How Twins Might Help Your College Funding Plans

From the desk of Mike Humann…..

We celebrated this past Christmas at our house.  My girlfriend had here family over.  It was stressful because my girlfriend’s view of clean is different than mine.  Perhaps you can relate, but I decided this year to help out as much as I could.  My girlfriend was out of town for work till December 23^rd.  Her whole family was over including her twin sister.  At one point during the day, I glanced over at them as they were talking and noticed how similar they both are.  Many times we look at people but really don’t notice them.  Well this day I did. 

I was thinking to myself what some parents must go through if their twins or triplets are going to college.  In their case, they also have a brother who is just 13 months older who fortunately was being helped along with a golf scholarship and another brother just finishing college when it was time for them to enroll. But their father assumed that they would not qualify for financial aid because he made too much money. He just wrote the checks and did the best he could to get them all through. Had he know to pursue it, at least according to today’s rules, he could have been paying just a fraction for each of them.

Twins Don’t Have To Be A Double Burden Financially

If you are a parent of multiples, or even if your children are close together in age, there is some good news for you.  Your Expected Family Contribution, or EFC when applying for financial aid, will be split between your children. So, if you have two children in college at the same time, the amount you will have to pay for each child may be cut in half. There are some variances in the ways schools calculate your contribution (based on the PROFILE or Institutional Methodology). But, even with 3 in school you are typically only paying 45% of what a parent in the same situation with a single student would pay per student.

Why Not Ask For a Twin or Multiple Student Discount?

Even without financial aid, there are numerous colleges that offer discounted admission when one or more of a set of multiple children attend their school. The amount of the scholarships will vary from full tuition to a moderate scholarship. For example Eastern Michigan University has the Furlotte Twins Endowed Scholarship for upper classmen enrolled in the College of Education Elementary Education Program with a minimum 3.0 GPA that exhibit promise, creativity and academic conscientiousness. Preference of this scholarship is given to to twins.  Other schools like George Washington University, Washington D.C. has a family program that offers a 50% discount for a second sibling.  That’s cool!

There are other clubs specific to twins.  Many times these organizations have scholarships.  Here are a few to check out.  National Organization of Mothers of Twins Clubs and Northwest Association Mother of Twins Clubs

Of course you could always start a reality show to show the world how great your family is, then divorce and TMZ will have two stories to report on.

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