Go to the Net Price Calculators (NPC) of some school in your child’s list. Definitely, your state flagship. Throw in Harvard, Haverford, Hartwick as well. And UAlabama, Penn State, UArizona,
How much do these each expect you to pay? For 2020 school year, 2018 income is used plus assets as of day you file.
Which of those schools can you afford without additional merit money? ( automatic merit is usually built into the NPCs).
Though you can rerun the calculators with two and three kids in college, not all schools will pay up the difference when you get additional kids in the mix, and the costs are good only for the oldest kids anyways. There is no telling, as @thumper1 says, on what is going to happen with the siblings. You can ask individual schools when it comes to the crunch time on how they treat aid when siblings go to college later
The financial aid formulas are very heavy on income, running 22-47 %.
of parents income after an allowance. -47% being top marginal rate. You can look up EFC estimator and see what your estimated EFC is.
Most schools will not count 401k balances unless they consider them
“Excessive” and that varies. The formulas will make you add back any contributions you made to 401ks and IRAs that given year as income.
When it comes to assets, FAFSA does not count your primary home equity. Most CSS PROFILE schools do, but some cap that amount, as a general rule, you are better off with assets in your home equity rather than sitting in an account where they will be hit a full 5.6%
Other than your mortgages and other secured loans against an asset that needs to be reported , any loans are not generally taken into account. For example , a school that just might ask for the value of your car, will want the amount net of the loan against it, but FAFSA and many schools’ CSS PROFILE will not ask about the car, is the loan against it is not included in the information. Credit card debt, general loans are not going to reduce your asset number. A strategy that can work is to use assets siting there to pay off your loans before submitting FAFSA and PROFILE To lower your hit. But remember, that hit is 5.6%. There might be good reason to keep a loan that is a good deal rather than paying it off.
All schools ( very few exceptions) require FAFSA to be completed in order to be eligible for any student aid. It actually vets you and your student for access to some federaly backed loans and federal work study even if there is no way you qualify for Pell. Some state programs and merit money require a FAFSA filed as week. Most schools do not guarantee to meet financial need
The schools that also require CSS PROFILE in addition to FAFSA tend to be more Generous and may guarantee to meet full need…as they define it, usually more stringently than FAFSA. At $200k, your DD May get some aid at the more generous schools, but costs for some of those schools are moving past $80k a year range. Not likeba few thousand in aid going to make a dent in that.
So figure out what you are willing and able to commit to pay. Find some schools with sticker prices and guaranteed merit thatvare priced in that range.
Then look at schools that have competitive merit money that can possibly bring the cost to affordable range. Your student is a contender for money from Duke, JHU, Vanderbilt, Rice, UChicago , Pitt, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, wakeforest, Richmond etc. look up full ride scholarships. There are lists you can google of the big number awards. Try “82 Colleges with full ride scholarships” These are lottery tickets, but your DD has the numbers to give it a go.
Some local schools might have some goodies too. Have your student ask the GC about what’s out there for a student of that caliber. Make sure you know ofvany programs your state universities might have for top students that lower the costs.