<p>Tell me if I am doing something wrong or if we are just out of luck.</p>
<p>When I run the EFC calculator and net price calculators on schools that use collegeboard data like Penn, I get an EFC of around $30K to $35K (ouch!) because even though our income is pretty low, our investments are on the high side.</p>
<p>When I run the next price calculator on Princeton, which uses it's own formula, it says "don't expect financial aid, here's the full price." Eeek!</p>
<p>I'm also confused thought Princeton had the most generous fin aid in the country.</p>
<p>Or, here's a worse thought - is the collegeboard formula accurate at all? Could my kid get accepted to say Penn and get socked with full tuition?</p>
<p>(Edit: I tried Harvard's net price calc and they come in lower than collegeboard - just $26K)</p>
<p>While collegeboard hosts NPCs such as Penn and Duke, the data and formulas used should be unique to the schools, otherwise they’d be useless. It’s not generalized collegeboard data or formulas. I can’t explain why the Princeton NPC would show less aid but how schools treat large assets or home equity is going to vary.</p>
<p>Are you going to each schools finaid page and clicking the link to their NPC. If it takes you to collegeboard, like I said it should use the formula for that school. I would expect Harvard’s NPC to show better aid that the generalized collegeboard calculator.</p>
<p>Yup, I’ve been going to each college website and clicking their net price calculators.
So far my results have been for net price on the selective colleges reputed to be generous with aid have been:</p>
<p>D is sad since she really likes Princeton and was thinking applying SCEA to it. Based on this, I’m going to try to talk her into picking Harvard or Vandy as her reach instead.</p>
<p>Edit to add: Anyone else see an unexpectedly high EFC with one Ivy versus the others?</p>
<p>If you haven’t already, double/triple check the answers/numbers put in the Princeton calculator, it’s easy to slip in an extra zero or make some other kind of mistake.</p>
<p>I’ve only recently seen that about Vandy, thanks to another parent here. I do want my D to consider trying it.</p>
<p>Btw, Carnegie Mellon has a scary net price calculator. Scary because all it asks about are number of people in household, how many kids will be in college, and what the household income is after taxes (choose a range like $70K-$79K). I’m wondering how accurate it can possibly be.</p>
<p>Speaking of scary calculators, how do you answer this question that is on the CMU & U Pitt calculator?</p>
<p>Are they asking for the w-2 taxable income, or the taxable income minus your federal income taxes, or minus federal, state & local? Very confusing.</p>
<p>@annoyingdad you were right - I must have put an extra 0 in somewhere. I reset the Princeton form and started from scratch, and now our estimated net price comes up as $25K.
Not that that makes it affordable, exactly …</p>
<p>I am not sure $25k/yr is worth borrowing for any school. That $100k debt at graduation is still hard to swallow. It is around 3 to 4 times of the national average student loan debt at graduation. But if you have some education fund or other family saving to cover part of the cost, then $25k total out of pocket cost (including loan) is a good deal for Princeton.</p>
<p>billsho, I don’t think scholarme is saying she/he would be borrowing 25K a year. She/he is saying that the cost to attend Princeton would be 25K a year and that it would be worth borrowing some amount of that in order to attend.</p>
<p>Did I understand that correctly, scholarme?</p>
<p>I’m glad you found the mistake. It didn’t make sense that Princeton was that far off.</p>
<p>Yes I didn’t assume she would be borrowing all of it.
But borrowing some & graduating with $25,000 in loans and a marketable degree is reasonable.</p>
<p>Do you have an non custodial parent in the picture, does a parent own a business and are there some unusual investments? NCPs can be wildy inaccurate if some unusual situations are at hand. And schools will handle those situations at times on an individual basis that can differ by quite a bit. A poster got NO aid from Swarthmore which is a generous school, overall, was resigned to go to state U when Carlton, another selective LAC came up with a very nice package. That’s why ED can be risky. You just never know what you could be getting as your best deal and if that is something that can make a big difference, comparing packages can be important in saving a lot of money.</p>
<p>No, our situation is very typical. Married, ordinary job, no business or farm, 2 kids. The investments are just stocks; its kind of a hobby for H.</p>