@Eeeee127 : run the NPC on EACH college you applied to and look at the line that states “Net Price”. Each college has its own formula therefore each college’s results are different. You cannot use one NPC’s result to predict any other college’s results.
My parents are too busy to run the net price calculator for each school so I guess I just have to wait for financial aid offers @MYOS1634 so basically, if you are a michigan resident, theres basically no point in paying 70k a year for private elites when you can just pay 30k a year for michigan? unless its hypsm
My D and I used a teamwork approach to negotiate a better merit offer. I emailed the Dean of the college and brought up the subject. When my D visited and met with him, she closed the deal. She made sure to mention that this extra amount we requested (2K/year) would result in her commitment to attend.
They’re too busy to provide you with numbers? Then you’d have to run the numbers for each college. If you go through the collegeboard NPC basically you only enter them once.
Is there no point? I don’t know but it depends on the full pay alternative. If you’re instate at Michigan, you would have reasons to choose a college like Amherst, Williams, Carleton, Pomona - elites that are very different from UMich. Or perhaps because you didn’t get into Ross or didn’t get the major you wanted (Ivies don’t admit by major, although they’re may admit you to a specific college.) If you’re not full pay, HYPSM may well be cheaper than UMich. In short, there are many reasons to apply to universities outside of Michigan even if you think you’ll get into UMich. But you can’t negotiate with private universities using your instate costs at Michigan, you only use private peers (Y for H).
@HImom sometimes one can get an additional $1000 a year. However, over on the financial,aid section of this forum, students are hoping for $10,000 more a year…or $30,000 more a year…or more.
Yes, getting $1000 a year saved you $4000 over four years. But really…with cost increases, and the like (and yes, I know your kid got a tuition award so when tuition went up so did his awards…but that’s not the case for most merit awards) that $1000 a year really didn’t coat the university a lot of money.
But when a student wants $10,000, or $30,000 more a year…it’s a completely different story.
My uni throws 1k to anyone who asks in the form of an “Alumni Endorsement Grant”. I actually had an alumni jump through the hoops and fill out all the forms, but others were just granted it after asking the financial aid office for a review.
There have to be huge special circumstances for an increase of 10k or more like many students want. I won’t pretend to know how it works at need-only schools, but I’d assume like massive medical (NOT consumer) debt, etc. In my friends’ and mentees’ experiences, job loss alone usually does not result in a significant change to the financial aid package until it is reflected in EFC (so a year later with the new FAFSA). It is tough.
My experience: I negotiated from ~13k/yr which is the “maximum” Presidential Scholarship to a 22,700$ presidential scholarship, which matched the amount (in combination with the automatic woman-in-STEM award the uni gives) of the top in-state scholarship that they give (I was not in state). But: (1) I had competed in national/intl competitions where judging panels were largely made up of my uni’s faculty and administrators (2) I lobbied professors and admins to reach out to admissions and financial aid on my behalf (3) I had an alumni who sits on the board of my dept do the same (4) the university was in a unique position in that they were just starting to really kick off huge research initiatives and there was incentive to pull me into that given stuff I had done in aerospace/research prior, etc.
I increased my package further by visiting the campus when I was down there for a conference (extra $250 once), asking for a need-based grant (extra $2900/yr), and applying for two up-to-10k-a-year competitive scholarships based on club/competition participation etc at my university (won $12k total). They also awarded an automatic 5k/yr award for being female & in STEM but that wasn’t the result of any lobbying.
Yes, we didn’t try for nor expect an additional huge sum, but we’re glad the U was willing to match the extra $1K/yr for 4 years. They also added extra merit scholarships to S over time and gave him an on campus job in his EE dept–all of which were very helpful. The matching “sweetened the pot,” and made the finances between his 2 top Us pretty close.
So, how does one afford it, if the kid meets the criteria and desire to get into a top school like Princeton and the parents are in that no mans land of making too much but not really low enough to get a decent FA package and not enough to really afford mid 5 figures in fees? I’m sure other parents have been through this. I guess the choice is bite the bullet or temper expectations and choose a lower priced option. Anyone been through this?
If your kid has the stats to get accepted to Princeton, your kid has the stats to get merit aid elsewhere.
And that would be quite the donut hole…as Princeton has very generous need based aid giving some tomstusents with family incomes approaching $200,000.
We’ve decided to lower expectations and try for merit money but you are correct that Princeton does offer a generous package. Better than Cornell but there are many other schools out there that are really strong academically which might be a better value for us.
Would I be able to use regents at Cal to negotiate even though it’s my instate school? What about a scholarship I still need to audition for to receive (music scholarship at Richmond)? I was offered 20K at Oberlin, but it’s still 16K more than Cal and I really need to bring it more in range to consider it as an option.
A private school does not care what your in-state university gave you in merit money. Remember the goal of a state university is to have an affordable option for their state residents because they do receive taxpayer funds.
IS your 20k at Oberlin need based aid?
My D got into Princeton with a great need-based package. Do you think she could get the same EFC from Columbia and Penn if she presented the Princeton package? And how does it work for the 3 years that follow - how would Columbia/Penn calculate the award annually?
What does the college say about a financial review/ Some schools will tell you straight up whether they consider a peer school’s offer (ex; Dartmouth, Cornell).
Penn’s revaluation process
http://www.sfs.upenn.edu/pdf/2017-18/Reevaluation-Application-Incoming-2017-18.pdf
Thank you @sybbie719 everything I wanted to know.
Ha - Columbia must have read my post as my D just received an email from them with this:
“So, how does one afford it, if the kid meets the criteria and desire to get into a top school like Princeton and the parents are in that no mans land of making too much but not really low enough to get a decent FA package and not enough to really afford mid 5 figures in fees? I’m sure other parents have been through this. I guess the choice is bite the bullet or temper expectations and choose a lower priced option. Anyone been through this?”
Many of these parents that I know have lived frugally and been saving since their children were very small with 529 and UTMA accounts and have benefitted from the “time value of money” and rising equity securities values since the 1990’s. In addition, many parents of current high schoolers are Baby Boomers who had their kids late in life and benefitted early pension savings and from the higher cash bonuses and easy job promotions of the 1990’s up until 2007.
Or they determine what their budget is. They do all the NPCs and decide where they can afford and the odds of getting merit if possible and don’t apply to places that are not ever going to be affordable.
@Dolemite Note that Columbia has a different methodology from Princeton. My experience is that they will not match a Princeton offer and their response will be, “go to Princeton”. I went through this last year with a kid I was working with. In the case of the email you got, what they are really saying is that they will review your award if they misinterpreted something.
To be honest, if you got a great package from Princeton why are you appealing the FA offers from other universities?
I think Princeton has the best FA out there for donut-hole middle class families, if the FA isn’t enough there you won’t get any FA more workable anywhere else. Instead you will have to rely on merit as a Princeton-caliber student, and that probably won’t give you a better price for most top 70 private colleges, would probably have to drop to 100 or so.
My son has a place at Princeton and the FA made it less cost than any of the top 70 private college with merit he applied to, the only places that were lower cost were UPitt with large merit, and sub-100 colleges with full tuition or full-ride merit. FA was more or less non-existent apart from Princeton.