Will colleges take my EFC of 50,000 lightly?

[BelknapPoint]

I believe that hardship distributions from IRAs do eliminate the 10% penalty tax for those who are under the threshold age for those distributions.

Do you understand that the language in quotes from my post is directly from the IRS?

“Hardship distributions are subject to income taxes (unless they consist of Roth contributions). They may also be subject to a 10% additional tax on early distributions.”

So, no.

Edited to add: I feel it’s important to correct an error you made in a different thread. You wrote this today:

Well, parental assets now hit up at 12% by FAFSA towards EFC , including 529s. This doubling of percentage of assets can hurt especially with the parental asset exclusion allowances as low as they are now. $100k in assets adds about $11k to the FAFSA EFC now days.

This is wrong. Parent assets are still assessed on FAFSA at a maximum of 5.64% towards the FAFSA EFC, as has been the case for years. You are forgetting Step 26 in FAFSA EFC formula A (for dependent students), which applies a sliding scale using Table 8 that maxes out at 47%. 47% of 12% = 5.64%.