<p>Hi
I am currently filling out my financial aid application and I’m now thinking for hours how my decision will affect my admission chances. It’s about the Expected Support of my parents. As most of the colleges will have their own formulas, how important can the expected amount of support be? You should know, that I am an international student, so is it possible, if we are unexperienced with this kind of applications and state a too low expected support and although the college would have admitted me with a slihtly higher EFC, they are going to reject me? It’s very hard to transfer our economical situation to the US, so I don’t really know how much is acceptable.
Or do I am worrying too much?</p>
<p>First of all it depends on which colleges you are applying to; if need blind they won’t care at all about the FA app. However, given your worry I’d assume you are applying also to non-need blind colleges. They probably still won’t care what you put down for expected support, given it’s how much they calculate that matters…</p>
<p>Your best bet is to see if the particular college has a FA calculator on their FA site, and plug your values in there to the best of your ability, and then see what it says about your expected contribution. Put that down on your FA forms and make a note in the additional information section that the value was determined with use of the particular calculator.
Also, you can report in a non-US currency (if you’re using CSS), as long as you note the currency down (that should alleviate the need to translate stuff to USD)…</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>I don’t have any insider information on this topic but common sense leads me to agree with EphemeralEternal. Colleges will come up with their own number for what they expect you to contribute. If they are paying attention to the self-reported expected contribution at all, they would probably care about orders of magnitude only: $2,000 vs $20,000 but not $20,000 vs $22,000. </p>
<p>If it’s any consolidation, American students are not asked for this estimate, so colleges usually do not work with these numbers at all. I have no idea why the question made it onto the international student financial aid application. A few colleges might care, but most won’t.</p>
<p>Ok, that’s good to hear. I was afraid, that this decision could heavily affect my chances.</p>