Who Exactly Gets Need-Based Aid?

Paying for College
21

I ran the College Board’s Net Price Calculator for a hypothetical income of $150K and no siblings.
St. Anselm isn’t a participating college.
However, below are net price estimates for a few other participating schools, assuming a 1-child family making $150K/year in MD with $75K cash/savings. Net price is in the left column.

$39,160 Reed, estimated grant/gift = $23,000
$40,780 Pitzer, estimated grant/gift = $25,500
$34,353 Colorado College, estimated grant/gift = $29,200
$37,104 Macalester College, estimated grant/gift = $25,499
$43,710 Northwestern U, estimated grant/gift = $25,050
$57,432 Michigan Ann Arbor, estimated grant/gift = $0
$41,473 Grinnell, estimated grant/gift = $19,625
$34,355 MIT, estimated grant/gift = $28,895
$44,973 UNC-CH, estimated grant/gift = $5,387
$28,700 UPenn, estimated grant/gift = $38,250

These net prices (in the left column) are after grant/gift aid only. Costs would be lower after deducting additional “self help” money (from student work or loans).

Next I used St. Anselm’s NPC, using similar assumptions. Below is the net price estimate, assuming a 1-child family making $150K/year in MD.
$34,028 – $36,028 net price for St. Anselm’s; estimated grans & scholarships = $18,000 - $20,000

According to St. Anselm’s 2014-15 Common Data Set (section H2) 383 of 523 entering freshmen (73%) received need-based scholarship/grant aid. The average financial aid package for this year was $27,051 and the average need-based scholarship/grant award was $21,382. The St. Anselm CDS doesn’t indicate the distribution of aid by income brackets of the recipients. However, if the list above is representative, it does appear to be true that at some colleges with relatively high sticker prices, “meaningful money is reaching income levels considered upper middle class or even affluent”.

(Note that the schools I listed are relatively rich, selective colleges. YMMV.)

22

Also to answer your question, we got need-based FA for both daughters to their private schools. Between pay-as-you-go and loans, we paid approximately $79,000 for D1 at a school that cost approximately $200,000 and approximately $29,000 for D2 at a school that cost approximately $240,000. Our family income ranged from $35,000 to $65,000 per year during the years of college.

23

@tk21769

The colleges on your list above are FAR more generous with need based aid than St. Anselms. In fact, all meet the full need for all accepted students, and many have need based aid for higher income students.

This is not a good comparison for St. Anselms which has a much smaller endowment and awards far less in aid.

I’m wondering how accurate this really is for St, anselms. It’s not a wealthy school, and I find it hard to believe they are giving 3/4 of the cost of attendance to 3/4 of their students annually.

24

[QUOTE=""]
For all the hoopla on merit awarded by U of Alabama, the debt number is $30k.

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While I’m not a fan of student debt, I know that it’s often a necessary aid. For some majors, it’s definitely worth risk. I’m not concerned about an eng’g major or some other major where they’d soon be making $40k-70k+ per year, then the debt is not fatal. Would I think that a child development major should borrow $30k? probably not.

25

[QUOTE=""]
For the record, I never said it was fantastic, I was merely highlighting the presentation because I don't recall the financial aid material targeting more affluent families.

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Can you copy/paste the results you get when you do the NPC on St. A’s website?

26

A little off topic, but if you are still looking for safety schools for your daughter (I’m guessing that is why St. anselms is being discussed at all), how about Stonehill or Wheaton, both in Massachusetts.

27

Yes, I would have expected the other schools I listed to be more generous with n-b aid than St. Anselm.
However, for the scenario I set up ($150K family income, 1 child) that is not what my queries show.

St. A’s net price appears to be right in line with the “full need” schools, and even lower than some.

Overall, St. Anselm meets full need for only ~24% of all students; on average, it meets ~83% of demonstrated need (according to its current USNWR entry). It may seem counter-intuitive (or just plain unfair) that a college would be comparatively more generous for families making nearly 3x the national median income. Nevertheless, that would make financial sense for a college that is less affluent (and less selective) than the “full need” schools. After all, it would be cheaper for a need-aware college (if that’s what St. A. is) to accept strong applicants with relatively modest need, then shower them with good aid offers in an effort to boost yield (and average stats). I can’t be sure that is what’s happening here, but it would seem to explain what I see in the above NPC results.

Another possibility is that I over-simplified the queries. It may be the case that families making ~$150K/y typically have more assets than I entered, and that St. A. would penalize those assets more than the other colleges would.

28

You have to interpret average student debt numbers carefully, because they are the average debt for students who have debt.

Average debt at Alabama is $26K, but only 45% have debt. Average debt at St. Anselm is $35K and 82% have debt.

So if you average across all students, you’d have $11.7K per capita debt at Bama and $28.7K per capita at St. Anselm.

29

You need to replace the word “biggest” with "most numerous.

FA budgets are FINITE. With a 100,000 budget, you can give out 10 awards of $10k to more affluent kids vs. 2 awards of $50k to poorer kids.

30

[QUOTE=""]
You have to interpret average student debt numbers carefully, because they are the average debt for students who have debt.

[/QUOTE]

Average debt at Alabama is $26K, but only 45% have debt. Average debt at St. Anselm is $35K and 82% have debt.

So if you average across all students, you’d have $11.7K per capita debt at Bama and $28.7K per capita at St. Anselm.


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that’s why you can’t just talk raw numbers w/o putting them into context.

Did you run the NPCs on St. A’s website? If so, what results did you get?

Your DD has good stats, so she should get a good bit of merit from the school.

I agree with Thumper’s recommendation to apply to Stonehill or Wheaton.