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Peter Van Buskirk : July 10, 2023
Gaining admission to the college(s) of your choice might weigh heavily on your mind at the moment. The odds are that the prospect of affording college looms even larger, especially with some price-tags ranging above $70,000 per year. If financial aid is critical to your ability to attend such a college—or any college for that matter—the summer is the time to get organized around the possibilities.
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So, what is financial aid? It can be a lot of things, including scholarships, grants, student loans, parent loans, and campus work opportunities. Financial aid is made available to help make college attendance more affordable.
Most financial aid is reflective of demonstrated need or the differential between:
Some assistance is offered on the basis of merit, aka recognition of some performance criteria established by the institution. Some is offered on the basis of merit.
Given the potential importance of financial aid in making college attendance possible for you, the following guidelines will help make sense of the financial aid application process you are about to encounter, including through the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).
So why do colleges charge so much?
College expenses typically include tuition, room, board, and other fees.
Room and board amounts reflect market prices for items including food, supplies, maintenance, food preparation, dorm rooms, room furnishings, dining areas, heating and cooling, staffing and related programming. Prices vary according to the number of room occupants and the selected meal plans. Some colleges provide additional amenities that can increase the cost.
Tuition covers the cost of educational expenses including faculty compensation (salaries as well as support for professional development and research), instructional facilities, lab equipment, performance halls, athletic facilities, libraries, computing resources, and health services.
Other fees include social and lab (breakage) fees, transportation costs, and insurance.
While some institutions will adjust their total cost up or down for marketing purposes, most can show that the total cost of educating and supporting each enrolled student is actually greater than their price-tags. This is most often the case at state universities because they are underwritten by their state legislatures. In other words, a portion of your parents’ tax payment supports the cost of operation at public universities in your home state.
While private colleges and universities typically do not receive funding from their home state legislatures, they rely on draws from their endowments to underwrite a portion of the actual cost of attendance.
In general, the prices charged by colleges and universities actually reflect real expenses. If you cannot afford the full cost of a college, you will need to apply for need-based financial assistance (generally done through the FAFSA).
As you approach the financial aid process, it might be helpful to regard financial aid officers as brokers. It is their job to maximize the revenue per student. In doing so, they will be mindful of 5 sources of funding that can generate cash on your behalf as you attempt to cover the cost of attendance.
After the funding from your family, each of the remaining sources is integral to providing financial support as you contemplate your college options. Ultimately, though, the path to college begins with support from your family or through your own means.
The FAFSA is a government document that references data from your parents’ IRS return to calculate your family's need and determine your eligibility for federal and state funds. In many cases, your FAFSA determines the amount of support you might receive from the colleges themselves.
For the 2024-2025 academic year, students and families will want to take a look at the new FAFSA, which will become available in December 2023. The updated FAFSA has a handful of major updates, according to Carnegie Higher Ed, including:
The amount your family is expected to contribute was previously known as your Expected Family Contribution or EFC. Simply put, your EFC was the difference between your family’s income and assets, plus your family’s cost of living. It is a calculation to determine your need.
The new FAFSA utilizes the Student Aid Index, which serves the same purpose of the EFC, with some slightly different calculations. The 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act led to these changes.
If you'd like to learn more about the SAI and how it determines need, this article can help.
Related: FAFSA & CSS Profile - A Straightforward Guide to Understanding Financial Aid
If you're a senior, your family should plan to complete the FAFSA as soon as possible before the deadline, using financial data from your IRS tax return two years prior to the year you start college. Students entering college in the Fall of 2024 will reference 2022 IRS tax returns.
Upon completing the FAFSA, a Student Aid Report (S.A.R.) showing your SAI will be sent to you and each of the colleges you've listed on the FAFSA.
In addition, many private institutions require submission of the College Scholarship Service (CSS) Profile to determine your eligibility for institutional funding. More granular in its assessment of family finances, the Profile is customizable by each participating college to reflect institution-specific requirements. The Profile should also be completed as soon as possible if you're applying to any of the schools that require it. A report will be sent to the colleges you've designated. You will not receive any information regarding the outcome of the need analysis derived from the Profile.
Some colleges also require the completion of their own financial aid forms. Make sure you are aware of the forms required for each college and submit them at the earliest possible date.
Most financial aid is awarded on the basis of need. In other words, if your SAI falls short of the cost of attendance at a college, then you have demonstrated need. On the other hand, if it turns out your SAI is greater than the cost of attendance, you will have no need.
Theoretically, colleges will provide financial aid to meet the demonstrated needs of the students they admit. That said, you should be prepared for the likelihood that the different forms will reveal different assessments of your family’s ability to pay. For example, a need analysis completed using FAFSA data might show an SAI that is lower than that revealed by the Profile. In addition to accessing the FAFSA and, possibly, the Profile, financial aid officers are able to exercise professional judgment (taking into account special or unusual circumstances) in assessing SAI.
This could be confusing if you are considering private colleges as each might eventually reveal a different SAI—none of which match the SAI you saw on the SAR from your FAFSA submission!
Welcome to differential need analysis, a practice employed by many colleges, mostly private, that allows decision-makers to determine the methodology (based on the FAFSA or the Profile) they want to use in justifying an assessment of your need that suits them best. As a result, it is possible, if not likely, that each college to which you are accepted will offer a different determination of need for you!
You need to be wary of online forecasters or of any service that suggests it can optimize your financial aid potential. While parameters for determining the amount of financial aid you are likely to receive might seem to be predictable, the actual processes of admitting students and awarding financial aid are heavily nuanced across institutions through differential need analysis. The amount and type of financial aid to be offered will most often be determined by the degree to which the college values you and seeks to leverage your enrollment.
In addition to the differential need analysis employed by many colleges, another practice called preferential packaging will be used to leverage the enrollments of students they want the most. In this case, colleges that admit you will put together financial aid awards including grants, loans, and work-study in amounts that reflect your desirability. The more you're valued, the greater the proportion of grant or scholarship (forgiveness of payment).
Conversely, it is possible that a college might award you a financial aid award that is light on grants or scholarships but heavy on student or parent loans (cash to the college!). In this case, the implicit messaging is that, while you were good enough to be admitted, you’ll need to find a way to pay more (cash) for the privilege of attending.
As a result, online forecasters, including the net price calculators found on college websites, rarely provide a complete or accurate picture of your likely out-of-pocket expenses for a college should you be admitted.
The acquisition of financial aid, then, involves a bit of a shell game in which you are relatively blind to a range of subjective deliberations on the part of college decision-makers. As you move forward, do what you can to find transparency. Ask questions of the financial aid officers at the colleges of interest, submit required forms in a timely fashion, and make sure you are targeting colleges where you will be valued for what you have to offer.
This article was originally published on October 13, 2021. It was updated on July 10, 2023 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
A 25-year veteran of the college admission process, Peter Van Buskirk is dedicated to helping families find student-centered solutions in college planning. His ability to interpret and personalize a complex, and often mysterious, college-going process makes him a popular speaker among students, parents and educators. His creative programming has informed, inspired and entertained more than 2,000 audiences around the world. Peter’s books, Winning the College Admission Game; Strategies for Students and Parents and Prepare, Compete, Win! The Ultimate College Planning Workbook for Students, coach families through the complexities of finding and getting into the college that is the best fit for the student. His weekly blogs are featured on his website, www.BestCollegeFit.com, and he has appeared on numerous television and radio interviews including “Oprah and Friends” with Jean Chatzky. A graduate of Bucknell University, Peter moved through the ranks at Franklin & Marshall College to become Dean of Admission, Interim Director of Athletics, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management, and Executive Officer in the Office of the Provost. He subsequently created and now operates Best College Fit® as a platform for delivering student-centered college planning content to students, parents and educators.
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