| First of all, I think many of these posts can be very deceiving. Many people are presenting their Federal EFC and then discussing how a school that used the profile "gapped" their aid. My federal EFC is 7200, when I ran it as an estimate that's exactly where it came in at. When I ran the calculator to determine my institutional EFC it came up at about 23K. That was the number I used to determine if the profile schools met our need. I certainly don't like the fact that I live on Long Island and my home is overvalued, but everyone has at least one problem with the way financial aid is calculated.
Anyway, FASFA schools - Pretty much what I expected:
Penn State COA 34K, $2000 scholarship, $3500 subsidized loan
SUNY at Buffalo COA 18ish- 2500 scholarship, 4300 loans
Alfred State (more of a moral booster than a safety) full-ride (not going though)
Profile School:
Tulane COA 50K, 18500 need based scholarship, 2500 WS, 5000 loans
total aid $26000, our cost $24000, gapped us by 1K based on institutional methodology.
Unfortunately my husband lost his job in November so we no longer have the option of borrowing against our home so we will not accept this offer. But even though the gap was $17K from our federal EFC it's a very fair offer using institutional methodology (EFC 23K).
One note about BU. In addition to using the chart, they also use the profile which probably explains the gap. |