On the other hand I’m getting daily emails from everywhere telling me now’s the time to commit. Better get in now for priority housing! Priority registration!
There’s pressure to commit. But none of the info most people need to do so.
Parents need to resist that. I’m just saying that it’s a formula for bad decision-making.
I think you are confusing merit and financial aid. If a school gives you a sizable merit award (not based on need), the Cost of Attendance could very likely end up lower than whatever the student needs. For example, when my S22 was applying to colleges, for the midwest schools that gave 30-40k in merit, I didn’t bother to send the FAFSA, as I knew by the school giving him a large sum it would clearly negate any FA. I also knew those schools were not meet need. My COA with merit was much less than indicated on the FAFSA.
Even the very expensive northeastern schools, which didn’t meet need, gave nothing besides merit.
I also recognize that every family’s financial situation is different but ours seemed to be typical of upper middle class families.
I will also have two in college this fall but I don’t expect the non CSS school to give any consideration to multiples.
Article today which appears to be balanced, although does not appear confident in the Dept of Ed getting anything to colleges in the next few weeks.
COBOL. Well, if that doesn’t bring up ancient memories of programming class. Are there any programmers left to “just update the formula,” or did the lack of programmers proficient in COBOL … not to mention skilled in marrying the old mainframe system with the new systems on the school side … necessitate updating the system? Did Congress think that there are COBOL programmers just waiting to be hired by the federal government when private companies pay so much more? I can see why they wanted to update the systems. But don’t they have to have a budget for the project first? Shouldn’t someone have said, “We can’t do it because we don’t have the budget?”
It’s amazing how legacy code just hangs around until the people that know how to write it are gone. I still use software that is written in FORTRAN because nobody has ever rewritten it well enough. No wonder they had had so much trouble with the update. At least it wasn’t on punch cards.
FAFSA submissions significantly down so far for Class of 2024 (no surprise):
https://www.ncan.org/page/FAFSAtracker
Jon Boeckenstedt has a new blog post with some important considerations and possible consequences of the FAFSA delay:
Here is the latest information about processing:
https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/electronic-announcements/2024-03-04/details-2024-25-fafsa-initial-institutional-student-information-records-isir-delivery-and-update-support-institutions-and-vendors
In addition, updated Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) software must be installed for your organization to access 2024–25 ISIRs.
@kelsmom do most colleges have this ready and tested to see if it works?
FSA is offering technical support. Not sure that I would want them involved in my technical support at this time. However, it sounds like there isn’t much of a choice.
One senior enrollment admin at a large state uni said their software vendor will need at least two weeks to get the school’s software updated once ISIRs arrive. Then that updated software has to be tested with all the various other uni systems it has to interface with.
I can’t imagine any schools will want DOE/FSA tech help. I mean, COBOL 
My dad survived many rounds of mega-layoffs at his huge defense contractor employer for 30 years. He was a chem major but started working on computers in the very early days.
We were shocked every time he made it through the cuts. But he eventually realized that literally no one else in the company knew how to manage the old VAX mainframe and code that loaded the fuel into the rockets. This is why we had a second phone line that the company paid for, and he’d sometimes get called on Christmas. He didn’t make a ton of money and was just happy to not get fired. I actually don’t know what they did when he retired.
I was recently amused to discover that bits of its code live on, because a VAX/VMS engineer lead the development of Windows NT 3.1, portions of which are still in Windows 11.
I knew others in the same situation with their COBOL skills (banks, anyone?), which was considered legacy even then. These were the folks that survived the mass layoffs of my childhood.
I would never have predicted that these systems would still be in use today, but I’m not that surprised when I hear about it anymore. My spouse and I had a good LOLSOB this morning when discussing that linked article!
Though I can’t throw stones because I still use custom software written in C by my postdoc lab in the early 80’s… and my spouse has to dust off the olde FORTRAN skills every once in a while.
This goes to my point above. Given this chaos, the technical snafus, the cataclysmic decline in the number of applicants, and the disruptive changes to eligibility and income guidelines…
Why would there be any expectation that the NPCs would offer an accurate portrayal of your possible aid package? From the federal update:
“Until schools and states receive the FAFSA information, they won’t be able to answer questions about aid eligibility or status.”
If the federal government can’t say what my need is after four years of trying, why would some little Catholic college with 1200 students have known what to plug into their NPC?
Let’s start here. You can figure out your SAI right now.
FAFSA processing issues aside, the SAI formula has been public for awhile, so one can calculate it on their own, or on a few websites that have been linked on this thread. Knowing one’s SAI DOES help anticipate aid you may receive, starting with Pell grants (and some NPCs ask for an SAI number to do a quicker estimate).
For NPCs, one can call the school’s FA office and ask if their NPC reflects the new SAI formula. That seems simple to me among the many not simple things that are happening in the FAFSA world right now.
It is common that NPCs wouldn’t show 2024-2025 COA yet, so people have to increase 2023-24 costs.
With that said, some schools didn’t have accurate NPCs before the FAFSA changes, and I am sure some won’t now or next year or the year after. Sadly.
ETA: Linking an accurate SAI calculator that I linked earlier in this thread: 2024-25 Student Aid Index (SAI) Calculator – College Money Method
Some schools are waiting to release a ‘complete financial package’ and haven’t announced merit yet, either. Some schools require that you fill out FAFSA to be considered for merit awards. In our case, we have automatic merit info from some schools, while others have said that they are waiting to announce everything in mid-late March or April. Kid would love to be able to go ahead and decline a couple of schools, but with merit awards still unknown it’s hard to make comparisons.
Yes. Agreed on all of that. And in my discussions with schools, they directly told me that their NPCs would be wrong this year and to not rely on them.
I ran the NPC at a large R1 my son applied to, plugging in the estimated SAI that we got from the feds in January.
I also ran it without that, plugging in our financial information and letting the NPC calculate everything. In the final report it generated, it still referred to EFC instead of SAI, and the number it came up with was 1/3 what the federally estimated SAI was.
So again, yes. I am do not believe I can count on the accuracy of the NPCs.
That SAI is wrong because the feds hadn’t loaded the allowances accurately, so the formula was wrong. The formula at the link above is correct.
I agree if a school tells you the NPC isn’t accurate to believe them. But, some schools do have accurate NPCs right now.
Wait, what?!?!? My COBOL skills are still marketable? I was giddy when a company I worked for in the 90’s couldn’t support their COBOL programs because nobody knew how. They laid the COBOL programmers off in favor of keeping all of us converted Windows developers. Suddenly, I was a valuable commodity!
And now the government has finally come calling? Time to find that bin full of silk shirts and corduroy pants.
It does seem crazy not to hear about merit until April. We’ve had about 20 schools between my two, and all sent the merit along with the acceptance, or it was easy enough to figure out on the website. I guess any college being forced to wait until April to give out merit may take a beating with yield.
delete
FAFSA will be down on this Friday for awhile. Let’s hope it will be ready to go after that.
Hope it’s up and running and processing and submitting after this!