@dyiu13 D’s fall semester starts late August and tuition and room/board payment is due early August, so you may have some breathing room unless your D’s school tuition payment policy is very different from most other schools.
@dyiu13 Do you own your home? A home equity line of credit has low interest rates and can help with cash flow when you need it.
Thanks! It seems the schools haven’t even set their 16/17 SY tuition, etc., rates.
@palm715, your daughter’s graduation sounds similar to what D16’s will be. Her charter school is not online, though because the kids are homeschooled, they have likely never met (small town though, so some connections are possible). I really would be fine if she didn’t attend graduation. 
She does sports and orchestra at the traditional neighborhood school (a bit like the setup for sports at @sseamom 's d’s school), and probably feels closer to kids there.
@dyiu13, yes. My D’s school doesn’t set tuition rates until July.
So even when you get your FA package it is based on estimates.
Wow. The FAFSA says we have A LOT more money to spend on college than the CSS. What a downer, but at least we got it done. I don’t know about the rest of you, but it feels like all depressing bits, no fun bits in the college process at the moment…
@palm715 - I think that’s the general thing that happens (FAFSA wants to take a lot more $$ than CSS Profile) because they ask about more/different assets and are looking with a stricter standard for federal aid. But many schools are more generous than the FAFSA, right? Hang in there…
Home equity tapped out. Unforunately.
@palm715 sorry to hear that. The CSS (and the way individual colleges interpret it) says our EFC is between $6k and $11k MORE than FAFSA – darn home equity and presumably other things. We almost think we can afford our FAFSA number – almost! – where out CSS number is truly frightening.
Question to parents of HS Class of 2016 from a parent of HS Class 2017: Our EFC is high, around $45K (well, I consider that as being high). In running various NPCs, I will occasionally see ‘Grant aid’ offered that is not tied to stats (they didn’t ask for stats). If this school also happens to provide merit aid…and your kid is fortunate enough to receive it…does that ‘Grant’ from the NPC tend to disappear? Is your final COA closer to the number without Grant (less financial need?), or did you see that the final number was closer to merit and ‘Grant’ numbers stacking? If the grant is pure FA, then can I assume it will be reduced if merit is awarded?
Hopefully this makes sense. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!
I ordered my senior yearbook online today well technically my mom did since she’s paying for them as we are seniors. So weird- another step towards the future. Second semester starts February 1st now that’s scary
I think you have to assume that the EFC is the minimum you pay unless the school meets 100% need (as they define it).
Unless the school costs less than EFC.
If you receive merit and need based grants usually merit will replace need based grants. Depends on school.
With our EFC we knew we needed full tuition merit so we could pay room and board.
Everyone realizes that your EFC is not the number that you are expected to pay towards college , right? It’s the number the government comes up with to determine what they think you should pay.
I do find it very confusing.
We have not found the NPC’s to be very useful (and yes, we DO know that the EFC is just a suggested amount). The numbers from the schools’ own NPC’s are different from what the more comprehensive generic NPC’s are showing, and what schools so far have offered in merit in both cases have been double or more than NPC showed us. So we’re taking each school as it comes and ignoring the NPC’s.
We approached this what I think is a non-traditional way. H and I married late after H’d been a confirmed, wandering bachelor and I’d been wiped out in a divorce. Our house is underwater. No parent living, so no help there. Yet we are not wanting for much-we just don’t have much savings. D wants us to not have to take loans. So when we discovered that most HBCU’s are much, much cheaper than the big name schools, she set her sights on those that offer big merit money to good, but not great students. Her stats are lower than most of your kids, but she has lots of non-quantifiable achievements.
We already have a school that we can pay for out of pocket, it’s so affordable, even OOS. One other has given D full tuition. Another, what would equal full R & B, but we would need more $$ to pay all the tuition and fees. We are waiting on at least 3 full-ride decisions. Because D will be an elementary education major, she can get a federal grant each year for $4,000 if she teaches in low-income schools. If she needs to, she could get the Stafford loan too, but would rather not. In any case, this plan appears to be working-for us.
@dyiu13 -most of D’s colleges offer a monthly payment plan. One even offers the choice of 12-month, 10-month, or 9-month options. Some don’t even charge interest. I feel for you. If D had chosen schools where we’d be expected to pay the bulk of the cost, we’d have to be telling her “no”. It is only her choice of schools that is keeping her from going local and commuting from home.
Okay, folks, I am catching up, so sorry for comments that seem like ancient history to you au courant types. A few comments on the first five of ten pages that I missed…
First, @lvmjac1, thanks for cleaning up the Acceptance list. I noticed. And congrats on the acceptance!
@dyiu13, fascinated that you are reading all those social networks and forums. Wondering if you see a real difference in conversation style. Those short sentences that kids use! Those partial thoughts that seem to be fleshed out in the mind of the reader!
Welcome, @oneundecided.
I am so sorry, @happymochi, to hear about the loss of your dog. Dogs are so always present that when they are gone their absence is particularly hard. Hugs to you.
@Sophmore1, those double-scheduled events are so painful. I agree with those who have suggested creating a make-up event for prom. Is there another high school that has a prom she might feel comfortable attending?
Congrats, @Dragonflygarden. I love hearing news about your impressive kids.
@Mysonsdad, I will also be speaking at D16’s graduation.
D16 thinks she will have a Senior Superlative, which show up in the yearbook–waiting to hear what it will be. S13 got “Biggest Flirt.” Yes, I am one proud parent.
Still catching up…!
Congrats, @Almondjoy1 and @Cheeringsection.
Our high school also gives letters for non-academic achievements, which I appreciate.
Welcome @greeny8.
Our school gives each student a weighted and an unweighted GPA rank, and the student can choose which one s/he reports to college. The weighted GPA determines the official class rank. If the student has an unweighted 4.0, s/he can also claim #1 status, but it is not the official #1 that is reported in yearbook, etc. After a big hoopla many years ago, our school stopped adding weight to any class offered outside the school. This was a disadvantage for our D16, who spent her freshman year elsewhere, but she still did fine, and it seems like a more fair policy than what happens at your school, @me29034.
@carolinamom2boys, I can’t believe you just joined in May and have almost 1500 posts. By the time we get to our shared 2019 children, you will have outpaced me 20:1. I have to stop combining my responses…but can’t seem to get out of the habit… 
@dyiu13 and @palm715 , no suggestions but lots of sympathy for having to come up with extra dollars.
So relieved to hear that @fretfulmother, our brilliant MIT grad, also finds all the financial aid stuff confusing.
@readingclaygirl, I’m saying what I hope my own D16 will hear too: this next semester will fly! Enjoy.
@carolinamom2boys I will confess to being confused on what you mentioned about the EFC. Whenever I have run the NPCs for any college without merit aid available I get a huge EFC number back. A couple universites will indicate what might be expected in terms of typical merit packages for the stats of my DD. I have pretty much assumed that number is the likely number but that it might go down based on additional scholarships available through specific college/major scholarships or (if really lucky) one of the major super competitive scholarships that are available for the university. Is there some aspect I am confused about? Please let me know if there is more money available from somewhere! We are looking at dental school tuition and college tuition next year and it is daunting to say the least.
@dyiu13 yes, financially we are in the exact same boat. No college savings and the NPC are saying anywhere from $12-$24 using the same numbers. Because we own a business we have no idea what to expect. Unfortunately, the $24,000 is my son’s top choice.
Our problem with savings is that the money we are making today has been a slow and steady increase over the 13 years we have owned our plumbing business. Had we been making the same money 13 years ago we would have been able to save. Now we are putting over 20% of our income in retirement trying to catch up. So it looks as if we should have a nice nest egg for college (we don’t) but it wasn’t so long ago that we were getting income based financial aid for things like summer camps and preschool.
Also, because we bought our house at exactly the right time we have decent equity which increases our EFC for profile schools. I also am repaying a high student loan myself, and ended up not working because of homeschooled child.
@dyiu13 We are in a similar situation with little savings due to other family related reasons. Minimal savings, with a good current income stream and let’s not forget trying to save for retirement that is closer than it seems sometimes. Little home equity either. D16 knew she had to get significant merit to make school affordable for what she likes, medium to large research oriented schools near or in a major city.
Her search started with local schools as safeties, but that expanded as we learned more on CC and elsewhere. Merit menu schools with strict number formulas for merit were added first, then she did great on the PSAT which added in NMF schools. The last additions were good competitive merit schools.
Her list is at six schools, two are private and gave half to two thirds tuition as merit, but are still out of our price range. One of those has a Stamps scholarship she applied for, not a likely thing, but worth a shot. Another school offered smaller merit with her acceptance, but they only make larger offers after a scholarship weekend, hoping to get the invite to that, otherwise unaffordable.
One NMF is full ride, one is full tuition with a cheaper than average R&B, and she has a full tuition (but not fees, which add up quickly) at a competitive merit school. Our spreadsheet using 2015-2016 COA for each school has us in the $12-15k per year range even for the full tuition schools. One offer adjusts with tuition increases (or decreases which actually happened one year), the other is a set amount that looks to be based off of current year tuition rates.
We will help pay for one of those two schools if she chooses them, but she will also be taking yearly student loans to share the burden with us, which brings the parental bill into the $7-12k per year range, which is affordable and allows us to not work until we are drop at our jobs. We would use a payment plan as well as my parents did for me.
If she doesn’t want loans she can take the full ride offer. DW and I both took full guaranteed student loans as UG’s to help our parents with college costs and don’t feel it is onerous to expect the same from D16 (who has never had to work yet, since we allowed her that time to concentrate on academics), especially since she has a good school offering her a true full ride if she wants it.