Grad student sibling's impact on undergrad's EFC

Debruns
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:24:58 +0000

Thumper, I thought you could declare the grad student on your taxes and CSS Profile, but not the fafsa. My son is a grad student, 22, lives at home, goes to school full time, and he is considered “independent” on his fafsa, so I can’t count him on ours. I do on the Profile and our taxes. All the questions to verify Independent status were negative until they asked about grad school.
I found some colleges counted him, many didn’t. Some took it under consideration, not giving me the full amount of a third child, but more than just two. It really varies. I called fafsa although the questionaire had him independent and they told me to put “2 in college”. When I asked a few college what would happen if 3 was put down, they said they would just "correct it’.
Most told me PhD students wouldn’t count because most had a stipend, masters students didn’t as a rule.