Parents - in my own experience, I’ve found that there are many pain points in the entire college financial process. From applying for financial aid, to paying for tuition, to remembering all of the passwords and log ins for each college’s different payment platform (different ones for dining vs tuition!), to giving spending money to kids when they ask over and over.
What do you find most frustrating, annoying, or confusing about the entire college financial experience as a parent?
As an incoming college freshman, the most frustrating part is the lack of explanation. Since I’m a first-generation student, it’s hard to understand what the numbers they throw at me mean.
For example, right now, I’m having a hard time understand how the whole loan process works. I’ve heard about something called an MPN that I have to fill out, but when do I do so? There’ll be left over money after everything’s paid off, so when will I receive it? Do I need a bank account? The list goes on…
Master Promissory Note
https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/whatYouNeed.action?page=mpn
If you have loans you need to do it ASAP or they can’t finalize your package. The counseling is part of the process and walks you through step by step with a quiz as you go. It explains all the ins and outs of interest and payments and types of loans etc. It is very comprehensive.
If you have a Perkins you do a promissory note through the school. A link should be posted on their FA web site.
Each school has it’s own procedure and timeline for refunding excess money in your bursar account. You need to check YOUR school.
The most confusing and frustrating part of the financial aid process was filling out FAFSA and the CSS profile (six years for FAFSA, four years for CSS). But because my daughters got good financial aid, I considered it part of the “cost of doing business.”
CSS Profile is a most annoying document to complete, especially the first time. Do they really need to know the purchase price of the 1993 Saturn that I still drive?
What seems to be confusing for many people is a clear understanding of the difference between merit based scholarships and need based financial aid.
NorthernMom61 speaks truth. We were quite a ways into the application process before realizing that a $25K need-based award does not usually get stacked with a $25K merit award to total $50K. Rather, the one clobbers the other; it’s like earning no merit award at all.
Dealing with that college board document uploader thingie this past spring. That and keeping track of who needs which year tax returns and W2s and non filer documents by what date and whether they need hard copies or electronic or email or PDF. It was a full time job.
As a first generation student, I had no idea what I was doing. Heck, I was in the dark about the loan process, and didn’t manage to get my loans in time, because the school had assumed I knew what to do (I did not).
It was after I called my upperclassmen friends that I found out what I was suppose to do. That was embarrassing.
It seems silly to me, that for my son to get ONLY an unsubsidized federal loan, we have to provide so much financial information. If we were looking to get need based aid that would be fine, but we are only looking for him to get a loan.
My most “aha” moment was when S1 was a high school sophomore and I learned on cc that merit scholarships replace need.
Both times I hated all the financial aid paperwork when they were seniors, because you have to submit it to every potential school. At least it’s only one school the following years.
Th annoying thing for me is the very early deadlines. We had schools with FAFSA and Profile deadlines of February 1. It’s bad enough doing these forms with estimates…but then having to go back and amend is just an additional PITA. It would be so much easier if the deadlines were Mid February so folks would have time to get their taxes done.
And now…you can’t link to the IRS data retrieval tool within three weeks of filing taxes…so how about a March 1 deadline?
If your income may change a merit scholarship is still a great thing to have in place. It could be that the first year you get merit + need and if your income goes up the need may vanish but the merit will always be there.
Here’s something annoying:
According to Northeastern, my family can afford to pay $62,000 per year.
According to Northwestern, my family can pay less than half that amount.
One thing that confuses some high EFC folks is when Child #1 goes to a school that doesn’t meet need, they will wrongly think that they will get aid when their EFC drops when Child #2 goes to college. Wrong. They may end up being full pay for both kids, even with a newly reduced EFC for each child.
There was a parent who posted about 2 years ago who let Child #1 go to a pricey OOS public where the cost was about his EFC. He wrongly thought that the school would hand over a bunch of aid when Child #2 got accepted to the same school. Wrong. He was stuck. He couldn’t tell Child #1 that she had to leave her school, and he didn’t have any money to pay for Child #2. I don’t know what he ended up doing. 
@mom2collegekids , thankfully we have only one child so we are exempt from that particular complexity.
How does the EFC formula accommodate the next child who enters college, all other factors being equal? Is the EFC for each of the 2 children half of what the EFC was with one child?
No, it’s not usually half. Each kiddo usually has an EFC that is 60% of what one would have…so a total of 120%.
In my current case with one child, I’m frustrated by seeing different EFC’s pop up for us in different schools’ NP calculators (usually super pricey/selective ones) when the inputs were essentially identical. There’s like an $8K variance.
What’s the gold standard for self-calculation of EFC, before FAFSA/CSS Profile season starts? Is it the College Board / Big Future EFC calculator? Or something else?