I see all of these Ivy and similar schools mentioning free tuition for under $200k with “typical assets.” Really curious as to what typical assets mean and whether this actually works out of if I am getting needlessly optimistic. I feel like most responsible families who are able to try to keep something equal to expenses for 6 mos to 1 year worth in easily liquidated assets (I know not everyone can). With tuition covered costs are about $20 -$25k which we could manage but I’m wondering it it really ends up being that for most families who are just under the $200k. NPCs are showing about $25-30k. Thanks for any reports!
This is 5 year old data - but Cornell told me if you had a million, you weren’t getting a penny from anyone.
At W&L, 88% of people in our bracket got $38K on average. We got none. I asked why. They said I had more than average assets which was 2x earnings - so less than $400K - again, 5 years ago.
Today - no idea.
Call and ask. They will tell you.
2 Likes
If you spend a little time plugging different income and asset figures into the NPCs, you will be able to determine the cliffs/thresholds where the FA award drops or disappears.
I don’t know how quickly Yale will update their NPC after today’s announcement, but imagine they can let you know when if you contact them.
1 Like
That’s odd as most would be satisfied with receiving one’s first born male child (unless, of course, my class in contracts was using an outdated casebook).
I’m hearing a lot of problems with this for kids in our town. We have lots of families in the 175K-225K range. One kid (T10) was expecting 35K from the NPC, got 5K. Another kid got 5K from dream school, 50K from another school (inline with NPCs and expectations). The big problem is home equity – with homes up 40%, lots of families in our town have 250-500K of equity. However, the only way to tap it is to move (and they could never afford a mortgage on the current value of their house) creating a huge problem for younger siblings.
If you are in your 50s and have been making 200K/year (especially with multiple kids), I think it is bad financial planning to not have at least 500K saved. I have no idea how people are going to retire since few have traditional pensions. This is well outside “typical assets”.
I think universities should be forced to disclose the % at 200K who actually receive full tuition, I suspect its less than 25% for suburban families (these low asset numbers are more common in urban areas where families rent).
I think people have a choice. You build a school list for an assured price. Any school that requires a css and doesn’t have a cost you can live with that’s assured at full pop or with auto merit has to go in the maybe column, not the assured column. What they see on submitted docs isn’t always what you submitted in the NPC.
People need to have at least 1-2 assured and the self control to not make a decision they cannot afford, no matter how great they think that name is.
This is about choice. Someone willing to wreck the future is taking a gamble unlikely to pay off, certainly not for themselves.
People need to make better choices in this case.
Doesn’t NPCs ask for home equity and other assets? If they do, how did these families’ FA awards end up so far from NPC projections?
2 Likes
IME schools that assess home equity for FA purposes do include NPC questions for the market value of the home, price paid, and outstanding debt on the home. Generally schools do cap the amount of any home equity hit too.
IME, people who are at the income range noted by jes_96 often have more than ‘typical’ assets, not including home equity…especially families who have been in that income range for a while.
People should take care that they are accurately entering info in the NPCs and always save a screenshot of NPC results.
4 Likes
This is key. “typical” is a relative term- I am always surprised when I hear people talking about their “typical” assets. They believe the beach house they inherited from Grandma is ‘typical”. It has no mortgage, and because Grandma bought it for $17K way back when…. that figure is stuck in their minds. The reality that they could sell it, borrow against it, etc. and that its market value is now $950K still has them believing that “everyone” owns a vacation home worth almost a million dollars.
Your 401K and IRA- not counted. But not “everyone” has a brokerage account worth $1.5 million, even if in your head that’s your “fun retirement fund” and not available for college payments.
Etc. Paying your EFC may or may not be what you had mentally earmarked your assets for- but surely folks can see that they are better off than someone without those assets.
3 Likes
If a school’s NPC is that far off, the families should be talking to the financial aid office. Different schools use different formulas so it’s hard to compare apples to apples, but the school’s own NPC should be accurate for their students!
The NPC can be inaccurate though when there are more complex financial situations like for divorced families, the self employed, people who own farm land, second homes, etc…
I will say I hate hearing the stories where families build their list around NPC figures and then they are glaringly wrong. Heart breaking!
And I agree it would be nice to see more data from the schools.
2 Likes
I can give a few specific examples of “typical asset” thresholds from conversations I’ve had with financial aid offices in the current cycle. Colby is $500k excluding retirement funds (401k/IRA), which includes all home equity. St. Olaf is $200k of non-retirement funds, but exclusive of home equity. I think excluding 401k and IRA funds is standard practice - I haven’t come across any school that counted these in the calculation, and even the NPC/MyIntuition calculators generally say that any such accounts are excluded.
1 Like
@CollegeAidPro is a sponsor on this forum and captures this type of data. Perhaps they can be of help?