Not exactly. SAI is used to determine eligibility for federal student aid. That’s it.
Many schools that give need based aid will calculate in their own way what they expect a family to contribute.
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Ok, so this is dumb. D24 was admitted many months ago to UNM (Univ of New Mexico). She got an email 2 days ago from UNM stating the following:
“We are contacting you because we have received your FAFSA for the 2024-2025 but our records indicate you have not yet been fully admitted to UNM. We cannot process your application until the admission process is complete and you are admitted in degree seeking status.”
General thoughts off the top of my head about this:
- Dude, y’all sent my kid a “you’re admitted!” notification ages ago. You even sent one in the regular mail.
- You’ve been emailing my kid multiple times a week since then urging her to enroll.
- It’s a good thing she won’t be attending there.
- Your system is totally screwed up.
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Is this high school class of 2024 or college?
High school
This not a contradiction but an elaboration–I believe to the extent the college is in charge of determining eligibility for federal financial aid, like Pell Grants, they still have to use the federal formula. However, they are free to use their own formula for their own grants, and this is often the vast bulk of large need-based awards.
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Colleges just grab the federal aid that they can for each student based on their FAFSA SAI. They don’t do any recalculating for federal FA purposes.
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Then yes my daughter is class of 2024. I did the net calculator for our public flag and for the private school she got into and when factoring merit scholarships the private should be cheaper but still 27k. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s even possible to get student loans for that. Guess I was hoping the school would provide more money on top of the merit scholarship and wasn’t sure we would qualify if that was our SAI number.
First is UConn and second is Howard. They don’t include $7500 scholarship to instate UConn or $20000 Howard merit scholarship.
Neither UConn or Howard meet full need unfortunately.
Students can only take out $5.5K in federal loans their first year ($27K in total over the 4 years of undergrad, for most students). Any loans above the $5.5K would be on the parents, either directly or as co-signers. Do you have less costly options/what budget are you trying to get to (that wouldn’t include parent loans)?
I do think it would be best for you to start a thread to keep this thread on topic, and to get more eyes on your situation.
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Kinda stinks that the kids have to bust their necks to earn top grades just for the school to say hers 100k in debt or go to community college. I thought this thread was to discuss Class of 2024 kids so I’m not sure about the derailment. But I appreciate the info you gave and I think I understand now. Thank you.
Did she commit and pay the deposit an UNM? If not then I guess that’s what they mean.
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Nope!
Drumroll, please….we have a decision! Admission offer accepted and deposit paid. D24 is heading to RIT!!!
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Unfortunately it happens. Plus add in cost go up each year (in general) but your merit will stay the same so therefore, your paying a little more than budget each year. We had one college send FA info and include loans and work study in the offer so the cost looks great until you start reading. Others are more open about cost and say this is where we sit, if you take student loans you would sit here.
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We had to be more aggressive and directive because of finances. There were basically no sure-thing schools we knew we could afford. We live in a state with pricey state schools, there’s no community colleges near us, and the guaranteed need schools were all going to be reaches. If left to their devices they’d have just applied to the reaches.
I think they’ll end up enrolling at schools we harassed them into applying to. They are excited about them now because they got aid packages that’ll allow them to commit 90% of their summer earnings and work study to paying tuition, rather than 100%.
As aid letters roll in I’m pretty sure they’d have no options we can afford if we just let them apply to the ones they completed on their own.
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S24 committed to Case and now I have to deal with the fact that his move-in day is his 18th birthday.
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Mount Holyoke for the win! Clicked “accept” this morning.
(I pretty much knew this is what she had decided, but was waiting for her to make the official commitment.)
After all was said and done, this was my top choice as well. I’m thrilled!
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@NiceUnparticularMan any movement on S24’s decision?
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We had a strict budget from the get go…not anywhere in the vicinity of full pay. Each kid knew the budget years before the admission process began. The first cut of schools, and the big reason we were so hands on at the beginning of the process, was budget first and foremost.
All the schools my kids applied to were schools we would be able to afford. After a lot of research and discussion, we were able to identify about 8-10 schools for each child that fit the parameters they gave (or at least 70-80% of the wishlists) and also our budget parameters. They then made the choices of where to actually apply.
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But that’s the thing. There was no school we could afford. With twins, coupled with the new rule saying the SAI/EFC would not be divided by the number of kids in college but rather added together, we had to throw some Hail Marys. Even if they got into full-need reaches there was no way would could cover two full SAIs.
Worse, we didn’t even know our SAI until mid January. And the fact that it was wrong.
On top of that colleges were telling us directly that their NPCs were wrong, not calibrated to the new rules, and almost certainly useless.
Every school they applied to was a school we probably couldn’t afford unless one of them tossed them a package out of line with expectations.
One that we can actually afford is because of how they treat Pell eligible students.
But we didn’t know we were Pell eligible until two weeks ago.
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That sounds really stressful. I’m sorry. I hope your twins found good options.
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