw it as a great OOS opportunity — and I have come to trust her judgment/research in these things. It was the only “public” she applied to, after she visited Amherst, because she could see herself there, while she gave Amherst College the thumbs-down!
I realize your daughter had not been looking at it that way before, but she may be selling some of her rather terrific acceptances short.
Exact same boat here - I’ve also posted about this previously. D23 is not happy with any of the 3 safety schools that she’s been accepted to because her hard work for 4 years should have been enough for a target school. Instead she has 2 waitlists and 1 rejection.
When she gets to school, no one will care where she got in or didn’t. She will meet new people, have wonderful opportunities (if she wants) and a life changing experience.
Everyone will be starting fresh.
Btw many kids will be there that got into higher pedigree schools. But they will have chosen this one. In 5 months you’ll all be able to forget the rejection and look forward to what hopefully will work out to be a great experience.
I suppose I was lucky. My kids chose to attend their safeties. That makes it easier. But I assure you they likely haven’t a clue as to whom got in where. They like who they like - regardless of their admission application.
Wondering if any other families were impacted by FAFSA’s change in calculating the efc with 2 kids in school. It is my understanding that in the past, a family’s efc was divided by 2 if you had 2 going to college in the same year. Now there is no divide by 2. So if our family’s efc is $40,000, it is $40,000 for each kid.
This is a killer for us, and basically removes private schools as an option for us. I feel bad for second son, he was admitted to a solid local private, but our expected contribution was significantly greater than the cost of a UC. I was hopeful that the school would at least recognize our efc according to FAFSA, but they did not. Their “offer” was $13,000 more than our efc according to FAFSA. And that’s without the divide by 2!
I’m not complaining, as second son was accepted to his first choice UC, so he’ll be fine. Just wondering if others are experiencing this.
I did some research on the FAFSA change. It appears that the change was made in the Consolidated Act of 2021, which also included simplifying the FAFSA, making incarcerated students eligible for Pell grants, and not requiring a social security number. I’m not very political, and not sure who to blame: republicans or democrats. But it appears the powers that be don’t care if middle class families (with more than one kid in school) are priced out of a college education.
Very frustrating, but a good lesson for our kids. Perhaps a politician will come along that actually represents our interests, but we’re not counting on it.
This is where, in my opinion, where you applies matters. Not sure if your offer but if a $30-50k was your range, there are many privates that could get one there.
FAFSA simplification was the brain child of Lamar Alexander, who I believe is a Republican who retired after his last term after getting this signature legislation regarding student aid passed.
I’m pretty concerned about the number of parents posting that their children are thus far only accepted to their safety schools and the child doesn’t like any of those schools. I’m hoping some of this might be the hyperbole of recent disappointment, and not the way the child felt before getting their denials.
To be a safety school, a school is one you can afford, your child has essentially guaranteed entry and they would be excited to attend.
If they don’t like any of their choices, it isn’t too late to find a school that might work better (and there are plenty of people on CC who are happy to help). And if that isn’t an option, for whatever reason - it is definitely time to help your child find at least three things they do like about each school they’ve been accepted to. They don’t have to be in love, but they do need to be able to see advantages beyond having been accepted.
This change doesn’t even apply to me, and yet when I read about it while trying to understand what the heck happened with my FAFSA’s outcome, I couldn’t understand any of the logic at all. I mean, our EFC was calculated as above our annual income, so I know FAFSA isn’t perfect, but what even is the logic that says if a family can swing $25,000, that they can magically swing another $25,000 if two children happen to be in college at the same time?
I noticed that both of my kids’ EFC this year is roughly half of my son’s EFC last year (daughter is the one graduating high school and he is a sophomore in college), so I don’t think the change has taken effect yet. I worry about next year, when it does, especially for the need-based aid schools where my daughter is receiving a lot of aid from this year. One letter from a school actually stated that the aid is contingent on “sibling attending college full-time”. Some schools came in right around what the NPC estimated for us. Others gave us about 5K less. Wondering if the schools that use CSS in addition to FAFSA will still consider the 2-kids-in-college situation in their calculations next year.
The logic (explained at the time the legislation was being discussed/debated) is that families with children closer in age to one another shouldn’t be advantaged over families who (for whatever reason) have children spaced further apart.
Getting a break on pricing because your had your children one or two years apart versus not getting a price break if your children were born four years (or more) apart is completely arbitrary. The idea was that families should have to pay the same amount (or get the same amount of help) regardless of the timing of their children’s birth.
I mean, high end privates are out of financial reach for plenty of families. There is a lot that doesn’t make sense about the calculators or take everything relevant in account.
If you had twins, does it make sense you’d be responsible for half the financial amount than if you had 2 kids 4 years apart? Of course, I have 2 kids 4 years apart. I don’t know.
But more generally, neither schools nor politicans really care about the middle class and their ability to attend private colleges. Or public ones for that matter. This isn’t really new. Middle class is underrepresented at high end privates. My kids were/are merit hunting or to public you go.
This is a little off topic to this thread…but if your FAFSA EFC was higher than your annual income…either you have some large assets (perhaps real estate, or something), OR there is a mistake. Did you do a tax deferred rollover in 2021? If so, and you didn’t indicate this, that rollover was included as income. This can be corrected by the college financial aid office if that is the case.
I agree with this in principle, but it sometimes just doesn’t work out that way. One, as people have mentioned, students change over the 9 months between starting a list and the outcomes. Maybe they were excited before but aren’t now. Two, many of us can’t afford to visit colleges in advance of applying just to “see” if they could be exciting. They look good on the internet or someone else liked it, but then you get to campus after you know what the cost will be, and the kid/parent just doesn’t like it. We didn’t make trips until we knew what the colleges would cost or we were competing for money. We can’t.
So those are two ways off the top of my head that safeties might not be “exciting” for a student. Acceptable, sure. Can they get excited? That is the best option, but it might take a while.
I know people always repeat the mantra about what a safety means, but in real life, especially if you live in remote places or have money issues (or both!) it just isn’t possible to be deciding if you really like a place before applying, and students change their minds- positively and negatively toward schools over the year.
Oh, I went into it upthread, and it isn’t really an issue, but it has to do with moving in the middle of the school year so we have two (waaay under median priced) houses right now, and the one that is not considered a primary address is where most of the equity is. Additionally, they count my child support without asking when it will end i.e. before school starts. Also, we have extremely irregular income and often have no option for employer 401k etc. which leaves only IRAs as protected and some years, we sell a house or have self-employment that we put entirely into savings but isn’t in the protected savings. We are also very, very frugal and so we have saved more than we were “supposed” to for our income, but since we don’t have it all in retirement funds- since the IRA cap and spousal IRA are pretty low- it is considered free to spend. How they think we’ll retire ever, I do not know. Basically, we an outliers in terms of our income going up and down and often being earned by selling housing or having one big job that we don’t spend, but save and then the next year having very low income.
Anyway, it isn’t affecting our decisions, so I didn’t even try to deal with arguing with them about it, but I do hate the form and prefer when they just count everyone’s assets in toto like on the CSS since it takes away favoring some ways of making money/living/housing one’s family and just says, “How much wealth does this family have?” Sort of like the logic that closer siblings and farther siblings shouldn’t get advantages on FAFSA- but people with employer savings accounts and people who buy expensive houses and put a lot of money in them get advantages, and they don’t look at lifetime income to “even” it out like with the children.
Sorry, that was longer than necessary. Short answer- we are abnormal in many ways, so the system doesn’t work for us in FAFSA. Thus, we just focus on merit.
It’s in the 30’s here and we got several inches of snow. My son is now on the beach where its in the 80’s. I am not going to be shocked if it quickly becomes his top choice based on location alone. But I worry as its likely not the best music program.
There is no guarantee for any of our children that they will have made the optimal decisions when it comes to having put together their college lists, or where they end up attending (whether it was their first choice or their last one initially). Money constraints are very common, and most students grow and change during senior year of high school.
So much of this process is a leap of faith and figuring out the best decision based on the information one has when they have it. Helping our students understand that uncertainty is definitely part of this process (imo) and part of the reason it is looked at as one of the first adult decisions our children will make.
As was reminding each of my children that they could make the best choice possible at the time, figure out it wasn’t the right one when it came to colleges (and other things as well) and…they could make the choice again. That the possibility of transferring, or rethinking a plan underway is always an option. There are so few choices in life truly irrevocable or irreversible.
Believing all that - I still worry about how people pick their safety schools, especially when the kids don’t seem to have ever been excited about them. So often there is little overlap in size of school, type of school etc between the top choices and the safeties. It is rare to hear of a student excited about their safeties at the beginning of the year and then down on all of them after all their decisions are in.
I think it is hard to be excited about safeties merely because they are for many kids ”backups” and the least close to the environment they want. Sure it would be great to find safeties that are just like the 5 top20s your kid loves, but in reality there arent safety schools that offer that same mix of peers and all the other stuff. And yes, part is a prestige factor. That may not be ideal or right or what not. But for most candidates, getting a true safety requires going in a different direction with a different peer mix and atmosphere. The other option is to have multiple “likely”(>75% chance based on your HS) options which can be much much closer in feel to your top choice. Alternatively, in-state schools are often true safeties(>95%) but the flagships that the kids want are not safeties for many bright talented kids, and it can be HS or curriculum dependent . I agree all kids need to find safeties they like well enough and go into it as excited about them as they can be, but loving safeties as much as match and reaches is hard for many.