Many colleges are at 60k a year including room, board, transportation and personal expenses. What each family pays varies based on income and assets. Each college calculates financial aid based on its own formula. To get an idea of how much your family might pay, go to a college's website and fill out the net price calculator. Some colleges are more generous than others. Some only give out need based aid while others give merit based aid to attract good students.
Remember, too, that "met need" in college parlance means that the bill gets paid.
The real bottom line there is that the number of "loan-free" institutions (much-touted back in 2005 and 2006) has quietly shrunk from several hundred to less than a few dozen.
So a college may well consider your costs to be covered-- that is, "need has been met" with financial aid package-- when:
a) EFC = 25% of household income, say 20K. If college tuition is 40K annually, then furthermore--
b) merit or need based scholarships = 6K
c) work-study, 2K
d) loans, 12K
Presto--
20 K of annual "need" has been met! Hurray!
Just noting that. If they don't specifically state that they don't consider loans to be part of financial aid packages when reporting what percentage of students have "need met" by the institution, then it means that loans ARE part of how they meet that need.
