I just compared NPC of individual schools vs. Niche.com’s True Cost for 11 colleges and for 4 TC was within 10% of NPC, 3 were 10-20% over NPC, and 4 were 40-60% under NPC. So about a third were wildly off, I’d say.
Which do you trust more? NPC or True Cost?
The NPC is provided by the university, so it’s a primary source.
Primary sources should always be considered over secondary sources
In our experience, TrueCost was closer to what colleges actually delivered, but the costs were all a little low (it expected slightly MORE aid than appeared in reality). The NPCs were generally higher than what the colleges delivered. So, neither were correct, but TrueCost was “more correct”. I found TrueCost had some issues with the way financial information is entered, so I suspect those errors are introduced into their estimate.
All to say that a college won’t give you aid based on TrueCost (as in, you can’t ask for reconsideration based on that number), but if you’re trying to get a sense of which colleges might deliver better packages, then TrueCost was overall closer to the final numbers. Just note that that it might suggest you’ll get more aid than in reality.
Niche claims NPCs are less accurate because many colleges fail to update them every year. That seems plausible.
I don’t quite agree that primary source should always be trusted more. I’d trust an objective third party the most (which Niche isn’t).
If your actual financial aid package comes back significantly lower than the college’s NPC, you have a basis for a discussion with a financial aid officer. If the actual aid package comes back lower than Niche or any other third party website– good luck arguing your case.
The primary source has the best access to information, but may not necessarily be providing it accurately to others. For financial aid NPCs, some colleges do a much better job than others at matching them to their actual financial aid.
However, for financial aid NPCs, third parties have or can get very limited information on which to base estimates, so if a college has a poor NPC, that may still be the least bad estimate, even if it is not really trustworthy.
Bingo
I wonder why though? Is it to drive up application numbers?
I expect some NPCs are out of date simply because the IT peeps and/or those in charge of the website have overlooked it. What would be the benefit of driving up app numbers? Acceptance rate isn’t a factor in USNWR ratings, for example, so no ‘benefit’ there. Maybe more application fee $, but many schools give waivers out like candy (and around half of students qualify for fee waivers anyway.) Any increase in app fees would likely has a corresponding increase in costs because of the need for additional app readers. (Note I’m not saying that some schools haven’t decided to increase apps and pulled certain levers to do that. Those machinations generally seem…misguided.)
IME, NPCs that are out of date simply don’t have the gross direct costs (tuition/fees/room/board) loaded in for the year that people are running the NPC. In that case, Niche true cost gross direct costs won’t be accurate either.
Big picture, Niche True Cost, per their methodology explanation, is getting much of their information from College Aid Pro (CAP). CAP has a sound methodology, but also isn’t always up to date, nor do they have access to a given school’s NPC formula.
I just ran Niche True Cost for a 2027 entering first year, and I can’t replicate the gross direct costs that Niche reported…it doesn’t match actual information from schools’ websites (I only looked at schools that have 2027-2028 gross COA available on their websites.) That’s enough for me to not recommend people use Niche True Cost over a school’s NPC.
And CAP costs money, so I generally wouldn’t recommend that either.
i would guess that the info directly from each college is always going to be better than any third party.