I live in NYC. Single mom with child by donor, so no other parent. I make $62 k a year, city job. Two of us in family. How did they decide that I can afford to have an EFC of 13905? I have no assets. Own our home and I have an IRA. I live paycheck to paycheck. Does anyone have any idea how they arrive at their numbers and whether I can question their response?
I hate to,say it…but that EFC sounds about right to me for a $62,000 income…family of two.
The EFC number is often surprisingly high to people. But yours sounds…spot on.
If you live in NYC, will your daughter qualify for a TAP award? Is she applying to instate public universities. Any chance she is a STEM major?
@sybbie719 can you explain TAP and rhe STEM award.
To answer your question:
https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/sites/default/files/2017-18-efc-formula.pdf
They do not determine if you can afford $13k but that’s what the calculations spit out, and it is the number to determine whether you get federal grants. The state of NY may also use the fafsa numbers to grant state aid. The asset allowance for a single is pitiful, but you said you didn’t have any assets. Does your child have any assets in his/her name? If so, that may have increased the EFC a little (the student gets no asset allowance). But the number does sound correct.
Good news is you’ll probably qualify for the AOTC credit and get back $2500 as a tax credit and also good news that NY has a lot of affordable schools for its residents.
Did your child apply only to these schools?
NYU Tisch, Barnard, Vassar, Fordham, Sarah Lawrence, Brandeis
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Chance me! NYU Tisch, Barnard, Vassar, Fordham, Sarah Lawrence, Brandeis for writing
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You may have a bigger problem. It looks like your DD wants some schools that don’t meet need. NYU gives lousy aid, too.
My advice is to run the net price calculator at each school’s website.
NYU and Fordham do not meet 100% demonstrated need. Sarah Lawrence is not committed to meeting 100% demonstrated need,
The FAFSA determines your eligibility for Federal aid (not Pell eligible) and NYS aid (which is going to be very little).
Many of the schools on your list will look at the CSS profile, which will take a more in-depth look at your finances. Many of these schools will take home equity into consideration and add back in the contributions that you make to your IRA so your EFC may possibly go up.
She has until February 1 to fill out a CUNY application in order to ensure that she has an affordable option when all of the dust settles. I recommend that she does that this weekend. Her transcript will automatically be pulled by the DOE, use the UAPC code 2950 so that her scores will go to every CUNY school that she applies to.
As a single parent in the city, 62K really doesn’t go far. I don’t think you qualify for EOP but SUNY Geneseo has a another process that she should apply through, which takes into account other circumstances (such as having a single mother who lives paycheck to paycheck.)
Vassar, if she can get in, would likely be your cheapest bet.
She really needs to apply to SUNY/CUNY schools, unless she’s ready to take a gap year in case none of the colleges that admitted her are affordable. Sarah Lawrence is lousy with aid, as is NYU.
Run the NPC on other colleges: Denison, Eckerd, Knox (all good for writing).
Op is not EOP eligible.
The TOP program at Geneseo looks at students who may be academically eligible under the EOP guidelines but there is no additional aid (actually Geneseo EOP really is not that generous to low income students).
https://www.geneseo.edu/aop/transitional-opportunity-program
ETA: Op’s D would not even be eligible for TOP because she has the stats to be admitted under general admissions. Mom needs to see if she has the stats for the honor college ( I think she does) and see what kind of scholarship comes with that (warning: it will no be substantial)
Op would most likely be full pay at SUNY minus the small amount of TAP/SUNY credit that the family would receive.
Actually I used the Collegeboard EFC calculator and it figured an EFC of around $7,000 for a household of 2 with parent income of $62,000. Did you or the student have assets?
^but even the lower EFC of $7-8,000 would not make her Pell eligible.
You need some affordable options!
Sounds like OP is only looking at the Fafsa EFC-?
The key is the NPC (Net Price Calculator, on their web sites.) for each college. Did you run that? Fafsa isn’t the sole determinant for those private colleges.
You could go back and be certain you did not overstate home value/equity. IRA value doesn’t count.
If that 14k did actually come from a college NPC, you need to look at its components. A student can take the Direct loan (5500, first year, more in the following years.) She’s likely expected to contribute from summer earnings and there may be work study. All those can knock down what the parent pays. (Make sure those parts are not already subtracted.)
If all you’re looking at is the Fafsa figure, the colleges may expect a larger contribution, based on their own formulas.
The OP said she has no assets.
But I believe she says they own their home. The equity in that will be included for the colleges listed in posts 4 and 5 as those schools also use the Profile.
@Durable You are talking about a FAFSA EFC number of $13k-$14k, right? It is most likely that your costs will be higher than that at the schools onnthis list that do not meet full need. Even if your daughter lives at home, and commutes to NYU, the costs will be $50,000 a year…or so.
Our income is about the same for six people but our EFC is even more at some profile colleges due to owning our home. My heart goes out to the OP.
Recently, I read another thread of a family that had a very high income but comparable EFC to ours. It’s really a puzzle, but it comes down to assets in the form of home ownership and savings. The family in the other thread made choices to upgrade their home and buy new cars so had less assets and debt, bringing down their EFC. But it’s still hard for them to meet.
We paid off our house and socked whatever we could away because at our income level we needed that security, and we were able to manage it which I know others couldn’t. In that respect, we are just fortunate. But all of this makes paying for college tougher, ironically. We could drain everything but our younger kids will probably need help more and we’d have nothing for our retirement.
I don’t mean to hijack. I guess threads like this give me another opportunity to remember a college education is not a right. It is an opportunity our kids have to pay for, as a wise person mentioned above. But it still can hurt as we try to make it happen.
Thankfully, many of us do have choices so our kids can go to college even if it means living at home, going part-time, and taking out loans (hopefullly not too much). There’s also ROTC, DoD science scholarships, and MAC at less competitive schools.
I also like the scholarships available at HBCUs. I have mixed feelings about them, thinking it shouldn’t be taken advantage of by people like us that they weren’t meant for but at the same time wanting for people to go there for them to be able to stay open and continue their mission.
It’s not easy but the OP is not alone in her struggles.
I think the DD has an ACT 32. Hopefully she has also applied to some schools that will give large merit for stats.
EFC calculations are harsher for households of two, with only one adult.
Does the $62k include retirement contributions?
@Durable posted this on another thread. It looks like total income including the contribution to the retirement contribution in 2015 was $66,000.
But really…that’s not clear…is it??
I’d also love to know the answer to this question, too.
I was thinking of transferring some savings into an IRA to safeguard some saving for retirement. I lived and worked overseas before kids and have no social security or pension, and my husband is a relatively new immigrant. We saved for retirement but have nothing in special accounts. Would moving some money into an IRA, which I think would bring down our adjusted income, help as far as the FASFA goes?
Any contributions to your 401k/403b or IRA will be added back in as income for financial aid purposes.
school year 2017-2018 will look at income from 2015
school year 2018-2019 will look at income from 2016
school year 2019-2020 will look at income from 2017
school year 2020-2021 will look at income from 2018
and whatever assets you have on the day you file the FAFSA
plan accordingly
See post #2, this thread.
Thank you, Sybbie719 and BelknapPoint.