I live on campus and wonder if this helps increase need.

Paying for College
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<p>Hello, me and my husband live in an apartment on campus as it is the only sanely possible way to let me go to school while he goes to work and uses the car. I was wondering if this will potentially increase the cost of the tuition as being part of housing and board and if it will help me receive Pell grants? </p>

<p>My schools little formula shows I would qualify for full coverage from Pell grants as they include in the formula whether or not you utilize school housing. My husband pays the rent with his job and not my financial aid (except when the disbursement hits they automatically take it out for one month… I just pay it back with what we save). He makes 13.45 an hour and never gets over time… I never work over $1000 a year and actually will apply for work study this year since I transferred to the big school which costs more.</p>

<p>It just is a unique and new situation for us since we have lived off campus the last two years while I was at a community college. I received full coverage from grants for the community college as well and haven’t wanted to work because we easily maintain bills + entertainment on his income alone and appreciate the aid! I am not lazy if you are wondering, I worked a couple odd jobs like the Spring Rush for the school bookstore. :)</p>

<p>I’m just hoping we qualify again this year with an income of approximately $25,000 and the cost of tuition is around $6000 plus housing is $8640 (720 a month). I know they lowered the automatic 0 EFC to $23,000 which is lame but I’ll be happy even with just partial grant money plus work study. :-)</p>

<p>I’m SO SORRY this is long and basically a rant. I cannot sleep as I’m sick and haven’t received tax returns so not able to file and see my EFC yet.</p>

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<p>The amount of your Pell grant will not depend on tuition/R&B, it will be determined by your EFC. You can file a preliminary FAFSA, with a “will file” tax status, or work through the EFC Formula Guide worksheets to get an estimated EFC. Use the “B” worksheets/tables.</p>

<p><a href=“http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/082511EFCFormulaGuide1213.pdf[/url]”>http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/082511EFCFormulaGuide1213.pdf&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Do you have children? Independent students without dependents other than a spouse never qualified for the Auto 0 EFC.</p>

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<p>Thanks for your reply. I do not have children and totally spaced about that little notation! I was wondering why my EFC wasn’t 0 last year. It was like 2000 something. I can definitely do the paperwork stuff. I think we hit around 4000 with one thing I did and the schools formula comes up as qualifying for full aid. I of course won’t get excited until the official response from FAFSA.</p>