<p>Some of my selected colleges are within this range, but I don't understand what this means? Does it mean that it covers 95% of the total cost? I understand that the CSS Profile must be filled out. BTW, my EFC is 0, and I will be an entering freshmen for the Fall 2015. </p>
<p>It means, on average, 95% of financial need, on average is met, as determined by the institution. It does not mean you will have 95% of your need met.</p>
<p>There are better statistics for financial aid, for example see <a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=179[quote]Freshmen”>Bucknell University Tuition | CollegeData
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<p>When you are dealing with need based financial aid, really all that matters is what they award YOU. Averages don’t mean much. All schools have a net proce calculator on their site. Put your financials into the NPCs and see what you get. At least you will have a ball park estimate of aid at the schools.</p>
<p>@thumper1 @Ctesiphon I’m not saying that I will have 95% of my cost covered, though I worded my OP wrong, I just want to know what does this mean? So if I need $50,000 to pay for college, on average, will it be 95% met? Basically almost the same as saying covering 95% of total cost. </p>
<p>The average isn’t 95% of total cost -it’s 95% of need. Need = cost -expected contribution/what a school thinks you can pay.</p>
<p>Let’s say a school costs $60,000, and your institutional EFC is $8,000. That means your need would be $52,000.</p>
<p>IF they were to meet 95% of your need (which they might not), they would give you $49,400 in aid (a combination of grants and direct loans/work-study).</p>
<p>Averages for amount of need met are very skewed. One student might get 90%, while another might get 40%.</p>
<p>It’s better to look at how many of the students get their need fully met. The chart above, for example, says that 89.9% of students have their need met. Those are good odds, but that leaves about 10% of students whose need is not met 100%. Question is: how do you know which side they’ll put you on?</p>
<p>The stat can’t be trusted.</p>
<p>First of all, the stat only reflects those who enrolled. It doesn’t reflect the aid pkgs of those who got lousy pkgs and then had to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>Also…if the school is loaded with rather affluent students with highish EFCs, then it’s easy to meet 100% of their need with a small student loan, so that could cause misleading details.</p>
<p>I would imagine that those with high determined need probably do not get 90% of their need met.</p>
<p>For instance…if a school costs $60k and the student has an EFC of $5k, then he has a need of $55k…which is a LOT of NEED. He may get awarded $40k, which is a lot of money, but not 90% of need… So, he’d have to pay $20k per year.</p>
<p>Since colleges can define “need” however they want, the “meet __% of need” stat is not particularly useful.</p>
<p>Use the Net Price Calculator at the college web site to get an estimate for you. But note a few things:</p>
<p>a. If your parents are divorced, be sure to include both parents’ income and assets, including the income and assets of subsequently-married spouses, unless the school explicitly says that the non-custodial parent information is not used, or it uses only FAFSA (not CSS Profile).</p>
<p>b. If parental income includes real estate or small business income, do another run using revenue or gross income before work or business related deductions to get a “worst case” estimate, since many colleges add back these deductions to income.</p>
<p>c. If you have siblings overlapping college with you, run scenarios for when an older sibling graduates while you are in college, and when a younger sibling enters college while you are in college.</p>
<p>It doesn’t mean what you think it means. You may get 100 pct of your need met or you may be ‘gapped’ and only get half of your need met. DIFFERENT STUDENTS WILL GET DIFFERENT PACKAGES* depending on how much they want that student. However, that is a pretty high percent so the likelihood of your need being met is reasonable. Understand that you will have costs even if your EFC is zero. They may likely put a student loan of 5,500 in your package. They will likely put work/study. They may well assume you can contribute a student summer earnings of 3k.Maybe there will be a small gap of 2,000 that they don’t meet. So run the Net Price Calculator for each school you are interested. Understand that most schools will not put health insurance in. So if you don’t have insurance that is acceptable coverage then that will cost you another 1,200 to 3,000 a year to purchase.</p>
<p>So you may have a 95% meets need, but your cost could be up to 12,000 + insurance one place and it could be 7,000 plus insurance at another place or 25,000 cost at yet another place…All those may meet 95% or need for accepted students on average. So you have to find out what they will offer YOU and you will never know for sure until you see the page after acceptance. You will have to use info from the calculator and hope they do you as good or maybe better when actual package comes.</p>
<ul>
<li>read this about how most schools that don’t meet need use Preferential packaging. excellent and honest explanation</li>
</ul>
<p><a href=“The Real Deal on Financial Aid | Muhlenberg College”>http://www.muhlenberg.edu/main/admissions/therealdealonfinancialaid/</a></p>
<p>“Preferential packaging” is basically unadvertised merit scholarships hidden in what is nominally need-based financial aid packages (used for the same purpose that advertised merit scholarships are used for, namely to attract students the school considers desirable).</p>
<p>From the school’s perspective, doing it this way avoids committing to awarding a stated number of merit scholarships of a stated amount. But it also means that some students will see a poor financial aid estimate (without the “preferential packaging”) in the net price calculator and not bother to apply.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus I have run NPC. My parents are separated not divorce or married. I don’t know anything about my dad and I don’t mind him. b) it does not apply to my mom. She makes very little. c)I have one sibling and I have enter the predicted age of her when she enters college on the NPC. </p>
<p>@mom2collegekids @BrownParent Syracuse and some other school of my selection, is by far with the best looking package. Or I might be interpreting this stats wrong.
Here’s SU’s stats, and this seems to be the best of all colleges I’m applying to. I will the NPC when I understand what they’re asking for, because my mother has no clue.
<a href=“BigFuture College Search”>BigFuture College Search;
<p>BTW, I’m thinking in terms if I was accepted to a college. </p>
<p>If you just look at the math in the sample Syracuse states that the avg financial aid package is $34,700
the cost of tuition and fees alone is $41,866 . just looking at these numbers the avg package is 82.84% of the tuition. We have not even addressed room and board or the total cost of attendance:
the estimated cost of attendance is $59,000. The 34,700 only covers 63% of the cost of attendance.</p>
<p>If you click the tab-financial aid by the numbers you will see that out of the people who applied for aid, only 46% had their full need met.</p>
<p><a href=“BigFuture College Search”>BigFuture College Search;
<p>@sybbie719 That’s almost half of the 15,000 undergraduates that get full need met. Why is that? Is there EFC 000000? Mines is, I don’t see why I wouldn’t be included. </p>
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<p>The bad news is that many schools will want his financial information.</p>
<p>What about merit aid @barcakid39: do you have a shot at merit money based on your ACT/SAT/GPA, etc?</p>