Who Gets What?
An inside look at how colleges gauge your financial need
Tyrone Jeffress knew that getting accepted by a college would involve subjective judgments by the admissions office. But he thought the decision on his financial aid application couldn't help being by the numbers and objective.
Was he ever wrong. Four colleges agreed that the aspiring engineer from Bethlehem, Pa., would make a great addition to their freshman classes. But the same schools couldn't agree on what would seem to be a much easier question: how much his family could afford to pay. The federal government estimated that the Jeffresses should fork out $15,000. But the University of Delaware in Newark wanted the family to pay its full $21,000-a-year cost for out-of-staters, for instance, while Drexel University in Philadelphia expected the family to come up with $37,000 a year. Jeffress, 18, was shocked. With his older sister already in college, his parents (his mother is a teacher, and his father is a computer programmer) had figured they could stretch to afford $10,000. The colleges "didn't know anything about my need," he says.
Before classes had even begun, Jeffress had learned his first lesson in college economics: Financial need is in the eye of the beholder. As college costs soar, more middle-class families like the Jeffresses feel they need help. Colleges, on the other hand, say it isn't easy to gauge a family's true need. Thanks to the growth in "blended" families and new financial tools like flexible home equity credit lines, it's tough to figure out which households are really hard pressed and which ones simply don't want to have to sacrifice a Caribbean vacation. What's more, aid officers argue, asking families to save and borrow for college is reasonable, since education is an investment that pays off with much higher future earnings.
Free-for-all. Financial assessments begin with formulas developed by the federal government and the College Board. Then, the school's financial aid officer applies his or her own judgment to determine how much money your family actually needs. Finally, aid officials look at their own school's "need" (that is, how badly they want you to attend based on your academic accomplishments or other talents) before deciding how much they'll actually award. The result is a free-for-all among different colleges that often leaves families baffled and disappointed.
Definitions of financial need are beginning to change, however, and the new thinking about aid may offer some relief to worried parents. This fall, 28 prestigious private schools will try out a new method of defining need that they say should be clearer and more consistent. The experiment is controversial, but if it proves successful there's a good chance other colleges will follow suit.
In the meantime, understanding how need is determined and how the process is changing gives this year's crop of applicants an opportunity to play the aid game to their advantage, says Bruce Hammond, author of Discounts and Deals at the Nation's 360 Best Colleges (Golden Books, 1999, $20) and a counselor at a private high school in New Mexico. "There's a premium on information because things are so complicated," he says. The more you know about the way need is calculated, the better you can figure out where to apply and how to evaluate--and improve--competing packages. Here's a guide through the aid maze.
advertisement
