Just Curious if anyone know which one of these Questions would hurt more as a Higher Value? Or are they treated the same in the FA formula and just combined but captured Separately?
Cash will always be considered, some net worth things may not be included when determining FA, so the answer is cash.
There are three questions that both the student and the parent(s) answer to establish assets that are assessed in determining need-based aid. Each question covers a separate category of assets:
- Cash and banking accounts (but not student financial aid)
- Net worth of investments, including real estate (but not primary home)
- Net worth of businesses and/or investment farms (but not a family farm or certain family businesses)
As far as I know, there is not one question that “hurts” more with a higher value. @rgosula really knows the FAFSA formula, so maybe he can provide a better answer.
As @BelknapPoint pointed out above(my answer only adds to his comment), there are 3 asset categories (1, 2 and 3 above). 1 and 2 are treated the same.
3 is scaled according to a table A4 in
https://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/071017EFCFormulaGuide1819.pdf
Summaryzing without being exact, Net worth of businesses and/or investment farms is divided by 2 before entering the calculations up the the first 665K. Any amount above that is not scaled.
Of course if you use my spreadsheet you see all this in action.
I just noticed that the scaling relative to (3) only applied to parental assets.
For student 1, 2 and 3 are all just added up.
My spreadsheet already handled this correctly:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1726777-fafsa-spreadsheet.html#latest