Sorry for the underwhelming aid and bad timing, @tx1707.
If you want to try, maybe load up your kid with financial info and get him to reason through it. When he feels ready, have him contact FA. I’ve seen several students try to do this, and it actually works out sometimes if the issue is legitimate.
**Personal Experience: **
Got accepted to Macalester and Richmond (chosen Richmond), and both ended up costing lower than the NPC estimate. NPC was around $2K over for Macalester and Richmond’s shifting student contribution puts it about $3K less than Mac over 4 years.
If relative to EFC, Macalester for me was $7K EFC above and Richmond starts at $5K above EFC.
It was a big shock for me as well. I was thankful I figured out the 100% need problem in the winter of D’s junior year. Now we are primarily considering automatic merit colleges.
Our cars are 10-15 years old. Mine has over 200K miles. Our house is smallish, paid for but older and not updated. Single family modest income. No cable. Thrift store shopping. Just saying, I’m in the same place and I totally understand your shock and pain.
It helped me to have someone here just say that it’s still always better to have money than not (thinking in terms of 100% need).
Right now I’m trying to think in terms of half full instead of half empty.
For me what’s hard to deal with is knowing we could manage it somehow for one kid, but what about the next two who will need more support?
@MACmiracle Thanks for sharing the thoughts and your situation which is kind of similar. I agree with most here and I get that parents are responsible for their children’s education. As it is, education in this country is with very inflated price tags and then colleges giving some grant does not really add up. There are several schools who genuinely consider your situation and give you financial aid accordingly. My only intent to start this thread was to let parent and student be aware of such schools who want to make sure that you home equity is eroded significantly, your bank account is broken and you need to work several more years before you can afford to send your 2nd child to school and living under debt.
OP: you can look for threads regarding schools that are still taking college applications. It seems to me that I have heard that schools that do not completely fill up, many of them quality schools, continue to take applications. Hopefully you can find some that will suit your child and be more affordable than what is currently on the table. Good luck!
@tx1707, my D goes to Vandy (junior). Is that one of the schools that you feel didn’t meet 100% need?
I will tell you that in year 1 we got amazing financial aid, better than the NPC predicted. She got the CV scholarship, which helped a lot, plus they gave us grant aid.
Year two, unbeknownst to us or them, they messed up our aid. We still got good aid that year, but a little worse than year 1. Our income and other financial didn’t change much.
Year three hit like a ton of bricks. We had a second D start school that year, so we expected our grant aid to increase for Vandy D. Nope. Our bill basically DOUBLED. When D called to ask what was going on, that’s when they realized they made an error in year two. Apparently, because younger S left private school to be home schooled, our bill should have tripled in year 2. Since they didn’t catch it, they graciously (sarcasm) didn’t make us pay what we should have. However, year 3 was correct and there was nothing we could do about it.
So we have Child #3 starting college this fall. They told us last year that there would be NO increase in grant aid due to having a third kid in college. None. Not sure why our EFC, according to them, is exactly the same with 3 kids in college vs. 2 (again, no change in finances), but they make the rules.
Once you pay your full EFC for the first child, the EFC for the second child is zero during the time they are both in school. I know, small comfort. But we did have a sizable reduction in cost for our second while our first was a senior.
A student who is accepted at Vandy or Rice would likely get a full tuition scholarship and maybe even a full ride at the University of Alabama. Of course U of A lacks the prestige factor. Prestige is very expensive.
@grtd2010, thanks for your advice. Honestly I did not ask for advice since we have great options in few top schools who are willing to help us. We are covered. This thread is not to ask for help or sympathy.
Only reason I started this thread was a place for families and to come and check if the school they are applying to meets 100% demonstrated needs reasonably or not and that’s it. And I say this because few of such schools have shown me huge difference in their EFC calculations. I am not angry, upset or out of options but was little bit disappointed with one school. I would update the thread later when all decisions are concluded with the school. My intent was only that if you applied to 5 schools promising 100% demonstrated needs are met by them. When you receive your aid packet, one of the schools sends to EFC 20K more than other 4 schools. Is this a school meeting 100% need? This is the kind of schools that require listing in this thread. I hope you get my point and start thinking from a different angle. Please stop worrying about me.
I am sure you have great options. Different schools may calculate need differently than you. We have acceptance to UT-Austin (CNS,CS) and wait listed at Rice.
Every school has a different formula that they use to indicate need- that’s why one school may be more than another. I am glad you have affordable options.
@tx1707 You say you did not want/ask for advice and you are not angry, upset or out of options…that you started the thread so families to come and check out the schools that are not honoring the 100% need - However you never mentioned in your original post or in your followups which schools you were refering to, the level of aid that you expected, and the level of aid offered. I don’t see how this is helpful to future students or families.
If you want to put it out there for people to use as a reference in the future then you would need to go first and model what you think the helpful thread should include. You didn’t include the schools, their offers, your financials, your child’s stats, etc… or anything that could be useful to help those in the future. Instead it sounds like a rant, perhaps justified but unknown without more information. In the absence of useful information, people are trying to be sympathetic, supportive, and helpful – to you and also future readers who may be able to prevent the disappointment that you are experiencing. That would be helpful.
We found that home equity really affected our package very differently among schools.
I found this out by putting in different values at different schools.
Alas, it is what it is (CA, Bay Area)
@tx1707
I agree with @bamamom2021 on post #34, it will help if you post the name of the schools and the level of aid you received. Otherwise, we all knew that need is determined by the school.
@annamom Yes, I hope that I have no school to report once the matter is closed either way with the school. For now, I have to wait for the school to check their numbers and get back to us. Lots of information asked by @bamamom2021 is not relevant for this thread for example “your financials”, “your child’s stats” etc.
Model of this thread is simple - You apply to 10 schools, one of the schools send you an EFC which is abnormally above other schools. The school sending you an abnormal EFC can be provided here. If all offers are more or less same then it is what it is. Also no one should ask about other persons financials here I guess?
The schools that meet need do it according to their formulas. They tell us, what our need is, and they can’t fund everyone with a full ride.
The schools expect the parents to fund most costs of their own kids. We didn’t expect the costs of colleges to rise so dramatically when we started our 529. It was a shocker. The “meets needs” schools actually do if you use the NPC.
We are in the same position as @MACmiracle, @Belle315, and @dragonmom3. Our 1999 Camry just got a flat and, fortunately, that Costco lifetime warranty covered the cost of repair for free!
If our kids receive any funds, we’re actually happy.
OP, you fail to be accepting delivery from many of these posts. The EFC and resulting Net Price will definitely vary from school to school. That is well established. We all agree with you that this happens all the time.
A better question would be this: “Which schools’ actual FA package varied significantly from what you were expecting after running the schools’ NPCs (net price calculators)?” And a discussion of ‘financials’ would definitely be appropriate to best understand ‘why the difference’.
It’s very tricky to name specific schools because EFC determinations are very personalized. In or case, FASFA only schools yield better EFCs than CSS schools. However, the best EFC I got was from Princeton at $30. The worst was Lafayette which was not too far off our annual income. I also got a great EFC from Stockton University, but it was such a simlpfied NPC that I don’t trust it.
@tx1707 There link above explains why Dickinson gave us an EFC close to FASFA level, while others were higher.
In any case, even FASFA only EFCs can be too high for people like me who have no retirement funds to count on and younger kids to get through school. Sure, I could sell my house but that wouldn’t get them all through college and our income isn’t enough to get an apartment in out town or any town nearby for six people.
The only answer for us is Big MAC at less selective schools, which at average priced unis can bring the bill down below FASFA EFC levels.
