EFC with more than one student

Paying for College
1

So, I went onto the FAFSA forecaster website (https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/f4cForm?execution=e1s1) to calculate my EFC; I filled it in for my second child. While it asks how many children are students, it only asks for one of them (the one you’re filling it out for) what are the expected college fees. Per the NYT blog (http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/fafsaq-and-a/?_r=1) each child gets half the EFC.

So, does the EFC number the calculator returns apply only to that child or is this the total EFC (irrespective of number of children) and do separate colleges then take that into account when deciding what financial aid to award?
Thanks so much.

2

Each run of the fafsa forecaster gives the EFC only for that student. When there will be 2 in college at the same time, the parent component of EFC is halved, then the student component is added to that. The student components may be slightly different depending on income and assets of the students. It’s not your EFC, the EFC belongs to each student.

For federal aid, that’s the EFC, nothing additional is taken into account. Generally, also for state aid too. If a school is awarding their own aid based on fafsa only, it’s up to each school if and how much they take it into account for their own aid. School’s with better aid also require CSS profile or their own finaid form in addition to fafsa. Some say those schools may require 60% of a family’s combined EFC for each student but the schools calculate your need based on the additional forms and it may not be what fafsa EFC is.

3

Most FAFSA only schools do not have much aid to give. FAFSA EFC is a federal number for EACH student. Colleges do not have to do anything with that number except see if there’s any small fed aid that you might qualify for. The feds can’t order schools to make themselves affordable, and most do not and cannot.

What result did you get from that estimator?

Go to a few different schools’ websites and run their NPCs…try your state flagship, an OOS public, a top private and a good, but lower ranked private and see what your results are.