It seems like the EFC is off. I just plugged in our info and our AGI is a bit higher and came out at $63000 for one child.
Something is off if you got 100k/year and your parents make 200k, with four in college-- unless there are substantial unprotected assets.
For retirement funds, if they are in “qualified” funds (real retirement plans where the money is, in essence, locked in,) you don’t put in those numbers. But any money in regular bank accounts, general investments, mutual funds, etc, is a countable asset. Plus usually the home equity (and that’s based on actual resale value, not tax assessments or what the neighbor’s home sold for.)
When you run your NPC, it’s for you. You show 3 others in college simultaneously (4 total.) What you get is your projection.
Go back over the numbers you input, verify there are no mistakes.
I just played with the numbers using what i know from your scenario and it came to under $25000 for just you. So I think it is probably safe to assume your EFC could be around $25K per kid, but I could be wrong. The number was made up from both parent and student contributions.
Yeah I plugged it back and and got like 25000 for each kids… I did need to divide that original number by 4. I have no clue what I did wrong originally. The exact number is $25,863.25 so that comes up to $103,573 per year. Which is bad, but not as bad as I thought.
Are Bro2 and 3 the ones wanting to do neuroscience and aerospace engineering?
With their high class rank, GPA and 33 ACT I really think they could get top merit at University of Pittsburgh.
Pitt is great for neuroscience, and they have mechanical engineering and offer a coop program.
I have heard that aerospace companies hire mechanical engineers.
You could visit and find out more about the opportunities in the respective departments, for you and bro1 as well.
Okay thanks for the suggestion @mommdc
For each college, do a web search for “[college name] net price calculator”. Put in the financial information to get an estimate for that college. Repeat for each college.
Do not assume that generic EFC calculators will be accurate for any given college, since colleges can differ significantly from each other in what financial aid they will offer for the same financial situation.
You’re on the right track with the college board EFC calculator. A lot of elite schools will have an NPC created by the college board that can import the data you’ve saved at the college board calculator to save you time.
You need to separate out EFC = expected family contribution
NPC = net price calculator
The EFC is an “assets available” score, and the NPC is what a college expects someone with a given EFC to pay. These are not usually equal.
EFC’s can be more than the cost of attendance, but NPCs are always less than the total cost of the school.
The federal EFC is an absolute mess of a formula: They start with your income, then subtract off the poverty level in 1960 tweaked by the social security cost of living adjustments since then, then multiply by various percentages based on the income level, taking up to 47% of your parent’s “extra” (by that ridiculous formula) income. They look at your parent’s savings, subtract off a reasonable-by-1960 allowance for “asset protection” savings, and apply various percentages to that come to around 5.6%.
Then they consider student assets at a higher percentage because you are not retiring any time soon. About 50% of your income and assets count against your EFC, so don’t spend job earnings on a car! Then the institutional (Profile) EFC adds in more of the parent’s assets but takes a slightly smaller percentage - just 5%.
A few common mistakes on the financial aid forms are in the assets department:
- The value of your home is not counted in the FAFSA formula
- Parent's assets that are in retirement-protected accounts (IRA, 401(k), etc) are not counted
- College funds in a 529 are considered the parent's asset, not the students, and are taxed at the lower rate
- Obviously, I hope you told the form that there are four kids in college not just one :-)
The college board calculator has little (i) information icons that will tell you exactly which line of the parent’s tax form they want included on each line of the EFC calculator.
If your EFC is truly 50K you need to work with your parents on understanding how the college financing system works, because they are going to be in for some sticker shock!
OP- and make sure you understand how colleges view the family contribution. When you write that your parents can’t “cover” tuition- you need to understand that the formula is based on past earnings (i.e. savings), current earnings (their salaries) and future earnings (their ability to borrow).
It is entirely within their right to choose NOT to liquidate savings or take on debt. But that means, all things being equal, that they will NOT be able to afford the EFC that gets spit out of the formula, which is based on all three forms of income- past, present, future. Families with two secure jobs often borrow against their home to pay for college. Families with two secure jobs sometimes borrow against their 401K. Is this a good idea? You’d need a financial expert to sit down with your parents to get a better handle on their finances.
But there are very few families with incomes at the level of your parents that are not paying for college with some combo of past/present/future.
^20% of student assets contribute to FAFSA EFC and 50% of student income after income allowance of $6,300 this year
Oh, see thing thing is, with an EFC of 25k per kid (about) is well within my parents ability to pay… They have substantial assets and quite a bit of money saved up outside of 401k etc.
Honestly, I was kinda surprised by how much they had in investments and other stuff like that. Honestly it’s suprising the calculator spit out such a relatively low number. (It’s stil ALOT of money, don’t get me wrong)
Remember also that net price = expected family contribution + expected student contribution. Colleges generally expect students to contribute some amount, usually from federal direct loans and/or work earnings, in addition to what they expect the family to contribute.
So if a college that claims to “meet full need” calculates an EFC = $25k for you, its net price for you may be $30k to $35k based on adding an ESC of $5k to $10k.
Probably because it accounted for three others in college at the same time.
Actually the FAMILY contribution should include both the parent’s and student’s contributions. (However, most schools don’t set their net price equal to the “standard” EFC. Usually, it’s more than the federal formula, especially at Profile schools.
Here is the actual Federal Formula: http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/100615EFCFormulaGuide1617Attach.pdf
The Profile formula is not published. However, here is a list of all the things the Profile formula adds to the Federal formula: https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/professionals/federal-methodology-and-institutional-methodology-differences.pdf
Yeah so I plugged in the numbers for Gtown (my dream school) and it’s gonna cost $30,673 to attend, which is rather generous considering it costs $69,730 to attend. I think I gonna take out a loan for like 5,000 dollars (or whatever the most a student can get without cosigning) and the beg my parents to pay the rest.
You never answered the question about the W-2 forms and Box 12 amounts and codes for your parents.
Read the net price calculator output carefully - many times a student loan is already buried in there!
yeah, for gtown, it said that is what it would cost if i took 2000 out in loans @AroundHere