A Primer On Financial Aid
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admission and financial aid, and this is Admissions Beat.
(music)
Hello, everyone. We are ready to roll with season nine, which premieres next week wherever you get your pods. But we wanted to bring you a special episode that was featured on the website Grown & Flown, where my colleague Jacques Steinberg and I did an interview on the real cost of college in 2026. How much can you actually afford? In other words, financial aid explained.
As Grown & Flown says in the promotion of the episode, college costs cause more stress for families than almost any other part of the admission process, and much of that stress comes from misunderstanding how college pricing actually works. They call it "an essential conversation," as Jacques and I break down what families really need to know about paying for college.
It's not about negotiating, like you're buying a car. It's about understanding how colleges calculate affordability, how financial aid works behind the scenes, and how families can make informed, realistic decisions without panic. And as the next admission cycle starts in the coming weeks for the high school class of 2027, and as the seniors wander from early January to the spring with an enrollment decision waiting by May 1st, this conversation about affordability and financial aid is applicable to everybody making their way through the college admission process. So take a listen. Hope it's helpful, and we'll be back next week with the season premiere of Admission Beat.
(music)
Jacques Steinberg:
Welcome. If you've clicked on this video, I'm guessing that you are a parent or a student or counselor who's got questions about the cost of college, and maybe even some anxiety about that. Over the next few minutes, I'm hoping that we can provide you some answers and maybe even a bit of peace of mind, but I know that last bit may be a stretch.
I'm Jacques Steinberg. I wrote about college admissions and college affordability for The New York Times for many years, and I'm also the coauthor of the book The College Conversation: A Practical Companion for Parents to Guide Their children Along the Path to Higher Education. I'm so pleased to introduce you to my guest today. His name is Lee Coffin. He's the dean of admissions and financial aid at Dartmouth, a role he's played for the last decade.
Lee was also in the first generation in his family to apply to college, and he knows firsthand challenges of paying for college and also the transformative power of financial aid. Lee hosts a podcast called the Admissions Beat. It provides news and tips about the college process for parents, students, and counselors. It's a podcast on which we collaborate. Lee, welcome back to Grown & Flown.
Lee Coffin:
It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me back, Jacques.
Jacques Steinberg:
So let's get right to it. How can a family find a college that they consider affordable?
Lee Coffin:
The first step of every college search is to sit down with your financial planner, whether that's a person or your own checkbook, your bank statements, and ask this key question, "How much can I reasonably pay per year to send a child to college?" And that number may be $100,000 a year. It could be zero. But that's the first question everybody has got to ask, because the answer to it points you towards options that help you achieve that financial truth.
So finding the place, once you know financial aid is a component, then the next question is, "Which colleges we are considering offer either need-based financial aid or merit financial aid?" Need-based, as it sounds, is based on your ability to pay. Merit is assigned based on some other quality. And then as you start to explore, the websites of the colleges will start to fill in the story of affordability campus by campus. And the thing to remember up front, every college does it in a very individualized way. So you can't assume six colleges with similar identities are going to have the same policies and equations.
Jacques Steinberg:
So it can be hard for parents to talk about money with their kids, including what they earn, what they've saved, and how much they're willing to spend and to borrow for college. Any tips for breaking the ice on those difficult conversations?
Lee Coffin:
Yes. I don't think a parent has to say to a child, "My income is X." But I think a fair topic at the beginning of a search, so usually in the junior spring, is, "This is the role affordability must play in your college search and how much as parents we can contribute to the cost of attendance." And just set it out front as one of the non-negotiables as a student starts to explore.
So junior spring, lots of time to ponder, to explore, to learn. And you don't want to ignore it and get to the end of the search where someone has fallen in love with a campus, and then suddenly, you have to have the conversation about ability to pay. That's awkward. That's when things get emotional. The later that topic surfaces, the harder it is to have the conversation. But starting with it, I think it's something most students will understand, because they haven't yet set their sights on a place. That's where you have emotion disrupting reason.
Jacques Steinberg:
So you talked about need-based financial aid, you talked about merit aid, and you talked about outreach to the colleges themselves, including to gather research. We talked about need-based aid and merit aid and reaching out to the colleges to do that research. How can a family maximize that financial aid, whether it's need-based or merit, and any other financial sources of support to pay for college?
Lee Coffin:
So I want to put a circle around the word maximize and start to back parents up from the idea that financial aid is something that can be negotiated. It's not like buying a car where you can go into the dealer and try and maximize the price you pay for the vehicle you're purchasing. So if you were diagramming this, you have to put yourself in two columns. The need-based column and the merit column are not the same thing.
So let's start with need-based. Need-based aid cannot be, quote, "maximized." A place that offers need-based is going to use the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which is required of all institutions awarding federal resources to students. FAFSA is the acronym. And the second form that many, but not all, colleges will require is called CSS Profile, Charlie, Sam, Sam Profile, which is a College Board form that many need-based institutions will ask a family to submit in addition to FAFSA.
What those two forms, individually and combined, do is tell the college, "Here's the resource this family has to contribute to college tuition, room, and board." Once we know that number, a need-based place will do one of two things. We will meet that need 100% or we will meet it to the degree we can. And so, for parents, that's another important fork in the road.
Does the college offer need-based aid? Yes or no. If yes, does it meet 100% of demonstrated need? If no, to what degree does the cost of attendance shift from college to parent? So let's stick with, "we meet 100% of the demonstrated need." In that environment, and this is the place where I work, there's no way to maximize it. If you need 50, you get 50. If you need 10, you get 10. If you need 100,000, you get 100,000.
Where maximizing aid might be a factor is a place that does not meet 100% of the demonstrated need, and the burden to meet need is going to land on the parents usually through borrowing, then you have a conversation around, "Which place has given us the most need?" Does that make sense, Jacques?
Jacques Steinberg:
It does. You and I spend a lot of time in our work life editing each other, and I appreciate the friendly edit on maximize.
Lee Coffin:
No, but it's a good reminder that people do think that way, and it's not how aid flows on the college side, and to help families not go into this thinking, "Ooh, I can leverage something." It's unusual for that to be true.
Jacques Steinberg:
Okay. Let's talk about common mistakes. What are a few common mistakes that families make in your experience, and how can they avoid those traps?
Lee Coffin:
Well, we touched one already, which is have the conversation earlier, not later. You're the parent of a senior in high school. We're late in the process in the sense that the application deadlines are upon us. So still time to have the conversation. Do not wait until April when admission decisions are back and the choice of where to enroll gets twinned with, "Can we afford it?" So that's a mistake.
For junior parents, the net price calculators, which are hosted on every college's financial aid website by law, are a first stop. What the calculators will do with a few questions will give you a projection of what you can afford and what the college will offer by way of estimated aid for the following year. And I emphasize estimated, because I think a lot of families make the mistake of assuming the calculator is giving you a concrete financial aid award.
It is a projection to help shape your understanding of affordability. There is not always a discrepancy between the calculator and the financial aid package when it arrives, but there can be, and I think a lot of families are surprised when a financial aid award comes in that it's not 100% synced up with what the calculator said.
And then I think the other error is just not understanding the vocabulary. The two of us are using words like need-based and meet full need and net price calculator, and I think people interchange the word grant and scholarship. People assume scholarship is something you earn as opposed to something awarded for need. And so, being familiar with the terms of financial aid is a really helpful lesson for parents as they begin a college search.
Jacques Steinberg:
So this is a question that sort of comes back to your point that you made about this is not like negotiating and haggling to buy a car. What, if anything, can families do if they are offered a financial aid package and that it feels insufficient for them to afford it?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. So I would say, in the scenario where there's a financial aid package that is undoable in a parent's interpretation of it, go into a conversation knowing that this is an appeal, not a negotiation. An appeal means you are bringing forward additional data to help the financial aid officer recalculate the financial need. Doesn't mean there is any additional financial need, but that's the zone of addressing what seems like a shortfall.
Sometimes there is an essential piece of information that was not included. Sometimes, in families that are divorced, the noncustodial parent contribution enters the equation in a way that is disruptive to the family dynamic, and there's an area for appeal, interpretation, and more clarity on this college side about what is the dynamic here.
And just to be clear, another mistake would be, I've seen many times, a divorced couple putting in the divorce agreement that one will not pay for college, and that's not the way it works. A divorce agreement does not erase a parent's obligation to contribute to the affordability and financial aid situation at the college. A lot of families assume so. It's not. And similarly, there are families that are remarried, and the income of the home in which the student resides is part of the equation.
Jacques Steinberg:
Okay. So a related question about mistakes. As somebody who's been doing this work for so many years, what do you wish high school parents knew about paying for college that we haven't discussed?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. I wish families had more faith in the college's ability to meet their need, as many colleges have sticker prices in excess of $90,000 a year. Many families conclude that that's not affordable. It's out of reach, without giving themselves the chance to learn more about financial aid, to learn more about merit in some environments, but to really see what's the difference between the sticker price that might seem outrageous and the net price, the price you're actually going to pay. And so, I wish more families were comfortable with the difference between sticker price and net price, because those are really important data points that aren't the same thing.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. And to take a stab at that question, myself coming from a different angle, and push back on this answer, I wish that more families realize that so many of our college financial aid colleagues are there to help them and to answer questions and to be a resource, regardless if your question is about that particular institution or about this process. In my experience, those folks are there willing to roll up their sleeves and help.
Lee Coffin:
That's true on the admissions side too. Those of us who do admissions and financial aid are committed to the process of bringing students to the college of their choice. There are rules we must follow in financial aid that help us assess need in an equitable way and to meet need when it's our policy. I think some families get caught in this idea of need-based and what we call want-based.
So you might need 50 and you want 80. Most need-based institutions are not going to be able to move from a $50,000 financial aid package to an $80,000 package. And so, it prompts this reflection intra-family around, "How much are we willing to stretch?" I had a father just the other day tell our financial aid office they were not willing to change lifestyle to pay for college. Valid. But that valid perspective is not going to bring more financial aid into that family's package.
There are going to be some choices students and parents make about what's reasonable, when does a private institution land outside the bounds of what's doable for that family, when is a state university the best option. And I had this conversation the other day with a friend who has a junior, and they were worried about affordability, and I said, "You must then include some in-state options on this list."
And the junior said, "I don't want to go to a state school. They're too big." And I said, "It may need to be a factor. You may need to have one pragmatically, because that's where the affordability question might ultimately be best for you, and you don't want to preclude that as an option prematurely."
Jacques Steinberg:
Okay. All right. Last question. What's one thing that I haven't asked about or raised that you would want to make sure is part of this conversation?
Lee Coffin:
A couple things, I guess. What's really important when assessing a college's financial aid program is not just is it a need-blind institution, meaning aid is not part of the admission decision, or do we meet full need? Hiding behind both of those two questions are questions like, "Does this college include student loans or parent loans as part of the award?" Some places don't. Some places do. Some places do quite heavily.
And so, a student loan, in and of itself, is an investment. I've said to people for many years that the loans I took as an undergrad and as a grad student were mortgages on my future as I went to college and then grad school. So I don't think a loan needs to be something people resist. But if your financial aid award is comprised of excessive loans, that's something you really need to stop and think about debt, and, "Do I as a parent or does the child want to carry debt load into the future?"
If the answer is no, then colleges that are using heavy loans as a way of meeting need might not be places that should be explored. Other places will have different degrees of parent contribution based on income. So I work at a place that has no parent contribution for anybody earning up to $125,000 a year with typical assets.
That's a wonderful opportunity for middle- and lower-income families. Every college won't have that option, but as you explore, those are the kind of clues you're looking for on the financial aid website institution by institution. Make a grid. Start to fill it out, and say, "Of these choices, which ones line up in the most comfortable way for us?"
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Lee, for-
Lee Coffin:
You're welcome.
Jacques Steinberg:
... joining us on Grown & Flown. You've given us lots of food for thought. Viewers and listeners, when Lee is not on Grown & Flown, or when he's not working in the admissions office in Dartmouth, he is hosting the Admissions Beat podcast. You can find it by googling it. You can also find it on Apple, Spotify, and other popular podcast platforms. Thanks so much.
(music)
Lee Coffin:
Thanks. If you found that conversation helpful, there's more to come as season nine of Admission Beat gets underway next week. New episodes drop every Tuesday morning. So please subscribe, like us, offer a comment. If you're interested in Grown & Flown, it's grownandflown.com. For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. I will see you soon.