Location a factor for financial aid?

vballmom
Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:29:54 +0000

There’s no one-size-fits-all CSS estimated family contribution. The CSS merely collects the information requested by the specific college so that the college can calculate its own EFC. Some colleges use the CSS to ask for home equity, value of family cars, worth of retirement accounts, etc. Other colleges don’t ask for these numbers on their version of the CSS. How the colleges use the data they collect via CSS is up to the individual college.

If a college has its own EFC calculator on its website, or gives other details about how a family’s financial data feeds into its formula, then that’s the best source of CSS information, much better than a generic CSS EFC calculator you might find online.

edited: sorry, redundant but maybe useful ;)