College acceptances are in hand. Now comes the hard part: before a May 1 decision deadline, students and their families must figure out how much each school would actually cost them and which they can afford.
When Maddie, an aspiring architectural engineer, was a high school senior in Rochester, N.Y., college admissions experts assured her parents she was an ideal applicant. She was “in a million extracurriculars, top of her class, and entering a male-dominated field,” says her understandably proud mother, Jennifer. Sure enough, by this time last year, acceptances from Maddie’s top choices, including Northeastern University, Syracuse University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, had rolled in.
Then came the bad news: follow up financial aid award letters laying out the $80,000 or so total annual “cost of attendance” for each of those private colleges and the not-big-enough merit scholarships Maddie was being offered to defray some of those daunting price tags. The bottom line (a.k.a. the net cost of attendance) came in at more than the family could afford.
“As soon as she saw the number, depending on her mood, sometimes she rolled her eyes and laughed, and sometimes she burst into tears,” recalls Jennifer, who requested we not use the family’s last name. “You’ve heard your whole adult life that there are certain kids whose parents make them pay their way through school—but banks are not going to let them take out $75,000 in loans. The parents have to put their names on those loans,” she points out. “Here we are, ready to retire, and we have to take out mortgage-sized loans?”
For some high school seniors and their parents, April really can be the cruelest month as buckets of cold financial reality are thrown on collegiate dreams. Usually, families have until May 1 to decide on a school and send in a down payment towards what will be one of the biggest expenditures of their lives. It’s a choice that could require taking on big debt and affect other life-defining choices (about career, homeownership, children and retirement) for decades.
The decision making process is even more of an ordeal because financial aid award letters are not standardized, often incomplete, and sometimes downright misleading, making it nearly impossible to compare offers side-by-side without extra calculations and research.
Maddie is now finishing her freshman year at the public University of Cincinnati. Its cost of attendance for out-of-state students is around $47,000 a year—a lot less than her first choices. Meanwhile, her high school junior brother, after watching Maddie’s experience, is focusing his college search on State University of New York schools. Undergraduate tuition for New York residents at the system’s four-year colleges is currently $7,070 per year, with the total cost of attendance coming in at $23,740.
To help other families navigate through this mess, Forbes spoke with financial aid experts to get their best advice for deciphering financial aid award letters and appealing for more aid when appropriate. High school juniors now beginning the college search can use the Department of Education’s College Navigator Tool and its College Affordability Transparency Center to research both gross and average net costs, based on income level, at specific schools. But keep in mind, your individual results could vary, so don’t write off applying to a school that suits you academically, based on those tools alone. A wealthy school able to fully meet a lower income family’s financial needs could end up costing less than a cheaper school with a small endowment.
Here’s a step-by-step guide for high school seniors:
Find Your True Cost of Attendance
It’s essential to know your individual net price of attendance for each institution you’ve been admitted to so you can compare your options, figure out whether your family can swing the price and get a read on how much debt you might end up with—and whether that burden is worth it to you.
Understand Aid Types and Traps
Rochester financial aid advisor Liane Crane tells families to look for four key figures in colleges’ letters: merit scholarships, grants, loans and work study offers.
Need More Aid? Ask
Yes, a student can—and should—negotiate with their prospective colleges for more aid if they need it. This negotiation process is typically called an appeal, and a student’s case is much stronger if they can show the college that their financial situation isn’t accurately captured by the FAFSA or other financial documents.
Read the full article here.
By Emma Whitford
Published April 1, 2023