“I noticed that there was the section with scholarships/tuition and my brother had a number on his while I did not so I was wondering if that was a possibility of our difference?”
ah HA! that would explain the difference!
OP said that she and her brother did not have income or assets.
That would mean that neither filed a tax return. If brother had to file a tax return because he had to report taxable scholarship income, then he would enter the amount he included as part of his AGI in question 44d on his FAFSA.
FAFSA would deduct that amount from his income. Basically cancelling it out.
I still don’t think it explains why brother had a $0 EFC and she did not.
If parent had auto zero efc (?) then student income and assets would be skipped anyway.
If the parents had auto $0 EFC, this second student would,also have a $0 EFC.
Something is not entered correctly on one of these forms.
I urge this poster to look again at EVERY entry…every single one. Despite saying there were NO differences in the forms, she has already found at least one.
Is it possible that the brother answered YES to one of the dependency questions? Check that.
How old is this brother?
My brother is 19 and he is in the middle of his 2nd year of college.
Did your brother have to input assets? What was his EFC for,the first two years of college?
My brother does not have any assets. For my brothers first year, his EFC was 0. For the 2nd year, he had an EFC of like 1000 at most because my dad was forced to work overtime so he made more than usual. But this year, my dad’s income went down $10,000 so my brothers EFC went back to 0 but mine starts with something… The only difference I can see from our SAR is that he has the amount of his tuition, but it’s paid off from his scholarship and the pell grant.
Is there any way the FAFSA people can look at both of our applications and see if there is a difference that affects our EFC?
I don’t know, you could try and call FAFSA helpline.
If your dad’s income is lower again this year and brother has $0 EFC then I think the problem is with your FAFSA.
Your brother would not have $0 for income and then have scholarships listed in question 44d, that would trigger an error message I would think.
Was your dad’s income under $25,000?
@kelsmom might have an idea, she used to work in financial aid.
If you both have same parent income, same household size, 2 in college I don’t know why you don’t have the same EFC.
Did you use the IRS data retrieval tool to link parent tax return to FAFSA?
My dad’s income is about $44,000, but we are a family of 6. There is 2 of us going to college this fall and I just don’t want EFC affecting the Gate’s scholarship if I become a scholar. I know it’s not really a high number, but I just don’t want my parents to worry. We both did use the IRS data retrieval tool to fix our parent’s tax return on FAFSA.
Where on your brother’s FAFSA do you see the “tuition number”?
Could your brother ask his financial aid office to look over his FAFSA and check if it is correct? Do you have a program at your high school helping with FAFSA completion, or at a college you were accepted at?