If you’ve got a group of similar schools clustered around the 17-25K range-- if it were me, I’d feel confident that barring a change in policy, you’re on firm ground there.
And agree that tossing the totally unaffordables is the best path forward!
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For the reliability of NPCs, one thing to really look at is to what degree are they estimating merit. We found a lot of schools didn’t ask for test scores or GPA in the NPC so there was no way they could accurately give us a merit number. When they did include that info, it tended to be accurate.
Also a couple schools my daughter was accepted to added additional scholarships on top of the original merit award, bringing down the price a bit lower. She ended up at Juniata which gave her an additional $5k to play in the band. With the initial merit award, it brought our cost down to about $30k.
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A real hidden gem for health sciences is Springfield College in Massachusetts, who has just opened a brand new $62 million health sciences building to consolidate all their programs under one roof. In these days of $90,000 plus cost of attendance, Springfield has a shockingly low 61,700 basic cost of attendance (tuition, fees, room & board). In addition, they offer merit scholarships of up to $30,000. A student receiving their top scholarship would be paying a cost of $31,700.
Health Sciences majors include the following:
Applied Exercise Science
Athletic Training
Biology
Communication Disorders and Science
Dance/Pre-PT to DPT
Health Care Management
Health Care
Movement & Sports Studies
Occupational Therapy
Physical Therapy
Physician’s Assistant
Psychology
Public Health
Speech-Language Pathology
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NPCs were extremely off for us. We have no extenuating financial circumstances, just an above average yet still “middle class” income and one home/mortgage. For example— for CU Boulder, the NPC was $38K; the actual cost with merit came in at $63K a year. Baylor’s NPC was mid $40s, yet we are paying mid $20s for her first year. (Edit: Baylor’s
cost does include an outside scholarship of $5K per year, but even so it is still way below the NPC).
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I wonder why CU showed that for OOS given there’s little to no need aid and most get $6250 ($25k as they say) a but that’s over four years.
No clue, but it is a real disservice to students and parents (not to mention a likely violation of the spirit of the law) when NPCs are so wildly inaccurate.
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I think that’s tuition, and doesn’t include (expensive) room and board and other COA.
I found the NPC were all over the place, even at the same school! For one daughter I kept putting info into the NPC and getting different results. Some would include state aid, other time not, sometimes a few school grants, other times not.
This could happen when the school is updating from one year to the next, but that isn’t the only explanation.
I think you have to look at the breakdown of the NPC. Does it explain what costs and scholarships/aid are included in the NPC results? COL - merit scholarship - need aid less department scholarships - Pell grants?
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No—I went back and looked at the screen shots I took and that was total COA. Many on here told me at the time that the NPC for CU Boulder was way too low and they were correct.
Where we got lucky is that one school ended up being much less than their NPC. It’s an excellent fit; that school really wanted her and she fell in love with them (although she didn’t know this was such a fit when she applied).
The process sure is something!
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