FAFSA. EFC. COA. CSS.
You have a child attending college soon? Then get to know those acronyms! But wait — there’s more, so much more! You will be editing an endless stream of essays! You will be there to console your child if he or she is rejected from a “dream” school! And you may even have to deal with the dreaded, inscrutable…waitlist!
And here’s the best part: This journey will likely cost you tens of thousands of dollars!
We’re at the end in our household — well, the end of choosing a college, anyway. It’s down to three schools. But let’s go back to the beginning and start tackling those acronyms.
The FAFSA. This is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. You must fill out this form if you want any type of financial assistance. It will be available in October.
The FAFSA will ask all types of financial and demographic information. Have your tax forms ready. It also will ask what schools your child plans on applying to so that the form’s information can be transmitted to those schools.
The FAFSA is used to determine your EFC — Expected Family Contribution. You likely will not be fond of this number. It will not seem fair to you. But this is the dollar figure schools will use to determine how much assistance they’re going to give you based on the COA — Cost of Attendance.
Some schools will meet 100% of your need. Others? They’re a little more parsimonious with their assistance.
Some schools also require you to fill out the CSS Profile, or College Scholarship Service Profile. It’s similar to the FAFSA and will ask numerous financial/demographic questions.
When my son started mentioning schools he wanted to apply to, I started doing some investigating because there were some I had honestly never heard of and others that I had heard of but knew almost nothing about.
So, here are some websites that really helped me get a feel for what my son is about to embark upon, and they’re in no particular order:
https://www.collegeconfidential.com/ I used this site mainly as a comment board. It’s a good place to see if other parents/students heard something about, say, a college announcing its admissions decisions. Keep in mind that, as my chemistry teacher liked to say, “Your neighbor is dumber than you are.” So, yeah, just because Fred in Minnesota heard something, that doesn’t make it true.
https://www.collegesimply.com/ This site gives nice snapshot information about colleges and universities and indicates your chances of gaining admission based on your GPA and ACT/SAT scores.
https://www.thoughtco.com/resources-4132590 If you go to this site, there are numerous education-related resources on it. But what I used it primarily for is this: You’ll see a search box on the top right. If you type in, for example, Penn State GPA, SAT, you’ll be directed to an article giving you the lowdown on what Penn State is looking for in its students. There will also be a chart with blue/green/red dots to show you specifically what test numbers/GPAs have been accepted/rejected/waitlisted from the previous year.
https://www.collegefactual.com/rankings/ This site has a lot of useful information. Just type the college name in the search box, and you will be led to all sorts of data about it.
http://profiles.asee.org/ My son’s going to be an engineering major, and this site’s specific to that field of study. It gives good information about what engineering schools are looking for and their outcomes.
https://www.collegedata.com/ This site is similar to College Factual and provides much useful information. It also features an Admissions Tracker, so you can see specifically the scores of students who have been accepted/denied to schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility This is a New York Times Upshot article that is filled with interesting data. Just put a college name in the search bar and feast away. This site really opened my eyes because one of the schools my son was accepted to is a tiny school in Ohio I had never heard of, but it has fantastic outcomes with regards to income.
These next sites are all college-ranking sites. You will discover that they are not consistent in their rankings. What I did was I took the scores from all six sites for the schools my son was accepted to and then divided by six to get a truer picture.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities There’s a pay version of this site, but the free one was enough for me. There’s a lot of good information here.
https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-colleges/ There’s a lot of great and useful information here, too, plus tons of student reviews and ratings/rankings on everything from the quality of professors to how edible the dorm food is. This is a free site, but even if they charged a subscription fee, it would be worth it.
http://money.com/money/best-colleges/ A good ranking site that will yield surprising results because it’s more cost-oriented than the other ranking sites.
https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/#333caffa1987 Click “See Full List” to get the details on all the colleges listed.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/rankings/united-states/2019#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats This is the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education rankings. Click on “All” in the Show box to see details on all the colleges listed.
https://www.collegefactual.com/rankings/ In addition to details about the colleges, as mentioned above, this site also gives each school a numerical ranking, listed at the bottom of each school’s home page.
In addition, here are a few more things I did to gather information:
- On the Google home page, type in the following words: “university name” net price calculator college raptor. For example: Temple University net price calculator college raptor. The first hit should lead you to a site where you can plug in the necessary information to get a ballpark figure of how much a college is going to cost you. Keep in mind, this number will not be exact, but it should be somewhat close.
- Also on the Google home page, type in “university name” prepscholar. For example: Temple University prepscholar. The first hit should lead you to the prepscholar site, which will give you a good idea of your child’s chances of admission to a particular institution.
One more thing: Many colleges offer music scholarships to non-music majors. My son’s played guitar for years, and he uploaded an audition to one of the schools that accepted him, and they offered him $2,000 a year on top of what they had already offered him in merit aid. It’s worth looking into.
That’s about all I have. There will be surprises along the way — safe schools that put your kid on the waitlist, reach schools that accept your kid, schools that give you less or more money than you expected — but do your best to keep your cool and be a rock for your kids when they seem to be getting overwhelmed.
And when you seem to be getting overwhelmed, remember: There’s always beer in the fridge. There is beer in the fridge, right?
h/t to Kossack SCarton for prompting me to write this diary from a comment I made a few weeks ago.