True cost of attendace @ UPenn

Paying for College
1

A newbie here. I would like to know if the following is possible.

Parents EFC is around 40,000
Advertised Cost of Attendance @ UPenn 75,000 dollars
Advertised Cost of Attendance @ Univ Texas Austin 27,000 dollars
True Cost of attending @ UPenn 27,000 dollars

Is this possible i.e. one can attend UPenn with an expense that is less than EFC

I spoke to a financial aid officer at UPenn and they told me parents (including child) has to spend EFC amount first before any grants/scholarships/work-study jobs are given. However a friend of mine whose kid is at UPenn said it is costing him the same amount as going to state school which is around 27,000 dollars.

Please advise.

2

http://www.sfs.upenn.edu/paying/net-price-calculator.htm may help you estimate what Penn’s financial aid may look like for your financial situation.

3

thx for taking time to help.

My post was to understand the discrepancy I am seeing. For someone attending UPenn with an EFC of 40,000 they must spend 40,000 i.e. the total of grants / scholarships etc cannot exceed 35,000 dollars - { COA - EFC = UPenn grants }. This is the explanation I am given by FAO (Financial Aid Officer). However according to my friend it is costing him only 27,000 dollars not 40,000 a difference of 13,000 dollars. My friend is unwilling to share the details and I am unsure if he is just making it up or being real

4

Each college may determine EFC its own way, so that they may come up with different numbers from each other, and from the FAFSA calculation.

For your own situation, use Penn’s net price calculator as linked in reply #1 to get an estimate.

5

Here’s an actual f. aid package from Penn for a particular student. Perhaps it can help you, though if your friend chooses not to share his EFC, you really have nothing to go on other than Penn’s NPC (net price calculator) or your EFC from the FAFSA, assuming you filled it out.

COA (cost of attendance includes tuition, housing, meals, books, personal expenses):
$70,340

EFC: $7,110

FINANCIAL AID ELIGIBILITY: $63,230

Endowed Scholarship (need-based): $40,000
Penn Grant: $19,830

Total Grants: $59,830

Total Loans: $ 0

Federal Work Study Job $ 3400

Total Aid Award: $63,230

NOW, caveat:

Billed amount (tuition, room, board): $66,000 (This removes books and personal expenses, which aren’t billed)

SO, technically, this student would only pay $2,770 rather than his EFC of $7,110 if he took the work study. If he didn’t, He’d pay $6170, which is still under the EFC.

SECOND caveat:

Said student was allowed to bring in $5950 in outside scholarships a year, which he had. Therefore, his total billed amount for the year (declining work study) was: $220 a year.

LESSON:

There are a number of factors that you can’t know unless your friend shares details of both the financial aid package and any outside scholarships. It’s certainly possible for a student to be billed for less than his EFC.

6

Also the work study is not a grant but income earned during the semester at a work study job.
It is not available up front and the maximum amount listed in the aid award might not be able to be reached depending on hours able to work and hourly rate.

7

Your friends EFC may be lower than yours. Run the NPC.

8

Your friend’s EFC sounds like it is lower. Does his family make less than yours? Sounds like they do. He has a lower EFC so he gets more need based aid from Penn than you would.

9

UPenn is a CSS Profile school and they calculate an EFC based on their own methodology that may or may not be even close to your FAFSA EFC. It is likely that your friend’s family got a lower EFC based on their CSS Profile info.

It’s also possible that they’re not giving you the whole picture and that it’s not truly the total COA that is $27,000. That could be what they’re paying + work study + loans. Penn’s financial aid packages have been known to contain large amounts of work study. Large enough that it’s unrealistic the student can actually earn that amount during the school year.

10

Per my understanding no body wants to give money away without good reason. It is highly likely (for most situations) that the EFC computed by UPenn is higher than one computed by FAFSA. So it is an exercise in futility to go through UPenn calculator - it is a long one and I can wait for few years.

11

I liked your explanation. In your example (Second Scenario) you said UPenn allowed student to bring an outside Scholarship award thereby reducing Out Of Pocket expenses to 220 dollars. However I was told by UPenn Fin Aid Officer that it is not possible to do so. The amount UPenn grants in need-based, work-study, etc is basically computed as follows

Money provided by UPenn = COA - ( EFC + Any Non-UPenn Scholarships)

Per the above formula the 5950 scholarship amount would be added to 7110 EFC to compute

What am I missing

12

Wanted to clarify one thing - my friend makes more in income than me - that I am absolutely sure. So any explanations that his EFC is lower therefore allowing more grant money is not true

13

Regarding UPenn having a large value for Work-Study that is not realizable can explain partially. A difference of 13,000 is an amount is too large.

14

Stop counting other’s people’s money.

No matter what your friend tells you, you have no way of truly knowing the details of their financial situation (you friend probably does not know all of the details of his/her family’s situation).

The one thing that you know is that your FAFSA EFC is 40k. Are your parents willing to spend borrow at minimum 40k? if the answer is no, it does not matter what someone else’s family is spending. You will have to take Penn ff the table because your family does not want to or cannot afford to pay 40k

15

It is even more futile to make uninformed guesses about your friend’s financial situation and UPenn financial aid and attempt to infer something about what UPenn may offer you, particularly when UPenn has a net price calculator that will give you a much better estimate than uninformed guesses that you have been writing about here.

16

@RErrabol

What year are you in high school?

The net price calculators are currently set for students enrolling in fall 2018. If you are starting college in some future year…the NPC might not be accurate for you by the time you go. Policies change sometimes.

17

And just because your friend makes more than you do, does not necessarily mean his EFC is the same or higher. There so many other things to consider such as family size, number in undergrad, home equity, type of other assets, there are definitely situations where people with more income still could end up paying less.

If you have not gone through the Penn NPC for your situation, even though it is long, you really need to do so.

18

Thanks to all who tried to help illumine my understanding. The response from one was very illuminating - all the formulas one can look up are basically meaningless - it is essentially a case of how much you can bargain. There is no such thing as a set cost - perhaps some will disagree with my conclusion.

19

I disagree with your conclusion because it is not based in facts.

There is no bargaining with a school like U Penn. In some very rare circumstances, you can present them with facts which were not in evidence when you applied- breadwinner lost a job, heavy medical expenses. And they may reconsider. Or- in even MORE rare circumstances, you can show them that Cornell or Yale has admitted you with a more generous package (although they are more likely to tell you to go to Cornell or Yale if they are cheaper).

You need to run the numbers with YOUR facts- salary, assets, number of people in the family, etc. What someone else gets or doesn’t get isn’t relevant for YOU.

But bargain? Good luck.

20

New tax proposals might change need based aid policies at U Penn.