Author Topic: Statistics on College Financial Aid Stuff  (Read 2453 times)

madamwitty

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Statistics on College Financial Aid Stuff
« on: June 30, 2015, 09:53:39 PM »
In another thread regarding strategies for college financial aid, I got a comment regarding the "gap" between Expected Family Contribution (EFC) and the financial aid offer from a college - also known as "unmet need." I looked around the internet and found a wealth of statistics on college financial stuff. This link offering statistics from 2007/2008 is pretty cool. (If, like me, you think statistics are cool.) Rather than derailing the original thread, I thought I'd share it here: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010162.pdf

Table 4.4-A on page 235 shows percentage of undergraduates who had unmet need; Table 4.4-B on Page 238 shows average amount of unmet need. Both show breakdowns by a variety of factors such as income level and public vs. private college. Interesting stuff.

Overall, ~50% of students had unmet need, but in the $20k-$40k income range, that percentage rises to ~73%. So I see a definite increase in unmet need for lower income brackets, but I wonder how much of that is correlated with lower student performance and less financial aid savvy, as opposed to being specifically a function of lower EFC.

Anyway, there is a lot of interesting information to dig through in this package. I think I might dive back in later.

MsPeacock

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Re: Statistics on College Financial Aid Stuff
« Reply #1 on: July 01, 2015, 07:40:14 AM »
Why would lower income *not* have greater unmet needed (and lower EFC), assuming the average college cost is consistent across income groups? I hear an assumption that just because someone has lower income they would have lower grades and that they would have less ability to apply for financial aid. As I see it, if you have less money that would directly relate to having less money to pay to college - e.g. a much stronger correlation than the proposed other factors (of being less intelligent, in general).


OttoVonBisquick

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Re: Statistics on College Financial Aid Stuff
« Reply #2 on: July 01, 2015, 10:42:44 AM »
I got rather decent grades in high school, AP'd 4 subjects for credit, etc. and decided to move out of state to here, Colorado, for my schooling, at an insane expense that will end up being around $100,000 after expenses.

In order to get it *DOWN* to $100,000, I had to financially emancipate myself from my parents in order to become a resident of the State of Colorado to get in-state tuition, meaning that, at least through my college career, I can receive zero money whatsoever from immediate family support. This meant all loans.

So, naturally, CU still looked at my Expected Family Contribution, meaning the income of my parents, and deducted money from my grants and federal loan support as such to accommodate that. I'm not allowed to get money from my family, but "hurr, we're going to expect your family to pay you money, which you can't do".

I've got a bright future in terms of career (barring death or major disability and the like), so maybe they just figured that and found a way to stab me in the back and bleed me for more money, maybe the American collegiate beurocracy is a massive sack of ****, but somehow, someway, they figured it more important to get my money than to consider the financial situation it puts a student like me in. Oh, and they're dropping $300 million on a new football stadium for a crap team that rarely has more than 5 wins a season, and the stadium is VERY nice looking as is.

Now, to link this to the thread I'm ranting in, my school has something like 60+% students from in-state, and I got a small-ish cut of the financial aid pie, all considered. This means that either I'm a minority among a massively-wealthy in-state crowd, or the University way, way overspends and increases tuition by ~2% a year to cover dumb costs.

/rant
« Last Edit: July 01, 2015, 10:44:17 AM by OttoVonBisquick »

EricP

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Re: Statistics on College Financial Aid Stuff
« Reply #3 on: July 01, 2015, 10:55:52 AM »
Why would lower income *not* have greater unmet needed (and lower EFC), assuming the average college cost is consistent across income groups? I hear an assumption that just because someone has lower income they would have lower grades and that they would have less ability to apply for financial aid. As I see it, if you have less money that would directly relate to having less money to pay to college - e.g. a much stronger correlation than the proposed other factors (of being less intelligent, in general).

The hope would be that Grants and need-based financial need would pick up the tab, thus "unmet need" would be relatively consistent across the classes.

Unfortunately, "unmet need" is just a paper statistic.  If parent's decide not to contribute their EFC, then the student will end up needing loans that greatly exceed their unmet need. 

madamwitty

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Re: Statistics on College Financial Aid Stuff
« Reply #4 on: July 01, 2015, 09:36:17 PM »
Why would lower income *not* have greater unmet needed (and lower EFC), assuming the average college cost is consistent across income groups? I hear an assumption that just because someone has lower income they would have lower grades and that they would have less ability to apply for financial aid. As I see it, if you have less money that would directly relate to having less money to pay to college - e.g. a much stronger correlation than the proposed other factors (of being less intelligent, in general).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying “poor kids are dumb.” I came from a low income family and went to <very good school whose name I won’t mention in order to maintain the illusion of privacy/anonymity on the internet.> I find the topic of unmet need fascinating and frankly, foreign, since <very good school> not only did not “gap” students, they didn’t even offer loans as a component of the financial aid package - just grants and work-study. From a practical standpoint, I am interested in understanding what are the chances of my kids getting “gapped” when they apply to college (many years from now.)

The whole point of financial aid is to make college accessible to those who cannot afford it. Taken to the ideal extreme, financial aid would level the playing field for students of all income levels, and lower-income families would not be gapped more frequently than higher-income families. In practice, it appears some colleges (most colleges, some would argue) take advantage of the fact that they have overwhelming choice of students at different income levels. Why would they offer more to a lower income student when it would cost less to "capture" a higher income student with equivalent academic performance. I get it. You may assume that this is an overwhelming factor, but I don't take that for granted - hence, that "I wonder" statement.

And remember, we're talking about statistics here. I'm would not make any assumption about a given individual's academic performance based on their parents' income level, but it has been shown time and again that there is a correlation between the two within the U.S. population.

 

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