<p>The NPC will collect your financial information and give you an estimate of aid and your contribution for that school. The only way it relates to fafsa is that if what you enter indicates Pell, possibly FSEOG, work study and direct loan eligibility, then those will be included in your estimated aid package. The NPC may not ask for fafsa EFC directly, but from the info you enter it can calculate eligibility for federal aid and in some states state aid.</p>
<p>Doing it now will allow you to compare schools. You’ll also be able to see how different schools calculate the NPC. Some consider loans and Pell part of their “grant,” and other schools don’t.</p>
<p>Unless you’re looking for excuses not to examine your current financial records, I just don’t see a downside.</p>
<p>Artie, the best time to run the NPCs for the actual schools your kiddo is interested in is AUGUST/September of his senior year. The NPCs get updated annually for each admissions round. Certainly, you can do them now to get a very rough estimate, but policies change, and the NPCs do sometimes change from year to year…so what you get NOW (which is for the 2015-2016 school year) might not be the same as what will actually BE for the 2016-2017 school year.</p>
<p>If you do the NPCs in early September, you should have a pretty decent idea of your 2014 income…which is what you will use for 2015-2016 need based aid calculations. Use the best possible estimates.</p>
<p>Are there business expenses deducted on your taxes? If so, this might render the NPCs inaccurate. Some schools add back in some business expenses. And if you are self employed, all bets are off. Ditto if you own real estate other than your primary residence. The NPCs work best with regular w2 form income.</p>
<p>You can run the NPCs anytime you want. I suggest you run them for a number of colleges, several times for each college with different scenarios. However, with a family business involved, a lot of NPCs for colleges not using just FAFSA, like the schools requireing PROFILE may be way off, as a lot of schools treat businesses very differently from the way FAFSA does, and schools do differ from each other on how they treat businesses, treat different businesses differently. IT becomes a big question mark as to how a school will look at your business. </p>
<p>I suggest getting some good safeties, schools that you know you can afford on the list just in case your business makes financial aid an issue. And add some schools where your child has a decent chance of getting merit money. You just can’t depend on those calculators with a business in the picture.</p>
<p>OP here again. It isn’t my business- I work for a large company in the sales department. Depending on how high they set the quotas I have some years better than others- it can vary by $10,000 or more year to year- so goes the sales world.</p>
<p>Good suggestions here- I will run the NPC with several different scenarios with a Plan A, Plan B etc. and make sure to run again in September.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help!</p>