MHMdad: If you are looking in the geographic areas near UMass Amherst, there are many schools that meet 100% need. If your EFC is $24K on the FAFSA, it will most likely be considerably more on the CSS Profile which all those schools will require. But, OTOH, if a school determines your ability to pay say $30K, they will meet the rest and you could potentially make up the remainder through other means (loans, scholarships, etc). While I think UMass is a great school, if its only a matter of $5K, it might be worthwhile to at least look at other options?
@NEPatsGirl, you are right, we will look at our FA package at the end of april when we’ll receive it from other schools. We applied to other 6schools- 2state NH,CTand 4private. Four of them already accepted him with grants and scholarships, but still around $40k is left for us to pay. But UConn and Syracuse are RD,so need to wait till february.It just nice to have an exit strategy, if private schools will not give any additional scholarships and UMass is totally affordable and important that my son is happy with the UMass.
about that EFC number. I think that that number is NOT $amount you have to pay, but just a number for FA people to have and determine your FA eligibility. So maybe my actual contribution to our S college is 10k or who knows what, only FA people knows. ???
My oldest is at a OOS public. His first year the school gave him scholarships and tuition waivers that covered pretty much all of our costs OUTSIDE of our EFC. Out package included loans in order to cover our EFC should we have needed it, but we didn’t since we were able to pay it. The second year, he only had 1 scholarship and a tuition waiver so we were left to cover our EFC+ as the free money was not enough to cover everything.
To make sure you don’t have a bad case of sticker shock come March/April, assume worse case scenario - you will have to pay, at the minimum, your EFC at ALL schools. I’d run NPC again now that you have a EFC number and see what they say.
@MHMdad ~ options are great but so is UMass Amherst 