Net Price Calculators Matter

Best tool for estimating your college costs

Net price calculators are available on all college websites that participate in federal student aid programs. They allow prospective students to enter their financial information into a calculator and find out what students like them received in financial aid.

When you start looking at specific colleges, net price calculators are the best tool to figure out how much the school will actually cost you– especially since they will only show gift aid, not loans or work study.  They can tell you whether you're likely to be eligible for a subsidized loan or work-study but they can't include self-help aid in the net price they show you.  

Colleges can either use the U.S. Department of Education’s net price calculator or create their own. Since the Department of Education’s calculator uses the FAFSA to calculate EFC, you should expect that you are using a different version of the calculator if the school requires the CSS Profile. So expect to see some differences when you use net price calculators for different schools. 

The Output from the net price calculator is required to include:

• Estimated total cost of attendance;

• Estimated tuition and fees;

• Estimated room and board;

• Estimated books and supplies;

• Estimated other expenses (personal expenses, transportation, etc.);

• Estimated total grant aid;

• Estimated net price; and

• Percent of the cohort (full-time, first-time students) that received grant aid; and

The Department of Education also requires that net price calculators “clearly present a student’s estimated individual net price. The definition of net price is the amount that a student pays to attend an institution in a single academic year after subtracting scholarships and grants – forms of financial aid that a student does not have to pay back.” So, while the output may show loans– including subsidized loans– and work study as options to cover the student’s cost, the net price will be calculated separately from those amounts.

Doing a few NPCs will show you the range of costs your family is likely to find and how colleges package financial aid, and can certainly help to narrow down your list. First you have to find it. Many colleges make them fairly obvious, but not all do. If it's hard to find on the school's website, you can either google "[school name] net price calculator" or access it via CollegeData, College Navigator or the Big Future websites by searching the school on either site. 

Next, make sure you're entering your data correctly. For example, income in a NPC is the same as income on the FAFSA: total income, not adjusted gross income. So make sure to add back your pre-tax retirement contributions so as to not understate your income.

The NPC will usually ask you if you want to save your inputs to your student's College Board account. Most parents are horrified at the thought of their student being able to see their incomes and assets, and I get that. However, when you fill out the FAFSA, every line of data in your FAFSA is sent to your student's email address to verify or correct, so not saving your NPC data is only delaying the inevitable. Beyond that, saving your data will save you a ton of time and ensure that every NPC is calculating your estimated net price based on the same set of data.

One shortcoming of net price calculators is they can only show what a student should expect to get with no additional application. Schools may have additional scholarships that students should research on their own to learn about application requirements and process.

A final item that you’ll find on the school’s website: its transfer credit policy. This matters a lot for students who’ve taken lots of AP or IB classes. Not every school gives you credit for these classes, and even if they do give credit, it might not be towards your major. If you’re intending to use your AP or IB credits to shorten your time in college, you need to be sure that your colleges will give you credit. Your best bet is to google the school name and transfer credit policy since there doesn’t seem to be a consistent place where schools list this information.

So when you’re trying to figure out what college is going to cost, make sure to do the net price calculator for any school your student is interested in.