FAFSA and FAFSA Calculator results

Paying for College
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<p>This week after finishing our Federal Tax return, I filed the FAFSA for my daughter for college this fall. Then I ran two different web-based calculators using the information I had entered for the real FAFSA. Here are results for you:</p>

<p>FAFSA on the Web (official FAFSA) EFC = $19524</p>

<p>[FinAid</a>! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org%5DFinAid”>http://www.finaid.org) EFC using the Federal Methodology and the most recent award tables (2008-2009) EFC = $20996</p>

<p>[College</a> Calculators - savings calculators - college costs, loans](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>Calculate Your College Costs – BigFuture | College Board) using the Federal Methodology EFC = $19524</p>

<p>I did not run FAFSA4Caster because it took too long to load and I just lost patience. </p>

<p>The College Board website questionnaire closely follows the FAFSA questionnaire, and may include a line or two that aren’t on the FinAid form. If you get your notes together for the College Board calculator, you will have everything you need for the real FAFSA. If you want a quick estimate that is in the ballpark, the FinAid calculator will do just fine. If you like doing things yourself, you can download the FAFSA 2010-2011 EFC Formula Guide from <a href=“http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/111609EFCFormulaGuide20102011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/111609EFCFormulaGuide20102011.pdf&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Both of the calculators that I ran also offer the option of using the Institutional Methodology which estimates the EFC as calculated by the CSS Profile which is used by some private colleges and universities. I don’t know how useful these EFC estimates are, as each institution modifies the formula a bit and those details aren’t available to the public. My daughter isn’t headed to a college that requires the CSS Profile, so I have no personal figures to compare the calculators’ results to. Maybe someone who has had to file the CSS Profile can comment on this issue later. In any case, I did find a significant difference between the IM results for these two websites:</p>

<p>[FinAid</a>! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org%5DFinAid”>http://www.finaid.org) IM EFC = $21848</p>

<p>[College</a> Calculators - savings calculators - college costs, loans](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>Calculate Your College Costs – BigFuture | College Board) IM EFC = $14550</p>

<p>Our family’s college planning is done (for the time being at least). Best wishes to all of you who are still in the process!</p>

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<p>Hello:</p>

<p>I’ve been working on the same financial planning project with the same calculators, but I sincerely hope I’m doing something wrong as the calculations all tell me that we are not eligible for ANY financial aid! I found another thread on this board about “upper middle class” families being at a disadvantage in this process–we live in high-cost California and are dual-income, middle class professionals. The thought that we are probably expected to come up with the entire $200,000 for four years of a private college is terrifying.</p>

<p>Does anybody know anything further about this topic? Thanks in advance.</p>

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<p>Ariel, if your total family income is above $$200,000 a year, your EFC calculations will probably yield an EFC that exceeds the cost of attendance at most schools. Our income was in the $140K range and our EFC was $44K. Yep…we paid that out of pocket.</p>

<p>The assumption is that college costs will be paid by using past earnings (savings), current earnings (income) and future earnings (loans).</p>

4

<p>Hi again:</p>

<p>Our income is very similar to yours–but my husband is 60 and self-employed. His income could plummet in the next year or two. Also, we need to save for retirement for him too.</p>

<p>We do have about a third of the college cost saved in a 529 plan, so that will help. Still, I always thought that we would qualify for some aid. </p>

<p>Thanks for your feedback!</p>

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<p>Ariel…keep in mind that even if you qualified for some aid, it would have likely have been loans (not free money) unless your child got accepted to one of the few elites that promise no loans in aid packages.</p>

<p>Is your child a junior or senior? If your child is a senior, did he/she also apply to any less expensive schools? If your child is a junior, then you may want to consider having your child apply to some financial safety schools…schools that are cheaper or who will award your child some merit scholarships for stats.</p>

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<p>My child is a junior, so we are just beginning this process. What you said makes sense. I suppose by less expensive schools, you mean public universities such as UCLA or UC San Diego. She will apply to those, but, of course, she has dreams of attending a school on the East coast. Fortunately, she is a very strong student academically, though none of the schools she’s currently interested in offer any kind of merit based scholarships.</p>

<p>Oh well–we will do our best! Thanks for the help.</p>

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<p>If she is a very strong student and gets accepted to a top LAC. They may give better aid and/or not loans in the aid. HYP give aid up to 180K</p>

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<p>ArielTemp -</p>

<p>This is exactly why I decided to share these results here at CC. We parents have to be clear about how much money we actually have available, and where exactly it is going to come from, or we can’t help our children make good choices about paying for their educations.</p>

<p>If you read through the threads that are “stickied” at the top of this forum, you will get some good ideas about where you and your child can start looking to find merit-based aid. Two other older threads that are worth reading through for strategies on finding merit-based aid are:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>

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<p>Thank you, HappyMomof1 and everybody else!</p>

<p>I did read some of those old threads and find them very helpful and illuminating. I personally have nothing against third or fourth tier schools (whatever that means exactly–I’ve never really liked the whole ranking thing)–but I can also see why my child wants to attend one of the universities regarded by her and others in her class as the “reward” for four years of strenuous effort. She has done very well indeed (straight A’s and will be a NM semifinalist), so I need to balance her achievements against the reality that paying the whole cost will tap us out right when my husband is set to retire in a few years. That seems imprudent, to put it mildly.</p>

<p>I definitely need to learn more about merit aid in general. Thanks again for the support.</p>

<p>P.S. What is HYP?</p>

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