Financial calculator ineffective


The first time I applied for financial aid, I was appropriately terrified. The crazy forms with a barrage of unfamiliar financial jargon are daunting enough. Add parental pressure, supplemental paperwork and endless deadlines into the mix, and your average high school senior will want to run away screaming.

Julia Vann | Daily Trojan

 

I tried to be levelheaded about it. Millions of other students had done it before me; it couldn’t possibly be that bad. So I spent a few weeks gathering financial data from my parents, making lists of contact information and submission dates and typing numbers into tiny data fields on an unforgiving computer screen.

Somewhere in the process, I came across the official Free Application for Federal Student Aid financial aid calculator, otherwise known as the FAFSA4caster, which promised to provide me with an estimate of how much financial aid I would receive if I spent just a little more time inputting numbers.

It was a bust. The online tool, which came highly recommended by college counselors and the FAFSA website, informed me I could expect a grand total of zero dollars and zero cents in financial aid.

USC’s recent addition of its own financial aid calculator to the admissions website won’t help matters. Financial aid calculators are more of a hindrance than a help to college students.

These problems are more likely to impact incoming college freshman — the newbies in the financial aid process — but experienced  students are not immune. Current college students, more than anyone, cannot afford to either waste their very limited time on a financial tool that probably won’t affect what they do next or worse, that will mess up their financial aid situation at a college they are already happily attending on account of putting too much stock in a calculator because they are not truly indicative of how much aid a student will receive.

The Internet is flooded with them — most financial aid and college prep websites will have their own version or link you to one elsewhere. They either put students in a panic over a calculation for minimal aid, or leave them with a false sense of security thanks to an overly huge one. Either way, they are a waste of time.

Tools like the FAFSA4caster can’t guarantee accuracy, particularly for those with more unique financial situations. They are terrible at taking into account special circumstances, such as custodial arrangements, exceptional medical bills or significant depreciation of assets.

As rudimentary mathematical programs, they are not able to interpret that sort of information. So unless your situation is free of complication, you might as well not use a financial aid calculator.

College students who do bother to use a financial aid calculator will tell you its results had absolutely no bearing on whether they decided to apply for financial aid. No student who legitimately requires outside funding for college is going to change his or her mind about applying for financial aid because of a low estimate on an unproven calculator.

It might push him or her a little further in the direction of seeking out scholarships, or maybe getting a job, but any person who would take the time to punch data into a financial aid calculator is probably already taking those steps.

There are only a few possible changes an advance estimate can make, and none of them is particularly good.

The first is that a student expends unnecessary time and energy stressing for several months over whether he or she will receive enough financial aid, instead of focusing on academic work or perhaps seeking other avenues to obtain funds. In the worst case scenario, such students convince themselves they cannot afford to attend certain schools without contacting those schools’ financial aid offices.

Some might even feel compelled to unfairly manipulate financial data when filling out their forms, which could land them in serious trouble.

On the other hand, students might feel so confident about high financial aid estimates that they choose not to take advantage of other opportunities to receive college funding. This can have dire consequences later, especially if the estimate turns out to be higher than expected.

Student financial aid resources should instead direct student attention toward alternative methods of college aid. Scholarship search engines could provide a useful tool to gather money to fund increasingly expensive tuition. Websites like FastWeb and CollegeBoard should come to the forefront of financial aid service as a useful and effective way to ease an otherwise stressful process.

Providing tools to help students better understand the technical aspects of the financial aid process is another viable solution. High school college counseling offices could put together detailed tutorials to help their students secure the maximum financial aid possible, without using financial aid calculators as a crutch.

If financial aid calculators don’t cause legitimate problems, they still create a nuisance — the last thing anyone needs to worry about is the biggest expense of one’s life. Financial aid is complicated enough on its own. It doesn’t need an calculator making it even more so.

 

Francesca Bessey is an undeclared freshman.