Hopefully you ran each school’s net price calculator to get a COA estimate. That would help you have a sense for what to expect.
No college has ‘final’ deadlines right now. I don’t think all schools are going to change to 6/1 (or even 5/15) unless they can’t get all their ISIRs in time to get packages out before their current stated deadline. Time will tell.
You may need to decide/make an enrollment deposit before you have all final FA packages. You can deposit at a school with a 5/1 date and then if you get a better offer, you can reneg on the first school, and deposit at the new school. You may lose the first deposit though.
There’s no number that is good or bad for FA purposes. With that SAI you may or may not qualify for a partial Pell Grant, it depends on family size, AGI, etc. Max Pell Grant is $7,495. If you do get a Pell Grant it may only be a small amount, but I can’t guess or estimate because I don’t know the details.
The vast majority of meet full need schools use the CSS Profile and will calculate a student’s need according to their own formula. SAI is not really important, but these schools will include any federal financial aid (which is why students file FAFSA) like Pell Grant and the $5.5K loan in their FA packages. Some will include federal work study and FSEOG too.
For schools that don’t meet full need, they will also include any Federal financial aid in their packages. And then they may or may not give a discount from there. For example, on the Ga Tech thread (not sure if you were on that one), for the vast majority of OOS students, there will be no institutional financial aid coming…they don’t give any merit or institutional need based aid to the majority of OOS students.
Net Price Calculators are the best way to get an estimate of what a given school will cost. NPCs aren’t perfect, some aren’t updated, and they won’t work for students in certain situations (divorced parents, or business or real estate ownership).
Have you and your parents run the NPCs of the schools on your list?
The important thing is that you have a budget from your parents, and you have at least on affordable school.
Yep I have done the ncps for all the schools I applied too. They just arent the best estimates for my familys situation because our income is very variable for several different reasons. But thank you for all this info!!!
I understand, the best you can do is put in your 2022 income and current assets. If your family’s income is signficantly lower for 2023, then you can have a talk with FA…but no guarantees they would change their aid offer.
Again, just have reasonable expectations about the packages that are forthcoming.
Thanks!! We will be doing professional judgement meetings for my top choices, but I have affordable options already if things dont work out there, so I’m not too worried about it.
I haven’t read all of your posts, but you have to have some reasons to request profession judgment. Parent dies, parent loses job, high medical bills…something.
I believe you mentioned that your income was variable for a number of reasons. Right now…get the documentation of the differences in your income from 2022 to now…and why.
Also, if your variable income goes up in future years, will the college chosen still be affordable? Food for thought.
In most cases, the SAI “number” if converted to dollars should be viewed as the minimum you will be expected to pay for college…At colleges that use the FAFSA only to determine need based aid awards.
Exception to this would be extremely well endowed colleges and most of them use the Profile or their own form.
And I do feel for families struggling with this FAFSA mess this year, and the delays it is causing.
Us too, I know that’s no help to you, but you aren’t alone, super super frustrating. We were applying to a ton of schools because we had the schools my son would apply to normally and then a bunch of schools he is eligible for a tuition exchange scholarship so when we filled out the FAFSA we left off any possible reaches and only a few sure things or schools he had already gotten into. Well he didn’t get into a bunch of the sure things, did get into a bunch of reaches and we need to add them all/ take them off. So our list is all sorts of messed up, sigh. I think I have concluded that if schools are not flexible and understanding then they aren’t going to get my son as a student. He has a few admits so I assume MOST will be reasonable.
SO much! and its so hit or miss whether you get it. I wonder if 20 years ago it was easier and thus seen as so much more of a benefit- now it seems sometimes like winning the lottery to get one.
Anyone else seeing this message in their “Fasfa Submission Summary” under “Next Steps” and feel like it might be a system glitch. I’m dreading contacting them on Monday and being on hold for an hour:
"We can’t successfully process your FAFSA form due to the errors listed on this page. Review the list of errors for instructions.
One or more of the schools you listed on your FAFSA form are not eligible schools. To receive federal student aid, you must attend a school that participates in federal student aid programs."
It’s possible that your child chose an inactive school code. See this link for an explanation and the information from FSA regarding how it will be handled: 2024–25 FAFSA Issue Alerts | Knowledge Center.
I think it was easier even a few years ago. My D’s friend is the youngest of like 5 or 6 kids. I was told they all got into all their TE schools except one didn’t get USC. That is it. This year has been a crap shoot for sure. With this and FAFSA delays I think I need blood pressure meds
This is so frustating. The school names and cities are clearly listed. I pulled them with her when she applied, and there weren’t any other schools to confuse them with. I’ll need to contact them on Monday.
You can call, but don’t be surprised if they tell you that nothing can be done until the FAFSA becomes available for your child to update. It sounds like the issue may actually get resolved on its own & there may not be any problems when the FAFSA is ready for updating.
I just got an e-mail from one of the schools saying priority deadline is on 4/1/24. So hopefully, the corrections will open before then or the school retracts the priority deadline.
Priority deadline for financial aid? In the past, the FAFSA submission date would be the date it was actually submitted, rather than the date it was processed. Hopefully, any FAFSA submitted previously will have that submission date. If your date ends up later, I would hope that the school will be understanding of students whose FAFSA was held up by an issue out of their control.
Thanks! That’s good to know. I was surprisingly able to get through Fasfa today. They said the form processed, but at least one of the schools didn’t process. They don’t know which one, but I can correct it in a few weeks. Not sure why they would have the wrong code pull up in the fields like that.
