I promise I’m not trying to be a downer. You are a good student and your test score is decent.
You are going to have a VERY difficult time if you only focus on these schools. Unfortunately, almost all of them are extremely competitive. Please read this:
Of that group, I think you might have a shot at Berea or College of the Ozarks. The rest are ALL very high reaches. They are incredibly competitive even for students with 4.0 GPAs, which many, many kids will have, and 1500+ SAT scores.
Rethink your list. For example, U Alabama is quite famous here for automatic merit awards for people with your stats. As mentioned, it would be best to create a post in the search and selection forum. You will get other people responding, in addition to those on this thread.
I agree…this is an issue. You need to figure out a way to go to college and fully fund it. You have been given some good suggestions about community colleges. I’ll add a couple more:
Work full time and take college classes part time. Yes, it will take longer, but if that’s what you have to do to fund your education, you won’t be the first to do so.
Find a job with a place that provides tuition assistance…I think UPS, Target, Starbucks might still be doing this.
Get a two year degree from a community college that can lead to a job…there are lots of options but you have to see what interests you.
Consider trade schools. We absolutely need competent, smart and good tradespeople on the electrical, HVAC, plumbing, etc trades. These are all very good careers.
It’s better to come off as a downer than to be unrealistic. That list certainly isn’t comprehensive, though; Reed covers 100% of demonstrated financial need but appears nowhere on the list. But as has been made clear in this thread, even if I were to be accepted into a school that covers 100% of financial need, my aid would likely still not be enough if the NPCs I’ve filled out gave me incorrect results.
I’ve already looked at UAlabama, but if I’m remembering correctly, I still would have some amount of tuition because I don’t think I qualified for a full ride. That said, I don’t expect to be able to go to college without paying anything.
At this point, you are saying the net price calculators are saying 1 1/2 to 2 times the $10,000 amount. Where will that money come from? You will be expected to pay your calculated family contribution. And it’s more than you can take out in loans in your name only. Will your parents co-sign loans or take loans out for you? If not, your limits are:
I’ve worked 40hrs/week at minimum wage this summer and will continue to work 20-ish-hrs/week through my senior year. I’m paying off my car and after that all of my money will go into savings, so I will have money to pay for some amount of tuition. Assuming I could work the same amount that I do now through college, I could make $15,000/yr. I could easily cover my COA, then, with federal loans + my income and still have money for my own needs (gas, etc.). Plus my parents would still support me in some ways financially (like, I don’t think they’d let me go hungry if I were in a really bad spot), they just won’t put anything towards my college tuition.
But the issue is that everyone here seems to be in agreement that the $10,000 number is inaccurate, so even with all of the above being possible, my ability to afford the COA at pretty much any college not offering merit aid would be significantly hindered.
Your take home pay won’t be that amount. You need to work with the amount you will actually be bringing home.
Plus…any money you have in the bank when you file your financial aid forms will be considered assets, and some of your income will also reduce need based aid.
You have to look at all of the moving parts…not just the income but all the other things too.
I think you can work this out IF a college comes in at a price that is reasonable.
You reported checking the NPCs of some schools with generous need-based aid and getting a range $14K/year as a low and $17K as the average. With a straightforward family financial situation, those numbers are likely to be very accurate.
I very much doubt you are going to find a better net COA at schools that offer merit aid. The NPC numbers you are showing are the equivalent of getting a full tuition merit scholarship and only having to pay for room & board.
When you you think about the combo of federal loans and working during the school year and summers that would enable you to afford that net annual cost, keep in mind that work-study job income, while taxed by the IRS, isn’t counted as student income for financial aid purposes. Of course, that benefit only kicks in later, since financial aid calculations look back two years prior for income.
As I think was mentioned upthread, you should run the NPCs twice —once with two students in college (you plus your sibling) and once with just you. The “just you” will be more accurate for FAFSA-only colleges and might be more accurate for CSS profile colleges. FAFSA schools will stop considering multiple kids in college and CSS profile schools might or might not.
That being said, the NPCs haven’t been updated for any of the upcoming FAFSA changes so all such estimates will need to be re-run once they are updated later in the year.
My take home amount is a little less than that. I get paid twice monthly. When I was in school this year I my net was $1,000/month. This summer my net has been about $1,300/month. So if you roughly estimate that summer is three months, my income is around $13,000. And yeah, I know it’ll raise my EFC.
Like others have said, it seems like CC and then transfer is my best option (unless I can get really good merit scholarships).
My sister I think got a full ride to UNM but she ended up not committing because of family issues. She ended up going to the same CC I mentioned having free tuition to and going through a radiology technician program.
My sister didn’t go to a uni. She went to a community college and she isn’t pursuing anything after that. My plans aren’t concrete at this point, but I’m considering graduate school, for which I’d have to have a bachelor’s degree and not an associate’s, so I’d have to take somewhat of a different route.
But as I mentioned upstream…getting an associates in something where you could work and make good money (radiology techs make good money, for example) could put you in the position of being able to pay for completing a four year degree. Yes, it will take longer…but it’s at least worth thinking about.
@AustenNut any suggestions for places this student could get a full tuition scholarship…or more?
I don’t think that the net price calculators at the colleges are necessarily inaccurate. If it is a CSS school that ends up not changing its formula much next year, the NPC be accurate. And 2024-2025 financial aid at those colleges might end up being more or less the same as this year despite the FAFSA changes. However, I still don’t think you will be able to pay the 14-22k without your parents helping at all. The schools are assuming that your parents are contributing at least the amount that they determine as parent contribution. A job is great, but you are overestimating how much you can make as a full time college student.
Also, as I understand it, you will not be able to borrow a subsidized loan if the college provides grants that “meet” your need based on the COA. You can borrow unsubsidized loans but unlike a subsidized loan, you will be responsible for the interest from the time the loan is disbursed. Finally, as has already been pointed out the most generous meets-need schools are all high reaches for everyone. You can’t count on being admitted to one of the schools that estimated 14-22k
All of that said, I also wanted to point out that impact of the FAFSA changes is not automatically worse for families with multiple kids in college. For many families, the new formula will result in a higher number but for at least some, it will be lower. For example, I anticipate that my kids’ individual SAI will be considerably less in the Fall of 2024 with 2 kids in college compared to this fall when I’ll only have one in college. In other words, your family could end up being more similar to example#5 (or #3) than to example#2 in this case study document. https://www.nasfaa.org/uploads/documents/SAI_Case_Studies.pdf
The new FAFSA formula does still take into account household size; it sounds like you are a household of 5 (with three dependents). The new formula just doesn’t take into account the number in college so the SAI will not be split the way that the EFC gets split between college students. So if the new FAFSA formula spits out a much smaller SAI number (as my kids will) then you may not be hurt by the change (it is at least possible that 2SAI < 1EFC). On the other hand, if you are applying to meets need schools, most will be using the CSS not the FAFSA anyway and I think the point is moot.
I’m not counting on being admitted to a college that meets need – I will either get into one or I won’t, and if I don’t then my options are community college or potentially a college that offers significant merit scholarships. However, I’ll only go to one of the latter options if my COA ends up being close to a college that meets demonstrated need. I really don’t have other options.
Thanks for the info on the FAFSA changes. I guess I’ll see how that pans out in October.
ETA: My plan has been to apply early decision to a college that meets need and hope that I get accepted. If that didn’t pan out, then I was betting on ED2. (And yeah, I know you should only apply ED to schools you really are sure you want to attend and can afford. That’s why I’ve only looked at schools that meet full need.) If that didn’t pan out, then my plan was community college because I didn’t see another option. I’ve known that some schools offer significant merit aid, but I was mostly considering them a last resort because all of the major ones people reference are in the deep south (notably, Alabama) and are places I actively want to avoid. I’m now looking for other options that aren’t in areas that I have an aversion to.
I think I got a 1340 on the NMSQT. So unfortunately not a semi-finalist. My school is very underfunded and they just kind of sprang the test on us a few weeks before we took it and never even brought up studying for it – or told us what it would be like. I was never told that I should study for the SAT either (and I never had a real geometry class) which is why I didn’t do so well on the math section. And why I intend to retake it.