How accurate are NPCs for families living in very high COL areas?

Applying to College
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Hi everyone,

My kid ('25) has a preliminary list of likelies/targets that we feel good about & can pay for. However, he is also interested in applying to a few very reach-y LACs, mostly in the Northeast. My husband & I are both public school teachers, so not rich. We live in Boston, so our actual salaries are quite high compared to teachers around the country, but our area’s cost of living is also extremely high. My understanding is that the CSS profile does take COL into account, but I’m not sure if/how that is reflected in NPCs (they ask for state of residence, but nothing more specific than that). Does anyone have any recent personal experience with this? We would need the actual COA to be at least $5k lower than the NPCs generally show me in order for the ‘meets needs’ schools to be possible for us.

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Net price calculators do not take your COL area into consideration.

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The other issue is that CSS schools often have a mysterious formula for determining need. 5K, while a lot of money, can also be tuition/housing/board increase in a school from one year to the next or travel cost for one year.
My point is that while NPC may give a rough estimate, it can easily be off by a lot.

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Accuracy may depend on which NPC template the college uses.

If a college uses CSS Profile (from The College Board) and The College Board NPC template, the chances of the NPC matching the actual FA are probably higher than if it uses CSS Profile and some other NPC template (especially the very limited one with only $10k increments up to $100k for parent income).

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Where you live is considered a choice - and higher salaries are a benefit of living there - and therefore not taken into account in determining need-based aid. Note, however, that need-based packages are often adjusted for rises in COA - I often see people on here suggesting that cost will go up 5% every year; assuming your income stays about the same this is not necessarily true for those getting need-based aid.

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So to review some basic concepts:

NPCs are supposed to accurately predict what sort of need-based financial aid award the college in question will give you, assuming you submit the same information when actually applying for aid.

The CSS Profile is a College Board service which participating colleges can use to help determine their need-based financial aid offers. And one critical thing to understand is the colleges can (and do) decide for themselves how to take that information and turn it into offers.

To help understand that, it is useful to know there is something called the Institutional Methodology (IM), which is a sort of baseline analytic approach the College Board will provide. This is in distinction to the Federal Methodology (FM), which is associated with FAFSA. Here is a primer on the IM if you are interested:

And when people talk about how the CSS treats various issues including income and assets, usually they are de facto talking about the IM. But again, CSS colleges can and do vary from the IM however they see fit. A common example is the treatment of net home equity. My understanding is the IM treats it like any other asset and assesses it at 5%. But some colleges reduce or even eliminate that assessment, others apply it but only up to a certain cap, and so on.

That variable treatment of home equity could be seen as one way in which CSS colleges can de facto adjust for HCOL scenarios. Generally speaking, at least home-owning families in HCOL areas tend to end up with a greater portion of family wealth in the form of net home equity. So if a CSS college eliminates, reduces, or caps the assessment of net home equity, that is de facto going to tend to help out more families in HCOL areas (again, at least the home-owning ones).

But to come full circle, a college’s NPC should reflect all this. So, a CSS college’s NPC should ask about net home equity if it assesses net home equity, and then it should assess the reported net home equity the same way it will assess it when actually determining a financial aid award.

So, to the extent a CSS college is de facto giving a break to HCOL families in this, or any other, way, it should already show up in its NPC as well. That system is not always perfect, but generally speaking I would not assume a more favorable result than the NPC is likely, barring a material change in circumstances.

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Generally, the meet full need school NPCs are accurate…and many CC posters do report that after receiving their offers. NPCs can only be accurate if the user inputs full and complete information. NPCs may be not be accurate if parents are divorced, own a business and/or real estate beyond a primary home.

If the NPC estimated COA is $5K from where you need it to be, it seems to me your 2025 kid can close that gap by working part-time during the school year and full time during the summers.

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Thank you, NiceUnparticularMan–that pdf is very helpful & informative. The document does state that some colleges may choose to apply a cost-of-living adjustment factor, which I still think might not fully be reflected in an NPC that asks only for state of residence (big differences in COL in different parts of California, New York, Massachusetts, etc). But I appreciate that much of that adjustment might be baked into different treatments of home equity.

Mwfan1921, I absolutely agree that my kid could make that much $ & more through working during the school year/summer (and he will), although many NPCs already include that assumption. I also could take on some outside work if necessary, & would be willing to. As I play with NPCs, it seems tricky to close gaps entirely with just additional work, because of course the more he & I make, the more our expected contributions go up. But we can certainly shrink the gap somewhat.

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I understand, but would say, generally, having more $ is better.

Big picture if the NPC is within $5K IMO it still would make sense to apply and see what happens. You can always present your case for more FA $. Maybe even apply within $10K (the cutoff is up to you.)

Most meet full need schools are reaches, so make sure to have a balanced list and at least one affordable safety. Some meet full need schools may be targets for higher stat students, for example Oberlin and Lehigh, so take a look at those.

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Living in a high COL area doesn’t help. We live in one of the top 20 cities where middle class would be upper class elsewhere.

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Make sure you have taken advantage (full advantage) of any retirement plans offered by your employer and Roth/IRA/401K whatever is relevant for your situation.

Your actual retirement assets will not be included in your asset calculation for financial aid; the money you have “mentally earmarked” to supplement your retirement is fair game for college spending as far as a financial aid officer is concerned.

A lot of people fall into this trap. Someone inherits a rental property-- in their mind, the cash flow right now is a “nice to have” but the actual value represents what they’ll sell and cash out once they retire. In most cases, you will get dinged on the rental income (income is income) AND dinged on the value of the property. So take any retirement funds off the table now and put them in a qualified plan to the extent allowed by the IRS!

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Thanks, everyone! Appreciate your insight as always. It sounds like (as I suspected) the reach-y schools will indeed be high financial reaches as well as academic reaches for him, which, fine–good information for him to consider as he prioritizes his time.

His current plan is to get all of his likely/target apps done first (9ish schools, mostly EA & at least 3 financial safeties), & then decide how much time he wants to spend on meets needs schools in the RD round (Oberlin is a good recommendation, thank you).

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Yes, and in theory if a CSS college has exercised a COLA option, it should ask for the information it needs in the NPC, and then apply it to the NPC estimate.

In practice? It has never really been clear to me what exactly the Department of Ed really requires from CSS colleges and their NPCs. Generally it seems to me they can get away with a pretty simplified version that may not be accurate in some specific types of cases. So I don’t know if they actually have to reflect a COLA option in their NPC even if they do in fact use one.

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I can’t imagine DOE is on top of monitoring NPCs…so many are inaccurate or woefully outdated. I expect some schools don’t even have one. But generally the meet full need school NPCs tend to be accurate/in the ballpark for families with straightforward situations.

NYU is one exception…but because they have one NPC up that is garbage this one and one that does seemingly work ok.

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Student income is protected up to a relatively high value, I think. I forget what it is, but if you play with the NPCs you can reverse-engineer it to figure it out.

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They are very accurate.

If anything, they overpromise aid a bit to attract applicants.

NPCs said our EFC was 70k last year, but when we actually did the updated FAFSA, we were/are stuck in “Processing” land and still are. I used a link to a non-school-specific tool that another user posted on this site, and it estimated our SAI to be 96k.

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Perhaps this is because the NPC user often includes only the financials of the custodial parent when the college requires both divorced parents’ financials, or because at least one of the divorced parents is understating their financials from the NPC user, presumably due to distrust issues common after divorce. I.e. this can be a common case of not giving “full and complete information”.

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We are also public school teachers living in a high cost of living area.
We found some NPCs were accurate and others were $20,000+ off (not in our favor).
My S24 got wildly different financial aid offers which range from us paying $3000/year to $50,000/year.
Through two students we have found the private reachiest schools to be the most generous.
I’m happy to message more about our experience if you want.

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