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<p>Really Off Topic Alert!</p>
<p>I’ve given our kids different advice. People who are going to raise their kids up to be responsible, productive, generous members of society should have larger families than the now typical 2 kids. </p>
<p>Every time you see an interview with some guy in prison, he’ll say he has 4 kids or 6 kids or something like that.</p>
<p>We have 3…wish we had a few more.</p>
<p>Now back to your regularly scheduled financial aid discussion. :-)</p>
<p>[FinAid</a> | Calculators | Quick EFC Calculator Results](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid)</p>
<p>In an effort to direct Junior High parents to a quick and accurate first pass at the Minimum EFC, what is the opinion of this panel of this site?</p>
<p>I’m going to recommend that our school’s website add a page about college planning. I can edit the page. What do you think?</p>
<p>I mentioned the finaid site earlier. If you play around with it the site can clue you in on some variables. Play with the numbers. Ooch the ages up and down. Ooch the numbers up and down . Sometimes it moves a lot . Sometimes not so much. I remember a section on professional judgement or whatever it is called spelling out exactly what they can and can’t consider. Maybe xig knows where it is.</p>
<p>Sybbie had a great post a couple of years ago on the differences in Fafsa and Profile and why. I’ll try to dredge it up. She does a remarkable job explaining the need side.</p>
<p>Thanks for advice. </p>
<p>I’m PTA president at a Junior High with about 500 students. About 1/3 are on free/reduced lunch, 1/3 middle of the road, and 1/3 middle-high income. We live in a city where almost everyone sends their kids to public schools. With such a range of incomes and backgrounds, I’m looking for information that can inform those who have only a few minutes and limited interest in looking further, as well as providing a starting point for those who will launch into extensive study of the subject.</p>
<p>I liked this quick little calculator, but am very interested in knowing if it is fairly close to reality, in the experience of posters on this board. I’m also interested in promoting this knowledge to parents of younger students. I’m hoping by posting the link here, others might be encouraged to spread the word. </p>
<p>At the risk of creating addicts, I’m also thinking of posting a link to CC on our JH website. It’s sort of like telling them there’s no Santa Claus…</p>
<p>Think about how many kids I can responsibly afford? I’d be childless! OTOH, I would be lounging on a beach with a tall, cool drink as I check out the huge balance in my retirement account. Oh, and I would be wearing a bikini instead of the tummy control one piece suit, because I wouldn’t have the stress-induced belly fat.</p>
<p>A girl can dream …</p>
<p>(AH, but I would never trade my wonderful offspring for such nonsense)</p>
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<p>True by itself, but then they switch the rules in the middle of the game! </p>
<p>When I graduated from law school, interest on student loans was tax deductible. Interest rates at the time were in the high teens. It made a lot of sense to consolidate my 3% loans with my 8% loans and pay them off at 7% over 20 years; after all, when would we ever see 7% money again? Well, not too far down that road, the interest was no longer tax deductible, and interest rates fell. What a stupid idea that was! </p>
<p>When my d was a baby, there was no such thing as a 529 plan. We were told to save money in her name for college, which would have no effect on financial aid. Then the rules changed and we had to figure out how to change our savings plan to accommodate. We’re the kind of parents who said, Go where you want and we’ll figure it out. So with lots of belt tightening, we’re following through on our promise to our daughter. </p>
<p>It would have been nice if the rules were spelled out and kept.</p>
<p>rr, it’s not that bad for what it does but you have to give them definitions. What is “income”? What is a “business”? Do you live on the farm or ranch? What are “other assets”?</p>
<p>Armed with some definitions I got close to what our number really was using this calculator.</p>
<p>I think you have to be prepared for unexpected changes in your kids’ educational path. The cost of high school for my kids greatly exceeded what we expected. Yes, some of it was choices we made, but there were some factors that really were not expected. We chose to still help our kids go to private colleges, but it all altered the financial landscape for our family.</p>
<p>[FinAid</a> | Calculators | Expected Family Contribution (EFC) and Financial Aid](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Expected Family Contribution (EFC) Calculator - Finaid)
I would recommend using this url as it lets you do the federal and institutional methods. My EFC was nearly to the dollar of what the Federal method shows. The institutional method is more like what the CSS profile would ask. However, each school can do with the FAFSA and CSS numbers as they wish. There is nothing set in stone about what aid you will get aside from eligibility for Pell grants. <a href=“http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/P0801Attach2008paysched2.pdf[/url]”>http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/P0801Attach2008paysched2.pdf</a></p>
<p>All freshman are eligible for a (un)subsidized stafford loan of 3500. How Perkins loans is distributed is up to the school. Not all schools give all students the full 4000.</p>
<p>I have given a couple of talks on financial aid at my kids’ high school, and I point people to three calculators. One is at FinAid, but it’s the one sueinphilly suggests - the longer version, not the quick one. I like FinAid’s calculator because it has good explanations of the questions and links to other places on the site where you can find out more. FinAid is such a great site that it’s good for people to start using it - then they can start jumping around and find out about savings, loans, whatever. </p>
<p>The second calculator I like is at the College Board site. It also offers a federal and institutional method EFC. Since the federal methodology is public, as long as you cover the same questions, any calculator should get the same answer. The third calculator worth knowing about is the FAFSA 4caster. This one sometimes makes people nervous because it asks for identifying information - name and social security number. It’s good to use in the fall of senior year, since it gives people a jump start on the real FAFSA by transferring the 4caster data after January 1.</p>
<p>I’m giving a talk to junior (and I hope sophomore) parents in a couple of weeks. This thread has so many useful points - especially about setting expectations. When I talked to senior parents last fall, I made the mistake of going too deep into the details of how to compute the EFC and how to research colleges’ financial aid statistics, and I think people just got lost and didn’t take away the big important messages. I think people do need to know the details, but they need to be really solid on why they need to know first.</p>
<p>I found the long FinAid calculator (both IM and Fed) to be right on the money 
about our EFC. It was a huge help in running possible scenarios for the future to see what effect that would have on aid.</p>
<p>Riverrunner, my 16 year old S often lets me know how ticked he is that parents “lie” to kids about S. Claus. He tells me he’ll never forgive me (for making him one excited little boy?!), and that he won’t do that (to the kids he says he’ll never have!). So, maybe it IS a good thing to tell your JH parents the equivalent of “there is no SC” … it is better that they know now, rather than being angry at being “lied to” later.</p>
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<p>Geez…all I did was go to work and you all put 5 pages of posts on this thread.</p>
<p>Re: the above quote…please…the GC’s have enough on their plates dealing with college selection and ideas about that. They are ill prepared to deal with the ins and outs of financial aid…especially when it comes to family income and assets, different formulas used for computing need based aid (for those Profile Schools), and the complications of divorced families, remarried parents, business owners, property owners and the like. </p>
<p>I went to a finaid presentation at our high school. The G department hired a “professional” in the area of finaid. She politely told the group that “even for Profile schools” if all you wanted was the federal aid, you only had to do the FAFSA. I almost puked on my shoes. Both of my kids attend Profile schools and it was very clear…the Profile was REQUIRED for the school to process the financial aid application. Period. Maybe that varies at some places…but it’s not everywhere.</p>
<p>I’m with Cur. I’ve been posting on this forum for a while. I tried this year to post a friendly thread about preparing for financial aid, and asked others to add to it. It has a lot of good things to consider. AND these should be considered as you are teasing out the college application list too.</p>
<p>Every year there have been the “gee I got lousy aid” threads, and the “if I miss the deadline, will it affect my aid” threads, and the “my parents won’t pay for me threads”, the “I can’t afford my ED school” thread…and my personal favorite “I live is state A…and but I’m independent and want to have instate tuition in State B.” Oh..I almost forgot about the “my kid got a $10,000 scholarship to Wellesley” (or any of the other need based only schools). </p>
<p>The trouble is…people believe what they want to believe. And as has been pointed out here numerous times…there is a “my kid will be the exception” notion. </p>
<p>In some ways, I think we’re preaching to the choir on this thread. Most of us have been through this process, and we represent a lot of ways of dealing with the costs of college these days.</p>
<p>To be honest…I’m thrilled that this month, I passed the half way mark on my daughters tuition! Someday I’m getting those new kitchen counters!!!</p>
<p>riverrunner: I think Calreader is onto something. You don’t want to overwhelm parents with too much information, especially if they are predisposed to believe everything will magically be all right. You might make it too tempting for them to discount good information because there is simply too much of it to process. Perhaps a few cautionary tales would be in order, real scenarios to which they can relate. They may then sit up and take notice of what else you have to say. You are to be commended for taking some action to help the next few crops of applicants. </p>
<p>BTW, kelsmom, my HS senior is still angry at me for lying to her about Santa. She trusted that I would always tell her the truth, and I let her down. There has to be SOME grist for the therapist’s mill, I tell her!!</p>
<p>GREAT idea, jnsq! I can still put the longer and better finaid calculator at the bottom (thanks sueinphilly), but three case studies would probably pique interest in this topic better than slogging through something that looks (and is) somewhat like a tax form…</p>
<p>and my kids feel the same way about Santa Claus. Time to pull off the beard.</p>
<p>How accurate are the calculators in determining EFC’s of the non custodial parents?</p>
<p>Madville…there is no EFC for the non-custodial parent only. The non-custodial parent’s income and assets are factored into the financial aid equation at schools that use the Profile (or their own finaid form that may request non-custodial parent info). That info is then used to compute what the school feels the family can contribute.</p>
<p>If your kid applies to a FAFSA only school…the non-custodial parent info isn’t reported at all.</p>
<p>Another issue with having the GC’s do too much with the financial aid is that I would NEVER go to my towns GC with my taxes in my hand to have them help me with anything complicated. I know there are organizations in my state that will help people fill out forms and explain what things mean if you’re having trouble, and I would much rather do that than sit down with the GC at the local high school. Small town, you know?</p>
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<p>I would assume that a significant portion of those that are on CC have incomes that limit them with need based FA if at all. For the other groups that may have qualified for Pell or are in divorced situations, I’m curious to see how they have fared with regards to FA. Personally, the Profile and selective school IM’s have fared very well for my S with regards to his FA packages. Not to gloat, for families such as ours, there has been a FA fairy. The state U option wasn’t comparable at all, and it is a FAFSA only. I understand most publics have different financial considerations but, even at a selective OOS public, the FA was outstanding.</p>
<p>timely: LOL!</p>
<p>My H says a co-worker always gives a speech to the well-employed and newly-married, telling them they should have lots of little taxpayer citizens to offset the people who are having lots of non-taxpayer and tax-USER offspring. :D</p>