How will sibling graduation affect my EFC?

_rentof2
Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:23:12 +0000

Your individual EFC will double, assuming you and your brother have similar income and assets of your own.

For your parents – if they had filed a FAFSA for both your brother and you, they would have received an EFC for each of you. For example, an EFC of 10,000 for you and 10,000 for your brother. That makes their total, combined EFC 20,000. The total was divided by 2, but still totals the 20,000 the federal methodology calculates they can contribute. When your brother graduates, their EFC will still be 20,000, but will not be spread out over two students. Your individual EFC will total the 20,000.

So, normally, their total, combined EFC doesn’t actually raise or lower depending on the number of kids in college, it just gets redistributed.

In your case, they may be seeing an artificially low EFC since they filed yours listing 2 students in college, but didn’t file one for your brother. Using the example numbers above, they’ll be getting the 10,000 EFC for you, but of course not the 10,000 EFC for your brother since they didn’t file a FAFSA for him. When they file the following year for you only, they will see their (theoretical) 20,000 EFC with just one student in college.