It's my understanding that each college calculates a family's assets differently, which can result in very different financial aid packages. This is particularly true for home equity.

I work for the government and have a middle-class income. But the house that I bought in 2014 has more than doubled in value, making it a seemingly big asset on paper. It's far from the worst problem to have. Still, for a school like Vassar, it means we'd get almost no financial aid. On the other hand, Skidmore does not seem factor in home equity in the same manner, and thus provides more than twice as much financial aid despite having a much smaller endowment than Vassar. These are just two examples, but I've gotten very different financial aid estimates from peer schools.

Anyhow, most people can get a pretty good sense of potential financial aid by taking out their tax returns and using a school's Net Price Calculator. I've found that many school's financial aid officers are very willing to have a call or Zoom to discuss things in greater depth.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I figured for most schools it was about 200-250k. One school publishes that (maybe Princeton) and when I did a lot of NPCs, that number seemed to be the line. Then it ramps up after that.

It's all pretty classist, imo. A two income family making 200k gets a lot of aid per marketing materials at these schools. And if you have a million dollar home? Fine! But if you have 400k in an account because grandma died? Not okay. You could drive an uber, have zero retirement, zero assets, and win a 1million dollar lottery and have to pay Princeton full fare. But if you had a million dollar house and 3 million in retirement, you'd get aid.

This might me the dumbest post I've ever read on this topic, and there's some pretty stiff competition.

In the first scenario, yes, if you inherit money it is considered an asset, and you will be expected to use it for college. Why on earth wouldn't you be?

And in the second scenario, yes, you are expected to use your lottery winnings (!!) to pay for college. Good lord.

I call bullshit. If I'm feeling irritated that my full freight tuition payments are essentially paying for not only my kid to attend college, but also paying for 2 - 3 of their cohort, I have a right to question why the overall cost of college has become sky high. And that's after reckoning with the fact that the income and assets being used against me in the tuition calculation process were already used against my kid in the admissions process.

If you took the total cost to run a top private school and distributed that over the entire student body, the average annual cost to each family would be no more than $20 - $30K (and not $90K+) ...

I know. Boo hoo. "Great problem" to have. Whatever.

Anonymous wrote:I figured for most schools it was about 200-250k. One school publishes that (maybe Princeton) and when I did a lot of NPCs, that number seemed to be the line. Then it ramps up after that.

It's all pretty classist, imo. A two income family making 200k gets a lot of aid per marketing materials at these schools. And if you have a million dollar home? Fine! But if you have 400k in an account because grandma died? Not okay. You could drive an uber, have zero retirement, zero assets, and win a 1million dollar lottery and have to pay Princeton full fare. But if you had a million dollar house and 3 million in retirement, you'd get aid.

This might me the dumbest post I've ever read on this topic, and there's some pretty stiff competition.

In the first scenario, yes, if you inherit money it is considered an asset, and you will be expected to use it for college. Why on earth wouldn't you be?

And in the second scenario, yes, you are expected to use your lottery winnings (!!) to pay for college. Good lord.

that's correct, because colleges like the marketing materials headlines that do get picked up by national media .. and nobody ever calls them out on the fine print.

This is OP. I have seen the 200-250k number on several selective college websites as being typical assets for a 100k family but those amounts were dated from 2008-2009. It seems that these 'typical assets" have not adjusted for asset price inflation e.g. upward move in the stock markets and real estate since then.

Anonymous wrote:Per Columbia’s website:

“When determining the parent contribution, we take into consideration the parents’ assets which include cash, savings, checking, investments, home equity, other real estate (other than home) equity, and business equity. We do not include retirement assets (i.e., 401K, 403b, IRA, Keogh) in our analysis.

For families with an income of $100,000, we would consider typical assets to be approximately $250,000.”

So if you bought your house awhile ago, you’re potentially in trouble just with the equity, depending on how they calculate it.

It's bad enough that admissions decisions are so heavily influenced by SES considerations, effectively trying (yet failing) to re-level the playing field for the students.

But then they hammer the families on the back end, too, with full fare tuition.

Student A: Family income $200K, Home Equity and Investments of $450K = Education paid for

Student B: Family income $300K, Home Equity and Investments of $1,000,000 = Full fare tuition

Student A emerges from a top degree program at a top school (with presumably better, more lucrative career options), with no dent to family income and/or assets along the way.

School B emerges from a lesser degree program at a lesser school (with presumably lesser, less lucrative career options), with potentially a $350 - $400K hit to the family income and/or assets along the way.

This system gets us coming and going, I guess.

OP, best to use the college's Net Price Calculator. You can use it anonymously.

Per Columbia’s website:

“When determining the parent contribution, we take into consideration the parents’ assets which include cash, savings, checking, investments, home equity, other real estate (other than home) equity, and business equity. We do not include retirement assets (i.e., 401K, 403b, IRA, Keogh) in our analysis.

For families with an income of $100,000, we would consider typical assets to be approximately $250,000.”

So if you bought your house awhile ago, you’re potentially in trouble just with the equity, depending on how they calculate it.

I dont think she's new.

Schools publicize general aid ranges for families in x and y and z income bands .. and then there's usually an asterix and there will be a footnote that says *"with typical assets"

typical assets not in home/retirement is in 200k range. if higher, all bets off.

Anonymous[b wrote:]Are we talking FAFSA or CSS?

[/b]


I think OP may be new. OP, are you aware that most colleges want to see the FAFSA and/or CSS filled out before they will make a financial aid determination? FAFSA is the federal government. It assesses an EFC - an estimated family contribution that the college should expect of the family. For us it was the equivalent of 100%. We received no financial aid at all (and no merit either)

Are we talking FAFSA or CSS?

I figured for most schools it was about 200-250k. One school publishes that (maybe Princeton) and when I did a lot of NPCs, that number seemed to be the line. Then it ramps up after that.

It's all pretty classist, imo. A two income family making 200k gets a lot of aid per marketing materials at these schools. And if you have a million dollar home? Fine! But if you have 400k in an account because grandma died? Not okay. You could drive an uber, have zero retirement, zero assets, and win a 1million dollar lottery and have to pay Princeton full fare. But if you had a million dollar house and 3 million in retirement, you'd get aid.

Each college has an estimated family contribution calculator. Play around with it and you can get a sense of what the thresholds are.

Cash and equivalents (anything that they believe you can convert to cash fairly easily, e.g., investments, home equity) will blow you out of the water very quickly.

I’m not sure where the asset thresholds lie, but dual income families with professional careers can probably count on being shut out.

What is the amount of "typical assets" that all the universities refer to when they claim that incomes below a certain level and typical assets will get free tuition