<p>Whenever I ask someone's opinion on how affordable a school will be, they tell me to use the school's financial aid calculator. Can anyone explain to me exactly what info this will give me? Like will it only give a rough estimate of need based aid I will receive, or will any merit aid be included? How accurate will the result be?</p>
<p>Also will the total they give me included fees room and board? Or just tuition?</p>
<p>the total COA should include room, board, etc.</p>
<p>The accuracy of each schools’ NPC can be all over the place, but at least can give some idea</p>
<p>Some are giving suggested merit awards without asking for stats or without considering that their scholarships are competitive.</p>
<p>Some are showing “extra grants” (likely SEOG) that aren’t assured. A student recently posted that his NPC showed that he’d get nearly $10k in grants, but he ONLY got his Pell Grant of $5500. So, his NPC was likely suggesting that he’d get full SEOG ($4k), but the didn’t get that.</p>
<p>I started a thread a while back to try to catalog NPC’s that collect stats and estimate merit aid based on the stats collected. Unfortunately there have only been a small number of contributions to date:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1346342-net-price-calculators-include-merit-aid.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1346342-net-price-calculators-include-merit-aid.html</a></p>
<p>another “trick” I’m now seeing on some NPCs is giving “ranges of aid”.</p>
<p>For example… (this is from a public, and the family income was $70k, family of 2, 1 in college (single parent household) </p>
<p>COA…$26,XXX</p>
<p>Grants and scholarships (without asking stats): … $2,000 - $18,000</p>
<p>Loans…$24,XXX - $8,XXX</p>
<hr>
<p>I forget what it said here,…$00.00…$00.00
but something about final cost. (ha ha)</p>
<p>Ugh. This school does NOT give assured merit, nor is it really known for much merit at all!</p>
<p>Not only might this give false hope to a prospective student/family that their student might get a large award, but it also suggests that loans (likely Plus) will cover whatever is left. </p>
<p>In truth, it’s really saying that the family likely will have a highish EFC (maybe $18k-20k) and may get a $2k grant and the rest loans. Yes, maybe a 36 ACT/4.0 student might get some near-full ride, but those would be rare.</p>
<p>This is very misleading. The school is protecting itself from by providing these ranges, but as optimistic as some families/students can be, this is just bad.</p>