In a 3 year-old post@UTmeritseeker asked, “Is anyone aware of any functioning A.I. tool that can help with this?” That was about finding a college that offers courses in nuclear physics. But AI has come a long way and I think the question is worth a revisit.
I had done dozens of NPCs manually to compile a list of colleges we can afford. I decided to give it try w/ AI. One free AI said no, I can’t do it. Another one (with paid subscription) said yes. I gave it my basic financial info and a list of 100 colleges, and it cranked away, sometimes prompting me to answer additional questions that it hadn’t encountered before. The results look pretty good to me. Most estimates came in within $2-3,000 of my manual results.
I plan on looking further into some of the colleges on this new AI generated list, and maybe re-run NPC manually on some of those to confirm.
EDIT/TL;DR – I already ran NPC manually for many. Then used AI on a hundred and they look pretty good. Now will run some more manually to confirm.
My opinion…you should run the NPCs on each individual college of interest to you. You have a start…and running the NPCs on all (not some) to confirm is the right next step.
I hope you redacted personal identifying info from what you shared with AI, and disabled model training. Also, CSS Profile schools typically need far more than basic financial info to calculate a reasonable COA estimate.
I agree with Thumper1 that you should still run each school’s NPC manually (and anonymously, not signing into one’s collegeboard account.)
I don’t know. I expect if one chooses to share the info with the school, that they use the data.
The potential downsides are too great, IMO, to complete NPCs while logged in to one’s CB account. The only benefit is avoiding the need to keep entering the same data, and having a record of NPC results. So, just keep screenshots of the results when using the NPC anonymously.
I assume you are talking about the second piece of that post, on NPCs? Colleges can’t put NPC info in Slate if one didn’t share it with the college, as I said in that post.
The first part of that post has nothing to do with NPCs.
AI was very handy for doing lots of NPCs. Helped me see that there is great variability in how different colleges treat divorced parents and/or home equities. If you’re divorced and on a budget (who isn’t?) I think you have to search broadly – i.e., run lots of NPCs to see which ones you can actually afford.
Here’s the full list of CSS Profile schools with a column indicating whether non-custodial parent (NCP) financials must be included (assuming they are alive.) CSS Profile Participating Institutions and Programs
The parent who provided the most financial support over the last 12 months should be the parent completing CSS Profile with the student, then the NCP will fill out their piece. Also make sure to include the financial info of any new spouses. The FAFSA contributing parent should also be the one providing most financial support (and new spouse as appropriate.)
As for home equity impact, make sure to run the NPC with and without home equity to make sure it is impacting expected contribution as you think it should be. (And for CSS schools that require both parents’ financial info you will have to enter home equity of both parents.)
Because your situation isn’t straightforward, I would encourage you to not eliminate schools simply because of NPC results (based on the post on your other thread.) You might call those schools that are showing too high a COA estimate just to make sure the NPC is accurate for your situation.
Yes, did that. After running NPC on dozens, there were basically 3 clusters:
a) schools that only took my info (very few)
b) schools that took both and computed a very low contribution from my ex (about half)
c) schools that took both and computed a very high contribution from my ex (about half)
I surmise that the diff between b & c are how they consider home equity. Some cap it very low, some cap it modestly, and a few not much at all.
I don’t think my situation is that unusual. Lots of people are divorced. Lots of people have significant home equity. And lots of divorced parents don’t have full transparency on their ex’s finances. Of course this will be clarified if/when we both file our respective CSS’s, but all the college selection can’t just wait til then.
Anyway, for me, for those schools that came back w/ high COA, I contacted some of them to make sure I was estimating things right, and their NPC’s were up-to-date. All that I contacted confirmed that I was doing it right, and that their NPC’s were doing it right too (capping/not-capping home equity per their current policy).
