<p>Hello,
We have one daughter in a State U and am somewhat familiar with how the AID works in that setting… Cost of about 22K, EFC of about 4k, got Stafords, Perkins, some grants - both income based and performance based once she had a semester under her belt. Paid the rest out of pocket from both her job and ours.</p>
<p>Second daughter will be a freshman next year and has chosen a low cost local tech school to study nursing. They way they run there program it takes about 3 years to do a Associates Degree in Nursing (They do it this way to have a slightly lighter load for all of the other students who are about 80%+ ‘older students’ meaning people with kids, jobs, etc…)</p>
<p>The cost is shockingly low compared to other kids at State U; about 3K per year…under 10K tuition for the whole thing, and a RN in our area starts at about 48K-55K per year with 100% student placement… not to bad :).</p>
<p>She has not decided for sure if she will live at home but is leaning that way right now. If she chooses to live elsewhere (or even if at home) how does Financial Aid work? What I mean is this; </p>
<p>If I go to her sisters State U Aid Estimator (Tech School doesnt have one) and put in the expected 3K EFC, the State U gives about 4K in grants, Stafords in the amount of about 5.5K, a Perkins for about 1.5K plus work study. </p>
<p>So can younger daughter get 11K in loans and grants to help cover living expenses even though the cost COULD be (if she lived at home) only 3K? The 11K seems reasonable amount if she got her own place closer to school with a roommate. </p>
<p>Just not sure how it works in this case. And in case you are wondering why take loans if not totally needed, many employers in out area have a “Loan Helping” type of benefit where they will give a bonus that would help pay them off in a few years. These funds could help her to pay for gas, car maintenance, etc…</p>
<p>Thoughs?</p>
<p>Thanks, DJD</p>
<p>You can’t use the state U’s estimator. FA is based on the cost of attendance at the school the student is attending. So if the school has a COA of $10,000 a year her aid is limited to $10,000 (and FA plus EFC cannot exceed the COA, though loans can be used toward the EFC part). </p>
<p>The COA usually includes average figures for tuition and fees, books, room and board, travel expenses and perhaps miscellaneous expenses. Some schools will have more than one COA depending on whether the student is living on campus, off campus with parents, or off campus not with parents (my son’s school had separate COAs, my daughter’s does not). The school should have a COA figure somewhere on their website. If they do not have dorms I am not sure how the room and board part would work for FA (or if there would be any FA for living expenses). </p>
<p>My daughter goes to a state flagship 4 year and her aid is based on their COA of $21,000 ish. My son went to a CC and did a tech degree, his aid was based on their COA of 10,000 ish.</p>
<p>Do a search on the school web site for financial aid or COA or Cost of Attendance (or enrollment). They may have it on there. My daughter’s school the info was easy to find online. My son’s it was like pulling teeth to get the info (which I needed for 529 account withdrawal/tax purposes).</p>
<p>Thanks for the tips… I did find the estimator with the phrases you mentioned. </p>
<p>If I understand your post right, you are saying that if the COA is 7K, and she gets 4K in grants, she can not borrow more than 3K through Staford? Makes sense. The estimator is actually saying she would likely get 8K (1K more than COA) in grants, so her ‘Net Price’ would be -1K! I will have to get together with their FA people soon to figure it out for sure.</p>
<p>Thanks again,</p>
<p>DJD</p>
<p>Hmm, where is this estimator from? The actual school? Generally she should not be able to get more grants than the COA.</p>
<p>The maximum Pell grant is $5550 for this year (will increase a smidge next year I believe) but that is for a 0 EFC. With 2 in college the part of your kids’ EFC generated by parent income/assets will be divided equally between them so each will have a lower EFC than if just one was in college. So if EFC was 4k for one it will be 2k each with 2 in college (assuming no student income or assets). So that would be around $3500 in pell. Really the only other federal grant is the SEOG (the ACG and SMART have will not exist after this year). Most schools seem to require a 0 EFC for the SEOG so it is unlikely she will get SEOG. So if this estimator is saying $8,000 in grants there must be some state money or maybe merit scholarship money included? If the estimator is from the school then you may be in luck. Otherwise the $8k grants does not sound realistic. Definitely not federal grants of $8,000.</p>