Why to run NPCs, no matter your income level

Paying for College
1

<p>I ran NPCs for 28 colleges, and have an Excel spreadsheet from $15,000 to $65,000 per year for how much our family would have to pay. My son's interest in the schools ranges from high to low, with me adding schools based on geography (he wants to stay within 5 hours of home in general) and his intended major for comparison.</p>

<p>Full costs of attending range from $30,000 per year up to $65,000 per year. Some of the costliest schools for us are actually low on their full cost of attending, but they do not give much aid. A few schools, especially Ivies (but not all Ivies), give generous aid but have very high cost of attending if your family does not qualify for any aid.</p>

<p>The reason to run NPCs is that we have found that there are very similar colleges that have vastly different costs for our situation, which is decent home equity (over $200,000) and upper middle class income ($150,000 per year together) and little cash on hand (less than $5,000).</p>

<p>The other reason is that if you grab your 2013 tax returns, you'll have all the info you need (might need W2s but they should be with your tax returns), and any college using the College Board for their NPC would be a matter of typing everything in once for the first college, then clicking through for other colleges. On occasion, there might be one or two questions added by a specific school, like typing in your child's SAT scores to determine merit aid.</p>

<p>We did have to run the NJ state schools on their own websites, they don't use College Board, so we had to type the info in again but the forms tend to be shorter.</p>

<p>Link to College Board NPCs:
<a href="http://studentnpc.collegeboard.org/participating-schools"&gt;http://studentnpc.collegeboard.org/participating-schools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>(I also made sure my son understood that our situation and his friends are totally different. He has a friend who will get no aid at all due to a very high family income. He has another friend who has very high test scores and GPA, so will likely access more merit aid, and his parents do not have much home equity. All of that can effect relative cost per year.)</p>

<p>A final note on picking colleges - my son's top two choices have interest-free 10-month payment plans (July - April or August - May). It will make a difference if we have to pay $35,000 over 10 months instead of $17,500 in August and December. </p>

2

<p>I love the interest-free payment plans! Since my son ended up moving home, attending our small local school, and receiving SS disability benefits, I don’t have to take out any money from our college savings account.</p>

3

<p>Here is an example of how different schools that claim to “meet full need” can have widely varying net prices:
<a href=“"Meet full need" schools can vary significantly in their net prices. - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1675058-meet-full-need-schools-can-vary-significantly-in-their-net-prices-p1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

4

<p>Thank you for the link - I hadn’t seen College Abacus before.</p>

<p>But oh my goodness! I put in CMU, and College Abacus collegeabacus.org thinks, with ALL of my previous data (in general noted above), that it will be only $15,000 per year for my son to go there (cheaper than sending him to the college I work at, with full tuition remission). I just ran the NPC the other day directly on the CMU site and it said $43,000 per year for CMU for my son…</p>

<p>The CMU NPC is very very general. For example, they put everyone making over $99,999 in the same pot. I have no idea how College Abacus calculates their CMU net price if CMU’s NPC gives such a different result.</p>

<p>Does anyone think that I should just flat out call CMU about this apparent discrepancy, or do you think they’ll just say “wait until October 1st and fill out the CSS/Profile” or "College Abacus? What’s that?)? Hope this doesn’t seem stupid, but if you fill out the CSS/Profile, you still don’t get any info back on what FA might be until the student submits the final application? Or do you get some kind of EFC estimate at least?</p>

5

<p>Thank you for the link - I hadn’t seen College Abacus before.</p>

<p>But oh my goodness! I put in CMU, and College Abacus collegeabacus.org thinks, with ALL of my previous data (in general noted above), that it will be only $15,000 per year for my son to go there! I just ran the NPC the other day and it said $43,000 per year for CMU for my son!</p>

<p>The CMU NPC is very very general. For example, they put everyone making over $99,999 in the same pot! I have no idea how College Abacus calculates their CMU net price if CMU’s NPC gives such a different result.</p>

<p>Does anyone think that I should just flat out call CMU about this apparent discrepancy, or do you think they’ll just say “wait until October 1st and fill out the CSS/Profile”?</p>

6

<p>There is no harm in calling.</p>

7

<p>College Abacus apparently web scrapes the colleges’ net price calculators. Possibly CMU changed to a new one at a different web location, but College Abacus is still using the (presumably now hidden) old one?</p>

<p>Call CMU and ask (maybe also ask College Abacus).</p>

8

<p>Actually, I finally dug up the newest link to CMU’s Financial Aid Estimator:
<a href=“http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/financial-aid-estimator”>http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/financial-aid-estimator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It looks more like a “real” NPC as compared to their NPC. Problem is, they want the students full info in addition to all the financial info, so maybe they don’t want to show their hand to random people (or researchers).</p>

<p>They are supposed to snail mail an estimate to us in a week or two.</p>

9

<p>I ran like 10 different NPC’s and I’m full pay at all of them. Ughhh! </p>

10

<p>First of all, yes, it can help to run NPCS, no matter your income level. SOme (example Fordham’s) ask for SAT/ACT and grades, and that links up with merit awards So even someone with a family income in the billions could get some get some merit money there that shows up in the NPC results. For those who have swing factors, like an income right on the edge of eligiblity, the NPC results can show how things like your home equity, other kids in college, etc will affect whether you are even eligible for fin aid and there can be differences in that from school to school.</p>

<p>As a caution, however, at schools like CMU that DO NOT guarantee to meet full need and that DO have merit money, the results can be inaccurate. The results are averages only and things also can change between the time you run the NPCS and when the awards are distributed. The NPC results are NOT guaranteed. But this is a tool that is now available to us that sheds more light on how colleges do come up with fin aid packages, and sometimes even merit money. </p>

<p>Some school that do not guarantee to meet full need, or that do meet full need but have what is called preferential packaging will have to have the actual application in hand to come up with the package. If you are a candidate that such a school really wants, you can get some great aid mostly or all grants. If you are a student that is in the “eh” category, you might get a lot of self help in that package and may get gapped. There are things like “merit within need” that can affect the estimators. That is what they are, estimates only.</p>

11

<p>Maybe that is why they have a financial aid estimator, instead of a comprehensive NPC like other schools seem to have.</p>

<p>One thing to note, that I am seeing more and more at other colleges as well:

  • CMU says that they WILL consider FA packages from other schools, and MAY decide to redo a FA package based on documentation from another school the student was accepted at
  • HOWEVER - they say that is only for RD, that if you are ED, you “get what you get and you don’t get upset” :slight_smile: </p>

<p>We feel pretty good (time will tell) regarding the schools my son is targeting ED and ED2, in terms of whether their predicted FA will be close to the actual FA offered. We have no idea for the RD schools he would look at.</p>

12

<p>CMU will do an estimated aid package for those contemplating ED. They guarantee to meet full need for those who are accepted ED. It’s take it or leave it, is what they say for ED, whereas for RD, they’ll take into consideration other offers if they really want the student. </p>

<p>Frankly, if money is a major concern, I would not apply ED. I’ve known many families who ended up taking an ED package only to find their students’ peers, classmates, others they know getting better deals in RD at school that they would have considered. You just never know what the deal will be when you apply in a vacuum. Also, CMU is not the only school that will “deal” when other offers are presented from what a school considers a competing one. </p>