The 11 Most Politically Correct Moments on College Campuses in 2014

National Review ^ | 12/24/2014 | By Katherine Timpf

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Dear dhs12345,

No need for any apologies.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas. I took a holiday from any substantive posting.

I'm not an expert. I've just done this twice over the last few years with both my sons. They did extraordinarily well in high school, so I felt a certain obligation to help them learn, know, and understand all their options, which were many and diverse.

Your approach to college costs strikes me as maybe somewhat more difficult than it needs to be.

First, in the world of higher education, “Ivy League” has a very specific meaning. The meaning you seem to suggest for it is “private” and “expensive.” The Ivy League IS a group of private universities (mostly, sort of) with high published prices

But private and expensive isn't what makes an Ivy. Membership in the Ivy League does. I previously posted the league's members. The common attributes of these schools are: very old (Harvard - 1636. The “youngest” is Cornell - 1865, the only Ivy founded after the Revolutionary War.); considered to be among the most academically-excellent universities in the United States; national research universities.

A “near-Ivy” would be an academically-excellent national research university of similar, or nearly-similar reputation of the Ivies. I've already named a few previously.

Once you get past the top 20 (25? 30?) or so national research universities, it gets tougher to call a place even "tending Ivy."

Liberal arts colleges (LACs), by contrast, are not research universities. The focus at these institutions isn't faculty research, but rather undergraduate education. Some top-tier LACs include Williams, Amherst, and Pomona. Even though the best of these schools are considered academically top=rank, and quite expensive in terms of published prices, they are NOT "near-Ivy" or “tending Ivy.”

Although the Ivies have published prices as high as nearly any universities in the US, for most families, the Ivy League schools aren't as expensive as most other private schools. That's because of financial aid.

Financial aid for college is relatively straightforward. Nearly all schools use the federal FAFSA form as the foundation of their financial aid system. You fill out the FAFSA, and provide the supporting documentation (mainly your tax returns), and you're mostly done. You do it on-line, you do it once, and you tell the FAFSA folks to which schools you're applying and they automatically send the data to those schools.

The FAFSA provides the raw financial data to institutions and the federal government to determine how much money your family can pay for college. That amount is called the Expected Family Contribution [EFC]. That amount is subtracted from the total Cost of Attendance at a university or college, and what's left is your financial need. Then, if the school accepts your child, it offers a financial aid package that will meet part or all of your financial need.

When your kid applies to the schools in which he's interested, you typically check a box on the admission form that you're applying for financial aid. They get the FAFSA information automatically, and will let you know if the school needs any data beyond the FAFSA to complete the application for aid. The schools that accept your kid will automatically generate a financial aid package. There isn't much by way of “shopping” for financial aid. The schools are going to provide what they're going to provide.

There are also merit-based scholarships at many schools, but that's another topic, along with athletic scholarships.

But regular needs-based financial aid gets most people into the ballpark of affordability, especially at better colleges.

It is a mistake to think that because a university has a lower tuition price that it will actually be cheaper. It's all in the award of financial aid.

It's easy to get a rough estimate of the financial aid that your family will receive from any school by using each school's Net Price Calculator (NPC). Federal law requires that any school taking federal funds must make available on-line an NPC. They're not tough to use, and they're accurate in a general sort of way. The NPC will tell you roughly what your EFC will be FOR YOUR CHILD, AT THAT PARTICULAR SCHOOL, how much of it will be loans, and how much of it will be grants. So even before you apply, you can get a rough idea of how much a given school will cost YOU.

The EFC for your family and its constituent components is the critical financial data when you look at a school.

The main problems with financial aid include that most schools underestimate need at least a little, and overestimate what a family can really afford, and that, many schools don't fully meet need. As an example, our state flagship is very open that they only meet about 70% of need on average. Thus, if the Cost of Attendance is $20K, and your EFC is $10K, then the school should provide a package worth about $10K. But this school openly states that on average, they'll only provide about $7K of financial aid for the family whose need is $10K.

As well, many schools depend heavily on the use of student loans in financial aid packages. Schools at or near the level of the Ivies try to minimize the use of loans in their packages, providing mostly outright tuition grants. Among others, Harvard, Yale and Princeton no longer incorporate student loans into their financial aid packages. And for these three schools, as well as a few others, students with family incomes of about $65K or less go free, except for the student "self-help" portion, usually a few thousand dollars per year.

The dirty little secret is that the better the school, often (not always), the better its financial aid. Even a lot better.

Harvard is often cheaper than State U. And the same means by which one applies for financial aid to State U is the same as applying at Harvard.

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