By Carol Stack, November guest blogger
I have had a long career helping students and families with the college search process — including helping them figure out how to pay for college. Recently, I’ve had many questions from students and parents about a new wrinkle: the federally required “net price calculator” (aka NPC) on each college’s website.
The thought was a great one — help students and families know the “net” (cost after financial aid) price they are likely to pay for college — as distinguished from the sticker (full tuition and cost) price. The basic idea is that if a student and family have at hand their income and asset information, they can plug it into a calculator and see how much scholarship or grant (free money!) aid the student would receive from a specific college. This can happen before applying for admission, before completing financial aid forms, as early and as often as the family wants to use the calculator. Sounds great, doesn’t it? The reality is more complicated….
First, you have to find the net price calculator on the college’s website! On the surface, this seems as if it should be an easy proposition. Ha. I resorted to three approaches. On try number one, I went to a college’s website, used the navigation system to get to the financial aid page, and looked for “net price calculator” on the side rail, and voila, success. Or not. If “or not” was the result, on try two I used the search function on the college’s website to look for “net price calculator.” If that failed, my last ditch effort (try three) was to go to www.netpricecalculator.com to see if the college was listed there, and I could link in.
Second, all net price calculators are not created alike. It would be too much to hope for to find a handy tool that would insure students and parents can compare prices in an apples-to-apples way. But it just isn’t so. The feds simply require a college to show, by family income bands, the average amount of financial aid students in each group received at that school in the prior year. And that is exactly what calculators for some colleges do. No more and no less. Other colleges saw this as an opportunity to be more specific — and add into the mix merit scholarship and other awards. The result: wide variety in accuracy and specificity of estimated awards from one college to another. The more detailed the information the college asks from you, the more detailed and accurate the estimated award will be.
Third — an old adage but still true — garbage in, garbage out. The results of the calculator will only be as good as the information you put into it. If your guesstimated family income is off by a missing “0” at the end of the number, or you assume an extra family member or two in college — the estimate you receive will be off as well. Take time to carefully enter a response to each question — and write your answers down so that you use the same information for each calculator.
Finally — above all remember that this is an estimate — not a guaranteed price. The younger the student, the more likely the college’s aid policies will change dramatically by the time he or she enters college. If there is a big difference in your family income between what it is now and what it will be when your student enters college — the actual aid award could be very different. Don’t take this NPC estimate to the bank, or expect to hold the college to it. Do use it as a guideline — a picture of college costs painted with a very wide brush.
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