College Information Profiles - Financial Aid Graphs

In the College Information Profile, Financial Aid section, three graphs provide insight into the financial aid packages offered to students. This article describes the contents of the graphs in more detail.

Cost of Attendance - College Expense Break Down

The College Expense Break Down graphs shows the elements of cost that build up to the total cost of attendance. Each element of cost can be selected in the key to add or remove it from the total cost graph. For example, click on Tuition if you want to see the other elements of cost without Tuition included. Click it again to add it back in. All the graphs work in a similar manner.

Financial Aid Offered - Affordability Snapshot

The Affordability Snapshot compares the average financial aid and scholarship awards to the total cost of attendance for both incoming freshmen and for all undergraduates. Again, you can remove one set of data by clicking on it in the key. The averages are for those students that received the specified type of aid. For example, the Need Based Financial Aid average award includes only those students that applied for need based aid.

• Need Based Financial Aid = average financial aid package received by students that applied for financial aid, excluding any PLUS, unsubsidized or private alternate loans awarded to replace EFC.
• Non-Need Merit Scholarship = average amount of non-need based scholarship or grant awarded to students that had no financial need.

The primary use of the Affordability Snapshot is to evaluate what types of award a school offers and the approximate size of each type of award based on the students that applied for the aid.

Financial Aid Offered - Allocation and Source of Funding

This layered graph offers two levels of details to include both how many students received financial aid awards and also the types of funding of the awards. The initial view shows the percentage of students that received each type of financial award. These numbers only include students that applied for the type of aid. For example, the blue Need-Based Financial Aid bar shows the percent of students that applied for need-based aid and received it.

To see what type of need-based aid was received, select the blue bar. The second layer of the graph for Need-Based Financial Aid shows the breakout of aid that was provided in the form of grants and loans. Click on any of the bars to return to the upper level graph.