Could I get into an Ivy League?

txfriendly
Wed, 14 Jul 2021 23:17:55 +0000

Hmm. Your comments run contrary to essentially everything else I have ever read on NPCs, both on CC and elsewhere. It does seem to be well understood that a few specific situations, including divorced parents and ownership of a family business or investment vehicle, can throw off the NPC significantly. Otherwise, the consensus is that NPCs are pretty close. And NPCs typically itemize the expected aid by grants/loans/work study, so there shouldn’t be any misunderstanding about what type(s) of aid can be anticipated. I wonder whether your situation, and perhaps those of others you mention, might be affected by asset issues - I have heard stories of families that have partial ownership of rental properties or investment LLCs that they didn’t think to input on the NPC, only to find that schools vastly reduced their aid package based on those assets.

I recall the Rice NPC situation that I think you are referring to, and I looked it up on the Rice ED 2025 thread. If that’s the one, your characterization is misleading. That parent ran the NPC and was unable to pay the NPC estimated net cost, but nonetheless encouraged their student to apply ED based the hope of obtaining an additional merit scholarship not reflected in the NPC (which they perceived to be a 20% chance for some reason). As one would expect, the actual aid award was close to, and in fact slightly higher than, the NPC estimate, but there was no additional merit aid. As others on that thread noted, you shouldn’t apply ED if the NPC estimate is unaffordable, especially when there’s zero indication that the school even gives that level of merit aid. This story is actually supportive of the idea that NPCs at Rice are accurate and reliable as long as you don’t harbor bizarre expectations of unforeseen mystery money.