<p>Received final package - covers 60% of tuition approx, I don 't understand. NMF, statistics at the top of the school … will talk to them definitely.
If not, as dd’s math teacher says: cry me a river, build me a bridge and get over it.
Fortunately, we have saved and the offer will allow us to pay with sacrifices but minimum debt. Thanks for
$15 hair cuts ;-)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Does the college guarantee more aid for NMSF? Does it guarantee to meet full financial need?</p>
<p>Are you looking to increase merit awards? </p>
<p>Or need based?</p>
<p>Well we have quite a few financial packages in now, but are still waiting for a few more. We cast a wide net because we knew that we would need to compare fiancial aid packages. I was surprised at some packages. I found that schools with higher endowments (factoring the number of students at each school, across the schools) did NOT translate into a better financial package. In fact our 3 best packages are from schools with lower endowments. You might think that they NEED to discount more to get students to matriculate, but I disagree with that. Schools that meet on average 92-95% of need did NOT beat schools that meet 75% of need in our case. 2 that meet 75% of need on average were safeties for our son, so perhaps preferential packaging played a role. One school that meets 85% of need on average, was one of our son’s best packages, and that was clearly a match school.</p>
<p>OK I have a whine. We have hardly heard a peep out of any of the FA offices at the schools where my D was accepted. I thought for sure we would hear something by now. To make a long story short, we started looking on her accounts on the schools’ websites to see if anything was posted and found a cryptic message on one that said she needed to call the office - no letter, no email was received stating this, just a short message on her account. So I emailed the office to find out that the Selective Service question was left blank on her FAFSA! Because of this one lousy question, her FA has been held up! Now I know I should have checked and double-checked her SAR, but come on! Someone could have emailed us and let us know a long time ago! I can understand if I left out financial info, but the Selective Service question? Geez, and she’s a female, which is very obvious by her name. To make it worse, I checked the second school’s site and sure enough, there’s another weird message in very small print, basically saying that the question was omitted. Now this school actually emailed D about a form that needed to be submitted, but they never said anything about a problem with her FAFSA. I swear that I answered that question when I did her FAFSA. Am I asking too much from these FA offices?? I submitted the FAFSA way back in the beginning of Feb. You’d think someone could have emailed D and let her know. </p>
<p>OK, my whine is over. I know, I know I should have double-checked the SAR and I did look it over, but I missed that little question.</p>
<p>The selective service thing is a huge problem for aid offices this year. Because of the layout of the FAFSA on the Web, many students are overlooking the gender question, and it is not mandatory … so students are submitting it without answering one way or the other. The students then are flagged if they didn’t answer selective service questions, which the girls don’t answer. The kicker is, we can’t “assume” the student is a girl. Schools are devising their own ways to deal with this. We like to have the student change the FAFSA. We can also get a copy of the student’s driver’s license & keep that on file. Other schools are choosing to use a form. You have a lot of company in this problem.</p>
<p>Many schools now communicate exclusively through the school’s student web portal, as yours is doing. Students MUST learn to monitor this … I know it’s hard to get used to it, but that is how it is. We will not email any email address other than the student’s school email address … and we post our outstanding requirements on the financial aid page on the web portal. Once students get the hang of it, it works well.</p>
<p>
kelsmom, does this start as soon as the student is admitted, or not until they matriculate?</p>
<p>(I ask because if my son has any “school email addresses” as of yet, I don’t think he is aware of it.)</p>
<p>nightchef, many schools assign a school email address when the student is admitted. Directions to access it would be included in the admission information. We encountered one school last year where the financial aid information was only posted to my daughter’s online account at the school; no hard copy was mailed to our home.</p>
<p>That’s how we do it, although for first time in college students, we send the first award letter to the home on paper - as well as the first letter requesting documents, if the student is chosen for verification. After that, it’s all school email.</p>
<p>When the student is admitted at my school, he is assigned an email address & told all communication will come via that account … so watch it closely. We also stress that whenever we talk to parents & students (info sessions, orientations, website info, publications, etc). We offer the option of having school email forwarded to the personal email account, which helps.</p>
<p>I have a high school senior. Getting him to see the importance of checking his college email/student portal is not easy! ;)</p>
<p>Thumper, we are looking at merit aid. I am totally puzzled on why the nmf award was only 2000 per year, they offer five full tuition to nmfs and the year I cold find data they had 15. Dd has great stats (way over top rank for school, it was actually a safety for her) and has a full tuition offer from a higher ranked university, I know I have to handle it diplomatically as it is her super top choice and if push comes to shove (and with additional sacrifices) we can do it.
Also, there is one more full tuition scholarship she is interviewing for but I thought nmf was her best chNce.
Well … at least we have 60%.</p>
<p>mpabon…good luck to your daughter. It does sound like she has gotten some great financial aid offers…if not perfect to this ONE top choice. If they only offer 5 of those NMF scholarships…this could be the (lean) year that no more than that are offered. I’ll keep my fingers crossed about the next interview. In the meantime, you have much to celebrate too with the offers she HAS gotten!!!</p>
<p>jym626 -</p>
<p>Bonuses are considered earned income - taxed at the same rate as a salary. The IRS is pretty strict on this.</p>
<p>I believe the strategy of the low salary-folowed-by-disbursement is to avoid the Soc sec payments. That is just wrong, IMO.</p>
<p>Perhaps some small business owners do it to avoid social security payments, not taxes, but many businesses with uneven sales do it because it is difficult to estimate profits. They wait until the end of the quarter or fiscal year because their earnings will determine their payout or bonus, if any. </p>
<p>And really, why should a small business owner have to pay social security on the profits of his or her own business? They are already paying the employer contribution for the folks who work for them, as well as a mountain of other taxes and fees.</p>
<p>kelsmom - the problem was that the first school didn’t send an email to my D’s school email address or any other email address. Since D is my third one going to college, I know to check the school email, which we did. They just didn’t let us know. We had to look at her account on the SISWEB, which they never actually told us to do. I am just familiar with how these things work since I work at a community college, so we looked there to check up on her financial aid status. Also, the message on the SISWEB just said to call the office, nothing about an error on her FAFSA. I did correct the FAFSA but they told me that they won’t get the correction for 2-3 weeks! This is the school that has been recruiting her heavily and has offered her some merit aid already, but this doesn’t make a great impression.</p>
<p>The second school actually took care of the matter themselves. My D’s financial aid counselor there is awesome and D is now leaning towards that school even more. Her FA counselor let me know that my D is ready to package and will get a letter during the first week of April. Also, this school emails my D all the time on her Gmail account, which is not a school account.</p>
<p>I understand that these FA offices are extremely busy right now, but if one school can take care of something like that, why couldn’t the other one? It’s just a little frustrating that the first school did not contact us so I could have taken care of the error sooner.</p>
<p>
Jym’s not talking about bonuses paid to an employee, she’s talking about those who are self employed and have an S corp who pay themselves a low salary and take the rest of the money in the form of dividends to avoid self employment costs.</p>
<p>Exactly correct, 3bm103. By paying oneself a small salary, they pay SS only on that small salary. They then later take funds as a distribution, avoiding the soc sec. payment. </p>
<p>There are a lot of small business owners in his country. I wholly agree that its hard to make ends meet and the financial burdeen is high (I am a small business owner), but I am also willing to pay the appropriate soc sec because that is the right thing to do. I dont write the laws, but I will follow them, even if begrugingly 
If soc security is going broke, these tactics dont exactly help matters…</p>
<p>jym actually called them “bonuses;” they are obviously distributions of profits. </p>
<p>Why exactly would a SBO be required to pay social security and fica on earnings? Most take a small salary because they want to wait and realize profits before taking a distribution. There’s nothing wrong with it - these are employers who already submit payroll taxes for their employees. It’s not a “loophole;” even the federal government understands that businesses are primarily in the business of making money first, not just keeping people in jobs and paying taxes.</p>
<p>There is a tipping point that occurs when these businesses are so heavily taxed that it no longer makes sense to continue the company and they shut down. Then, everybody loses.</p>
<p>To clarify, I believe I called them disbursements. They are distributions. Sorry for any confusion, but 3bm103 understood what I was trying to describe. </p>
<p>People are supposed to pay soc sec on their income. This is a strategy used by a lot of SBOs to avoid soc security payments-- paying themselves a low “salary” and then taking the rest of the $$ as a distribution. I was told by my accountant that IRS agents don’t look kindly at professionals who claim a salary lower than what they (the IRS agent) makes, but then take very large distributions. It is wrong.</p>
<p>Forgot to mention–
I trust my accountant, and she called this strategy of avoiding Soc sec payment “a smoking bomb under the car” . Ripe for an audit and ready to blow. Her words, not mine. She said it is a common red flag for audits of S or subS corps.</p>
<p>I’d like to add my whine to the listing</p>
<p>D has done her job and applied and was accepted to 5/6 schools(one pending, we’ll know April 1 at 5). She only applied to schools that were tops in her chosen major, and sadly, our state education system was zero help, so all but one are out of state, the one in state is private.</p>
<p>School A - after scholarships and grants costs $30K (actual)
School B - after scholarships and grants costs 20K(actual)
School C - after scholarships and grants costs 22K(estimate from their FA calculator)
School D - after scholarships and grants costs 20K(estimate from their FA calculator)
School E - after scholarships and grants costs 30K (estimate from their FA calculator)
School F - We’ll know after April 1</p>
<p>Our EFC was set at 10K. Fortunately D has 1 year in savings, and in that regard we are so fortunate. But what a pile of debt to take on.</p>