<p>The EFC is NOT what the family needs to pay. It is a figure that determines which federal financial aid the student qualifies for.</p>
<p>Very few colleges and universities will meet the “full need” (COA - EFC) for an applicant. Most will leave a gap that the student and his/her family need to cover. So essentially, your EFC should be considered to be the least amount of money that your family will need to pay.</p>
<p>In your first example, the family would need to come up with the 10k. You are correct that in this case the family would pay less than their EFC!</p>
<p>In the second example, if the child received no scholarship or other need-based aid for the school with a COA of 30K, the family would have to scrape together 30k.</p>
<p>Each college puts together its aid packages as it sees fit. For some students, a school with a sticker-price of 52k can work out to be less expensive than another with a sticker-price of 5k.</p>