Just pointing out: someone mentioned your own instate schools. But if they don’t have the funds to be generous, you won’t get FA that brings you near the EFC. Public or private.
There are plenty of schools that just use the FAFSA to award their own need based FA and don’t ask for any non-custodial parent info or for a CSS. I don’t think the California schools require any additional info from the NCP for all that need based FA. I agree that most of the FAFSA only schools do not meet full need, but many give out some need based aid based solely on the FAFSA.
The NPC was accurate for my kids, both at FAFSA only schools. I am a single parent. I was not asked for additional information.
I didn’t write that correctly…
Colleges that want additional information in addition to the FAFSA will ask for that via the Profile or their own financial aid forms.
@twoinanddone IIRC, your kids went to FAFSA only schools. Those schools would not request additional info from you. They use the data on the FAFSA only.
The best thing you can do right now is to figure out what you are willing and able to pay for college. You should also have a conversation with your children’s other parent what can be expected from that quarter. Perhaps, it’s better that your kids bring up this discussion.
You and your children should explore what is available to them from state schools, what financial aid can be expected from FAFSA only schools. Start looking at merit possibilities.
Do you have done idea what schools are under consideration? If your children are looking at high cost private schools, then it is highly likely that their father’s income , and , yes, even stepmother’s financials will be taken into consideration for financial aid, and given the numbers you are citing, little or no financial aid. Bluntly, without their father’s financial contribution to college, they won’t be an much of an option. Most all of them require an additional financial aid application which requires non custodial parent’s financial. Yes, UChicago an exception., but not not going to find many more schools like that in the private school pool
@sherimba03 Hi, You will get more responses starting your own thread than popping in the middle of someone elses.
They don’t ignore it, it’s just that with $12k EFC you aren’t eligible for a Pell grant, may get some work study and SEOG. That’s the federal aid picture. If your EFC were $0, your child would get about $6200 in Pell grant money, probably work study, SEOG, and subsidized loans.
The schools may not have any need based aid to give out. My older daughter went to an OOS public and other than the federal need based funds like the Pell, they didn’t really have need based aid. The instate students got a lot of money directly from state programs (‘license plate’ funds). The need based aid was really hidden in ‘alumni’ scholarships. They had a couple hundred of these endowed scholarships that were given out as the FA office wanted to. “To a student in the nursing school” or “for a future teacher.” The FA office controlled them and almost all had a need component. No addition application, and most were awarded in the spring. There weren’t just need based grants given out, all were tied to an alum scholarship., a major, talent (music, theater, athletic)
Some public schools (California) give nothing in need based aid to OOS students, so yes you are right, it wouldn’t matter if you had an EFC of $0, California schools will give nothing in need based aid, not even an SEOG. It’s not that Cal schools don’t care bout your EFC, they don’t care about it if you are OOS.
Anything over about 5K EFC is not going to matter much for out of state schools as it’s really just used for federal aid. However, you might still qualify for state grants in your own state with a 12K EFC. As everyone has already stated, schools are not going to give out need based aid to OOS students.
We have a 0 EFC and the only OOS schools my son was allowed to apply to were the ones with big incoming merit scholarships. A 6K Pell was not going to cut it for bringing the cost of an OOS school down to where we could afford it.
As you can see we have a lot of Californians on this forum that pay high state taxes and expect something in return, but to answer your queston, there are very few schools that meet your FULL financial need, and all of them are very difficult to get into. I don’t know of ANY public schools that meet full financial need without loans.
This. The phrase “expected family contribution” is tremendously misleading. I have long said that the result of inputting your financials into FAFSA should be an index number, perhaps on a scale of 1-10. Each college could be transparent about the amount of aid, or a range of aid, that can be expected for each point on the index. If your family is a 4, one college might give X amount of aid, but another college might give X + $10k. Same index could apply to CSS Profile.
If you want aid the meets or almost meets your EFC, your child has to apply to a meets-full-need college. These are the meets-full-need colleges.
Did your child apply to any of these?
Full need with no loans:
Amherst College
Bowdoin College
Brown University
Colby College
Columbia University
Davidson College
Harvard University
Northwestern University
Pomona College
Princeton University
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
US Air Force Academy
US Military Academy (West Point)
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt University
Washington and Lee University
Yale University
Full need with limited loans:
Colgate
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Haverford
Lafayette
Lehigh
MIT
Rice
UNC-Chapel Hill
Vassar
WashU
Wellesley
Wesleyan
Williams
Full need with loans and grants:
Barnard College
Bates College
Boston College
Bryn Mawr College
Caltech
Carleton College
Case Western Reserve University
Claremont McKenna College
College of the Holy Cross
Connecticut College
Colorado College
Denison College
Emory University (US only)
Franklin & Marshall College
Georgetown University
Grinnell College
Hamilton College
Harvey Mudd College
Johns Hopkins University
Kenyon College
Macalester College
Middlebury College
Mount Holyoke College
Northeastern University (US only)
Oberlin College
Occidental College
Pitzer College
Scripps College
Skidmore College
Smith College
Thomas Aquinas College
Trinity College
Tufts University
UCLA
Union College
UNC Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame
University of Richmond
University of Rochester (does not include Eastman School of Music)
University of Southern California (USC)
University of Virginia (UVA)
Wake Forest University
Let’s be clear here that in almost every case with a meets full need college, the FAFSA “EFC” is not what the college is using to determine what the family’s expected contribution is. These colleges will calculate their own EFC for allotting institutional need-based aid, and it’s not unusual for the EFC derived by a meets full need school to differ substantially from the FAFSA EFC, especially if the school’s formula places a relatively heavy weight on primary home equity.
How does one define “limited loans”? Does it mean anything less than the fully available federal direct loan? And a school that meets full need with limited loans most assuredly incorporates grants in its financial aid packages.
There are a few. UNC meets full need, but for OOS students it is very difficult to get accepted into UNC.
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UNC and UVA meet full need for all accepted students. Both are public universities with very low acceptance rates for OOS students. Both include the Direct Loan in student aid packages. Not use the CSS Profile, and require the non-custodial parent form if the parents are divorced or separated.
No. Since Wesleyan is included in that group, I will use it as an example. It means that below a certain income level (i.e., 60K), the family’s EFC will be loan-free. Above that, there is a sliding scale of loans versus grants.
Yes, of course.
At least one of the schools that I am familiar with that is listed on the “Full need with loans and grants” list will only include the subsidized part of federal direct loans in an aid package. I would consider this to be a “limited loans” policy, and yet the school does not appear on the “Full need with limited loans” list. (In fact, after a minute of research, it looks like Wesleyan has this same policy when the family annual income is above $60k: https://www.wesleyan.edu/finaid/financingoptions/directstuloan.html and https://www.wesleyan.edu/finaid/Affording/index.html)
@BelknapPoint wrote:
Isn’t that because the non-subsidized loans aren’t need-based?
Sure, but if a meets full need school is only including the subsidized portion of federal direct loans in financial aid packages, that means that the school has a limited loans policy, right?
This is a quick and easy tool used by some schools. 7 questions to get an estimate of costs::
Whenever you calculate a discount, it’s per that particular company or special offer. Not for every entity out there. For the FAFSA EFC, it’s only per the fed formulas.
It’s not what college X can or is likely to give. In contrast, the NPC is what’s per an individual college’s means.
When you need the $ help, you don’t stop at, “But this other group’s formula says xxx.”
Btw, how a college doles out endowed money depends on how donors specify. If a fund is designed for, say, future nurses, that’s where it has to be applied, legally. Not the whim of FA folks.
Colleges that claim to “meet full need” may (and typically do) define EFC themselves, resulting in EFC and net price different from the FAFSA EFC or each other (and the net price may not necessarily be better than that of some schools not making a “meet full need” claim).
Also, colleges generally do expect a student contribution. Smaller student contributions may be doable with federal direct loan or a reasonable (for a student) amount of work earnings; larger student contributions need both federal direct loan and student work earnings. Student contributions are the most likely parts that a college will allow substituting merit scholarship money for before reducing grants.