Financial Aid in Future Years

cptofthehouse
Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:59:54 +0000

Mom2college kids is absolutely right. There is no guarantee of anything when it comes to financial aid. With the shake up with the economy and investments, many schools are changing financial aid and merit policies. Some announce them, but some do not. Small changes are often not announced but can make a big difference on some of us.

Though the fact that you have 5 kids is taken into account when calculating EFC by FAFSA and by all other financial aid calculators such as PROFILE, there is no assumption that about future college for those kids. Some PROFILE schools and those with their own apps will take into account tuition for your other kids if you have them in private schools, or if they have special needs and you are paying for programs and education to meet those needs. But not all schools.

The first step with financial aid is FAFSA is what most folks say. If your child is applying to PROFILE school, I’ve always felt that is the first calculator to use. IF you are middle class, the only thing you are going to get from the FAFSA numbers are loans, maybe subsidized while the student is in schools, and those are at the $10K mark only in special situations. Staffords cap out at about $4K or so, don’t remember exact amount, for freshmen. So that EFC is really not a useful number for you if your child is looking at private schools that use PROFILE or their own apps. Many kids who are in divorced parents situations get a totally skewed result from FAFSA as only the custodial parent and spouse’s financials are taken into account. PROFILE generally wants the value of the gold in your teeth, as well as that in spouse’s, your ex and his/her spouse, in a divorce/remarriage scenario, and that of your other kids’ as well.

If you need or want a discount from the the $50K+ that the most expensive private schools are charging, you need to do some numbers by running a PROFILE calculator on your situation to see what range you are expected to pay from that group of schools. Run the FAFSA calculator too, just in case you are eligible for the PELL grant because other govt goodies can come with that, but you need to have a pretty low EFC to get that. Then you research what those colleges typically fund in terms of financial need. You may find that School A typically meets 70% of need, so you can see what they might expect you to pay.

As Mom2collegekids says, looking at some schools with good merit aid can give you somewhat of a break. Your student has to be in the top 4-10% in stats, usually test scores to get that kind of money, and not all schools give merit aid.

Finally, look at lower cost alternatives such as your state schools and local schools. My son has his eye on a school that discounts its expensive tuition for commuters. That can bring the cost almost within our comfort zone. ‘’

Gotta cast a wide net to get some money.