<p>I don’t know any school that guarantees to mee 100% of need as defined by FAFSA. That is, meeting need as: COA minus FAFSA EFC. There may be some specialty schools that do, and there are the militiary academies and such that pay for just about everyone, but off hand I can’t name one “regular” university/college that makes that guaranteed. NY state schools tend to meet full Tuition and Fees costs for those who have the need from the FAFSA formula, but with their low tuitions, after they use PELL, TAP (state money), federal loans, SEOG, workstudy, it’s not like they have to come up with very much for very many students. Which is why our state schools tend to be very heavily regional with a lot of commuters. Living expenses are high, as are “discretionary” costs, so many kids live and home and commute. </p>
<p>So there are a number of state schools that have a lot of commuters that do tend to meet full need of the tutiion and fees component. When it comes to room and board, that 's a whole other story. </p>
<p>A person has living expenses everywhere, and a question that arises is why anyone should be paying them for a student to get a “sleep away” experience when there are colleges within commuting distance. Few expect student to go to a "sleep away’ setting for k-12, but it has become an expectation of sorts for college. This poses a lot of problems for a lot of families. They’ve absorbed the cost of the students living there. Yes, the utility bills will be lowered, but rent and mortgage will still stay the same unless the family downsizes in that respect. So families have to come up with the money for the student to live elsewhere and eat,not to mention meet the everyday costs of going to school and living. Gotta wash up, wash clothes, need certain supplies, including school related ones like books, paper, computer often. </p>
<p>The most generous school, tend to have their own definition of need, and often start out with a required student contribution for all students regardless of EFC. So an EFC zero student may still be asked to come up with, say $2-4K. And then need is defined by the school, not the family, student or the FAFSA. If there is a NCP in the picture, the financial are needed from that parent as well, even if that parent refuses to pay or give the numbers. For that matter even custodial parents can balk and refuse to do the same. IF schools gave parental refusal to pay any standing, most all parents would assume that position to max out aid. </p>
<p>So it’ s important to have some idea of what you and your family can and are willing to pay, as well as the income and asset numbers for them to run through the NPCs of each school considered. If a school comes close to affordable, then it is a good consideration for the list If you and your family can come up with $25K, and the NPCS are saying that you are expect to pay most all of the $60K cost, that’s a huge gap, and unless there are some high merit awards that are possible from the school, it’s unaffordable. </p>
<p>In our case $35K was always the max we set out for our kids. we did not qualify for financial aid. So our kids tried to get $5-10K in merit to bring the cost down to about the $50K level, had $5-10K they could kick in from savings and working, that could bring it to the $40K optimistically, and then considered the Direct loans which start at $5500 freshman year. At the end of the admissions seasons, every single one of them had affordable choices including schools that required every bit of money we had budgeted, and what they could muster, down to costing very little at all. Some nice choices in the mix. Yes, I had twinges of regret. I wish I could have paid for any school any of them wanted, but they just took off the schools that were too expensive and enjoyed picking from what they felt were embarrassments of riches. They could commute to a number of schools, go away to a number, not take loans, take loans, not work, they could mix and match it all from a nice list of choices.</p>