Grad student sibling's impact on undergrad's EFC

entomom
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:05:25 +0000

Just starting to get familiar with this myself since D1 is graduating from college this spring and has applied to grad school and D2 is graduating from HS and entering college in the fall. Here is what I have gathered so far, not definitive, so if other members have comments, I’d love to hear them.

After many discussions with FAFSA, it sounds like no matter what their independent/dependent status of the older child, the fact that they are in grad school means they don’t qualify as another child in college. I’ve called and online chatted with FAFSA several times and have come to this conclusion. However, recently a CC parent that their kids school says that it will count the older sib for FAFSA, so it never hurts to ask an individual school.

For Profile, if the older sib is a dependent for tax purposes, they can be counted as another student attending college. They even told me to do this w/D1 who had applied but not yet found out if they had been accepted. However, when I talked to one college, they told me they weren’t sure that the school actually counted the grad student as another child in college in FA calculations; as with all figures on the Profile, schools have their own policies on how they use the information.

As far as the dependent/independent question, my understanding is that they use whatever you used on your taxes.