Good grief people, it’s a legitimate issue. Someone is wanting to write a story that will help inform the public that their EFC isn’t really the number you pay at most schools, and if it isn’t a full need school (i.e. most schools) the EFC isn’t even close. Even most schools that use the CSS and get more detailed financial info still leave a (sometimes substantial) gap. Several schools dropped off of our preliminary lists when I ran the NPC and saw what they really expected me to pay. I just told my (non-CA resident) sister the other day that she needs to quash her D’s dreams of UCLA, because as an OOS student her gap will be huge.
Right now I have one kid on a very generous plan, and one that has a decent gap. It’s an issue I knew about, and one that I am willing to live with. The school acknowledges that I can afford X, but they are going to charge me X+Y. I think most of us know that is the norm, but the average parent of a HS kid who hasn’t encountered it yet probably doesn’t. I know I’ve educated numerous people I know IRL about the reality of how it works.
I don’t think we need to be beating up OP on this.
That’s funny; that’s not even close to the impression I got from reading the first post in this thread, not when OP defines “financial-aid gapping” as “the practice of when colleges give you substantially less in financial aid than your EFC shows you should receive.” (emphasis added)
I would like to know who says a student “should” recieve financial aid to cover the gap, and who is going to provide that money.
Regarding student self-help contributions… how much do people here think is a reasonable amount before it can be considered (possibly part of) “gapping”?
@ucbalumnus my daughter’s was (imo) unreasonable. She makes the federal minimum wage over the summer and at school makes $9 an hour. Her outside scholarship caps work at 10 hrs a week- but she was never offered that many hours anyway. There was no way she was going to make thousands over the summer or the school year.
I consider it misinformation to suggest that COA - EFC is what financial aid “should “ cover. A better approach would be to explain how financial aid actually works, including the fact that the EFC is simply a measure that compares relative financial strength. There is no financial aid tree, so families need to understand the reality of aid. They can then focus on figuring out how to pay the amount they will have to pay, based on the choice they make in terms of a school. There is no “supposed to” when it comes to financial aid; there is only what you are offered. If you accept it, you have to figure out how to pay the rest. I think that focusing on how people pay the rest can be helpful … but beginning the conversation with the premise that folks didn’t get what they were supposed to get is not helpful.
Jeff—you posted in the wrong place. CC is full of high-achievers and highly educated informed parents (so not the real world) who believe that that everyone has equal opportunity to access information, etc…in other words–fantasy. The fact is that the majority of parents/students find the current system head-spinning in its confusion and rightfully so, IMO. Set foot in a public HS on the South Side of Chicago and tell me that group of students/parents have the same access to information as a public HS in Oak Park. Talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not. If a single parent working 2 jobs to support his/ her family also has ample time to research FAFSA and CSS profile obligations, not to mention filter outside scholarships in order to fund their child’s education, then all is well. If they are fortunate to get that far and they see an estimated family contribution of $5K spit out from the government, they wouldn’t be “naive” to think that colleges/universities would be bound by the same governmental guidelines as the family, would they? Why would they think otherwise? Because they have 20 in-school college counselors available to assist? NO; because they have the financial flexibility to hire a private college consultant for their child? NO. Because they have ample time between 2 jobs and raising a family as a single parent to do extensive amounts of research to become fluid in College admission/FA speak? NO. So please refrain from the mountain-top approach and don’t tear into the OP b/c he is looking to help inform the other 90% and not cater to the CC 10%.
I heartily agree that there are many who need this information, but beginning the post by asking what you do to pay when you didn’t get what you were supposed to get doesn’t lead me to believe that the information will be presented properly. Just my opinion, of course, but I have years of experience in the trenches of financial aid.
I agree that many of the people who need the requested information find it difficult to obtain. I wish that there was funding to have professionals who could assist low, lower, middle and upper middle class families understand the reality of financial aid. Many colleges actually do go out into schools to provide this information, but it is difficult to provide the one-on-one assistance that would be beneficial for families.
I want to add that in my experience, families not only have trouble paying for the gap … many have trouble covering the EFC. This makes the real gap even larger.
You’re welcome to your own opinion, but please don’t stereotype by assuming that every poster in this forum has the same beliefs about access to college financial aid information. I’m not naive enough to think that any financial aid neophyte can get all the information they should have by spending a few hours reading or posting here, or anywhere else. What I and others can do is try to demystify the process one answer at a time to those who find their way here.
If the OP really wants to help inform “the other 90%” who don’t have the resources (time, money, etc.) to gain the knowledge that many of us here have acquired over a long period of time, he should write about how the federal “Expected Family Contribution” is a misleading term tied to a misleading metric. He can also write about what need-based financial aid is like in the real world: where it comes from, how to apply for it, how to find out how much a student might be eligible for at a certain school, etc.
There are tons of parents and kids who post here in shock when they are gapped, often enough wealthy families too, who don't like how their holiday home/overseas income/investment portfolio counted on the profile. Or angry divorced couples, or the remarried, or the business owner. It is far from the poor that are in shock. Frankly, the kids with less expectations are far more realistic. The irritation isn't about the lack of info of the average applicant, but that of a writer for the NYT, "Jeff Selingo has written about higher education for two decades. " would frame the question so.
I say…let this journalist write his article. We have all seen articles that we feel are less than clear on what they think they are saying.
I’ve been interviewed by NYTs reporters before. I would be happy to talk to this person but my kids are long out of undergrad, and the net price calculators weren’t even on the radar screen when my kids went to college.
And we knew the FAFSA EFC was not really what we would be paying for college even at instate public universities.
This was on your other thread…
Could you explain what “other expected contributions” means?
I would much rather read an article that follows successful students who took the “unpopular” choice of the option they could afford. Follow graduates of state schools (flagship, directionals and CC) who took on no more than the federal limit of student loans or less and who are living their best lives, serving society, and thriving. This should be normalized instead of articles about students and families are struggling to afford aspirational school that makes some list. These articles with parents lamenting that their middle class income can not come close to their actual COA ignores the fact that most students in the country do NOT go to schools costing $70,000 + a year and they go on to thrive and do great things. So many articles normalize the debt and normalize the idea that only some schools are worthy and therefore people make reckless financial decisions thinking that is the only path to success. Other articles paint the schools as villains and predators who artificially create this loan crisis. Every article on the loan crisis and the crushing debt ignores that before signing for debt almost every student/family had choices.
The story should be about the vast majority of people who do make the right financial choice and who do go on to find amazing success. That is what should be normalized. Publicizing and highlighting families who borrowed, sold, leveraged, and mortgaged to meet the COA makes it seem like the required path to a higher education. The premise of the OP is off as 99%+ of applicants are gapped and expected to pay and contribute to the service that they are receiving. The 1% that is not are the merit or stacked scholarship lottery winners.
How do we know what the premise of the OP is? All that was asked was whether the family had been ‘gapped’ and how that family paid for college. Maybe the article will be about all the families that decided they couldn’t afford the gap and picked another school. Maybe the article will be about how the family sold a plot of land (my friend did that), or took a second job, or started buying lotto tickets.