<p>Bella…how about if you think about colleges you might like for some reason. Then run the net price calculator. While price might be a factor in your choice, I’m not sure searching for colleges with your price is a good means of beginning your search.</p>
<p>OR if you give folks here an idea of your price point, and your geographic preferences…and some areas of study that interest you…maybe folks can give you some suggestions.</p>
<p>On other threads, you mention that you are interested in applying to colleges with a $50k cost per year. Answer this question first…how much can your parents contribute annually for your college costs? Do any of these colleges offer guaranteed merit aid for your stats? Have you run any net price calculators? Can your parents pay what these are suggesting they will be asked to pay?</p>
<p>Forget averages! You want to deal with YOUR financial situation!</p>
<p>My Parents would pay @ 20K
I don’t know how to tell if the colleges would offer any guaranteed merit aid.
I have run few NPCs and it came back with price higher than 45K</p>
<p>You are right averages are not much helpful. I thought I would filter colleges by what average student pays and then run each school’s NPC and I thought that should be within 10% but it is not.</p>
<p>The strategy I described is for identifying places that would be affordable without aid. </p>
<p>If your parents will pay 20k, and if you will borrow the maximum federal loan each year, your budget would be 25,500 for freshman year. In many states, that would cover the cost of at least some of the public four year universities.</p>
<p>Bella, if your parents can pay $20,000 a year, and you then take the Direct Loan for $5500, you would likely be able to pay for any of your instate public universities. You might want to start by looking at those.</p>
<p>If your parent contribution on a bunch of Net Price Calculators is in the $45,000 a year range, it sounds like you may not qualify for need based aid at most schools.</p>
<p>If your SAT/ACT score and GPA are significantly high, you might qualify for merit aid at some schools. Did you check the thread at the top of this forum for guaranteed merit aid? Do you qualify for any of those?</p>
<p>Bella, there are only about 30 or so colleges that guarantee to meet full financial need for all accepted students. They are amongst the most competitive colleges for admissions in the country. So…you would have to get accepted at one of these schools…do you have a VERY high ACT/SAT score and a VERY high GPA? </p>
<p>Other colleges will not likely meet your full need. This means that the $25,000 is the LEAST amount your parents will have to pay. More than likely it will be more than that.</p>
<p>With a calculated family contribution of $25,000, your only guaranteed federally funded need based aid would be a $5500 Direct Loan.</p>
<p>If the net price calculators say your net cost will be $25,000, then you could likely get aid in excess of that $25k.</p>
<p>If your parents are divorced, are self employed or own a business, own rental properties or real estate other than your home, the NPC will likely NOT give you an accurate net cost estimate.</p>
<p>What do you mean in Post 7…that you’ve run a NPC and have gotten $45,000?</p>
<p>Yes, 529s are reported as assets whether they’re in the student’s name or the parents’. In general they are treated as parent assets, but not always. For FAFSA they increase your EFC by 5.6% of the total amount in the 529. For Profile schools, you can try running the NPC with and without the 529 funds to see how much your EFC increases.</p>
<p>So many of you have asked me to run NPC for each individual schools since average net price is very vague. I have run NPC for few schools. What I noticed is they don’t ask your SAT/ACT score, your GPA etc so how are they figuring out what scholarship/merit aid etc you would get if any? How reliable is the net price then?</p>
<p>Only thing it takes into consideration is your parents income, assets.</p>
<p>I’m looking at couple of colleges in Texas and they have quite a difference in Instate and out of state tuition fees. Let’s say you get admission and you start going to school, for first year you will pay out of state tuition, do you pay instate tuition the following year as you may become resident of Texas after living there for a year, you will have postal address etc. The same rule will apply to any state.</p>
<p>Which schools did you run the NPC for? Some NPCs ask for stats and include merit, some don’t. At most schools, merit is competitive so there is no guarantee you will get it so it’s not included in the NPC. You would have to look at each school’s scholarship web page to see if there is any automatic merit for stats. There is a sticky thread at the top of this forum for large automatic merit awards.</p>
<p>I don’t think you have posted your stats, your state, your intended major or the kinds of schools you are interested in. With that info people here could give you more help in narrowing down the schools to look at.</p>
No & no. Most state schools have residency rules on the websites. If you read them, you’ll find it’s not easy (or impossible) to become in-state just because you go to school there for a year.</p>
<p>No, generally you can’t establish state residency while in the state for the purpose of education. Each state varies in their rules and even public colleges within a state can have different rules. While you are a dependent student for finaid your residency generally stays as where your parents live. Each school should have a webpage that explains how residency is determined. But it generally can’t be obtained while attending school.</p>
<p>No. Your residency is based on where your parents live and where THEY pay taxes. Having a poor student living in a state doesn’t contribute taxes to that state. </p>
<p>Bella…you keep making new threads. Just ask your latest questions in your existing thread.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help, I know you have been very helpful. Each query/question is different, If I put everything in one thread it will be very difficult for others to search.Sorry.</p>
<p>Since we have arrived at EFC, I ran the net price calculator link for the institutional method on the college board site, and ended up with a number of let’s say $20k after $1800 of student contribution. I have run probably 30 calculators with the same numbers, and I have yet to see one institution hit those numbers. Penn was closest, but they added in $3k of student contribution and the IM already had $1800 in there from the student. I have seen several “full-need” schools come in well over $30k. What is the point of an Institutional method calculator that doesn’t represent any institutions?</p>