Our EFC was twice the cost of one year of the most expensive schools. All NPCs I ran had us paying full price even when I ran them with two kids in college just to see what would happen. It’s not our income that puts us in the full pay category because I played with the NPCs a bit. I cut our income in half and kept our savings as is and we still had the same EFC. So…it’s our savings that made the difference. You can just run NPCs over and over to see what different scenarios are.
I did fill out FAFSA just to see our EFC according to them. It’s an easy form and I was curious. After I did all of this, we decided to not bother with sending FAFSA or doing CSS because the CSS was just going to include even more of our assets (our house) and the EFC would get even bigger. I did call all of the schools that gave merit to make sure that not filing wouldn’t be a problem for getting merit aid. All but one said don’t bother filing. They didn’t need FAFSA or CSS to give S19 merit. We just dropped the school that wanted those forms. (It wasn’t a favorite so that was ok.) I do know there are schools out there that want you to file to be considered for merit. It’s important to check on that if you decide to not fill out the forms.