So I just spent about an hour running the net price calculator on a boatload of schools. I know that there is some super secret magical way that they determine need. But putting in the exact same numbers for NYU has our out-of-pocket and over 90,000 a year and yet Barnard at zero a year. And then the majority of the rest between 20,000 and 50,000. With a few over 60,000 and then that random NYU over 90 lol. I can only laugh because it would be wild to go $400,000 in debt to put my kid through school even if it’s the most amazing magical school on earth. I wouldn’t even pay that much for Hogwarts.
Also is college raptor accurate? Or should I be going to each individual website and running the numbers? College raptor was just so much faster.
You will never get accurate results from any of the aggregator sites. They do not account for the different ways that Profile schools look at home equity- for example. And if you have a divorce situation, I am told by people who have tried to do early estimates that the aggregators are WILDLY optimistic about how much aid you are likely to get.
Don’t use College Raptor full stop. I am surprised to hear it would be faster as their full version for NYU’s NPC has 70 questions, to take one example (and that one is still not connnected to NYU’s actual NPC formula at CollegeBoard as far as I can tell.)
As blossom touched on, NPC results may be inaccurate if parents are divorced, own a business and/or own real estate beyond a primary home…are any of those the case for you?
I wouldn’t use it. Use the NPCs on the college websites. Keep in mind, they are currently set for students starting college in fall 2025. For 2026, they will be updated in the summer.
Best to use the individual sites. Even then, it’s only maybe half accurate. We’ve gotten back lots of surprises when the actual financial aid package came in. Hence why our daughter opted to start at community college.
Definitely use the NPCs on college websites. Some of them (but not all) use the College Board NPC, which means once you put in the data once you can then re-use it for several schools.
That said, I still found NPCs to vary a lot (and am finding that offers from schools that “meet full need” also vary a lot). In general, NPCs for private universities were much higher (like $15-20k higher) for my family than the ones from small liberal arts schools, although there were some exceptions.
Thank you! those things do not apply to our situation. Our situation is super straightforward. Two working parents with no investments other than our primary residence that has some equity.
I will go and run the NPC for each school. When I checked Barnard website, it changed our cost to about 30k. Basically plus room and board. The grant listed was about equal to tuition.
I’ll have to run the one for NYU, and of course, all the other schools. Womp womp. What a waste of a lunch hour lol
Just a tip when comparing costs, take direct costs (tuition, fees, room and board) less merit scholarships and/or need based aid. Usually the NPC gives a COA which may or may not include indirect costs like travel, health insurance etc, and then estimates your financial aid to get to a net COA.
Many schools’ NPCs don’t estimate merit aid, if they offer it. NPCs are likely still set to 2025 levels, so you may want to increase them to approximate 2026 direct COA (although need based aid will keep up, at least at the meet full need schools.)
Health insurance may be a direct cost if billed by the school to the student who does not have coverage applicable to the location of the college. However, it may not be an additional cost if the student can continue under a parental family health insurance plan that covers providers around the college (but then some colleges may reduce financial aid if they have a special financial aid grant for health insurance).
Travel is a real cost, but highly variable based on the current location of the student and parents and location of the college.
Misc and personal costs are real, but depend on the student’s spending habits and the general cost of stuff around the college.
Actual costs of the above may be different from the college estimates, but they should not be assumed to be the same for all colleges.
Something to be aware of is that some colleges change which NPC template they use… but the old one is still up and findable in a web search. When web searching for a college’s NPC, follow the link to the financial aid part of the college’s own web site, from which you can then follow the link to the college’s current NPC.
And remember that if a college does not promise to meet full need, the financial aid package for a student with calculated financial need will likely be less than a financial aid package from a school that meets full need.
However, this is not always true, if the school that claims to “meet need” has an unfavorable (to you) definition of “need” compared to the school that makes no such claim.
A common example is if the “meet need” school requires both divorced parents’ financials, while the school that does not claim that requires only the custodial parent financials, and the non-custodial parent has substantial income and/or assets. Another example is if the “meet need” school makes unfavorable-to-the-applicant recalculations regarding small business, self employment, real estate assets and income, etc. that the school that does not claim that does not. Even without these situations, a “meet need” school may just have an unfavorable-to-the-applicant definition of “need” relative to income and assets.
YES be you - when things didn’t look right you dug deeper and asked for advice.
You have no idea how many people just take those figures and tell their child to apply to colleges that they can’t afford, and then have to say “sorry kid, after all that stress and then joy, we can’t afford any of the colleges to which you were accepted”. Don’t be THOSE people…
Actually, if you’ve been here for a bit, you probably do know.
In cases where colleges link to it, MyIntuition is typically stated as a quick estimate, while the colleges also link to a more detailed NPC that is likely to be more accurate.
Myintuition’s net COA is generally in the form of a range. And the ranges can be large, I’ve seen tens of thousands of dollars. Ranges tend to not be helpful when people are trying to build a list of affordable options.
MyIntution also does not calculate/show Pell grants.
Take the extra time and do the NPCs linked on each school’s financial aid website.
ETA: over the years of working with students, U Miami’s MyIntuition results were among the least helpful because it gave such a large COA range. And this is a school that meets full need for all, so there shouldn’t be a large potential range. I went to their website to run an example to post the results and to my extremely pleasant surprise they do not use MyIntuition anymore.
So… I just ran the NPC for Holy Cross. Now, I wasn’t expecting to get much (if any) aid, but at the end of the process it spat out the 2025-26 cost of attendance ($85k) and then said that parental contribution would be $112K and student contribution $2400K per year.
The common wisdom is that few families pay sticker price, but I’ve never heard of paying $20K above sticker price What gives???
What gives???