The 2024-25 SAI Guide is available. https://fsapartners.ed.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/202425DraftStudentAidIndexSAIandPellGrantEligibilityGuide.pdf SAI replaces EFC. Eligibility for Pell Grant is calculated quite differently from past years. Number in college is no longer reported/considered. Simplified needs formula is no longer in play.
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Thanks! That is going to affect a lot of people!
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The changes are good for the lowest income students, which is the goal for federal student aid. It will negatively affect some, though, and it will be interesting to see how colleges handle their institutional aid.
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And it will be very interesting to see what Profile schools do. They never had a simplified needs test.
Will the auto $0 also go away?
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There is no automatic 0 formula going forward. From the Federal Student Aid site, this is the new method:
“The FSA amendments eliminate the automatic zero EFC provisions and replace them with special rules that establish a zero or negative SAI for some students.
Independent students who are not required to file a tax return, or dependent students whose parents are not required to do so, automatically qualify for an SAI of -$1,500.
Students who qualify for a maximum Pell Grant based on a qualifying AGI qualify for a zero SAI (see the “Scheduled Award Under the FSA Amendments”). If the student’s calculated SAI is less than zero, the negative SAI applies.
Students whose SAI is not determined under either of these special rules will have their SAI calculated based on the formulas in the statute.”
Here is the section about Scheduled Award Under the FSA Amendments:
“ The FSA amendments base the amount of the scheduled Pell Grant award on either (1) SAI or (2) a new alternative procedure by which students qualify for maximum or minimum Pell Grant awards based on an AGI at or below specified levels.
Regardless of whether the scheduled award is based on SAI or AGI, the amount cannot exceed COA and cannot be lower than the minimum scheduled award.
Under the FSA amendments, students with an AGI at or below a specified level, the maximum grant AGI threshold, qualify for a scheduled award that is equivalent to the total maximum Pell Grant. The maximum grant AGI thresholds, calculated as a percentage of the poverty guidelines, are specified in the FSA amendments. In addition, students whose families are not required to file a tax return qualify for a maximum Pell Grant. Most individuals (or couples) are not required to file an individual federal income tax return if their gross income is below established levels that depend on filing status and age. For students who qualify for the maximum Pell Grant based on AGI or not needing to file a federal income tax return, the FSA amendments modify their SAI such that they may be eligible for higher amounts of other HEA Title IV aid.”
And this is the section on minimum Pell grants:
“The FSA amendments also establish minimum grant AGI thresholds such that students with an AGI at or below the specified levels qualify for at least the minimum Pell Grant award. Students with an AGI above the maximum grant AGI threshold but below the minimum grant AGI threshold qualify for a scheduled award that is equal to the greater of (1) the minimum Pell Grant or (2) (total maximum Pell Grant - SAI), capped at the total maximum Pell Grant level.
Students whose AGI exceeds the minimum grant AGI threshold may still qualify for a grant equal to (total maximum Pell Grant - SAI), capped at the total maximum Pell Grant level, provided that their SAI is equal to or less than 90% of the total maximum Pell Grant.
This combination of rules means that a student does not qualify for a Pell Grant if the student has both (1) an AGI above the minimum grant threshold and (2) an SAI of more than 90% of the maximum Pell Grant.
The maximum and minimum AGI grant thresholds are specified in the statute and vary by dependency status and single parent status. For example, students from families with single parents, including students who are single parents, may qualify for a maximum Pell Grant if their AGI in the reference year is less than or equal to 225% of the federal poverty guidelines ($51,817.50 for a family of three in calendar year 2022). Students not from single parent families (including independent students without dependents) may qualify for a maximum Pell Grant if their AGI is less than or equal to 175% of the federal poverty guidelines ($40,302.50 for a family of three in 2022).”
Confusing, right? If you go to this link, you can read the full information. To see the graphic illustrating the examples above, go to page 15: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46909.
As for reporting assets:
“The FSA amendments eliminate the SNT terminology and modify the criteria to exempt certain applicants from asset reporting. Under the FSA amendments, the AGI threshold increases to $60,000. The FSA amendments establish that eligible tax returns are those in which an applicant does not file specified tax schedules or files schedules within certain parameters. Applicants can continue to be exempt from reporting assets based on receiving a federal means-tested benefit.”
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It will take a bit of time for that all to be understood by future applicants. Thank you for posting it now.
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It’s going to take some time for financial aid professionals to figure it all out, too!
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Wow this is a change! We’re going to have to start using the appropriate lingo for 2024 students. I’m a little befuddled but I just brushed over it. So when people post about their “EFC” we should slowly transition to “student aid index” or “SAI”?
Siblings in college, at the same time, won’t be considered independent of their parents income and they won’t divide the EFC by two+, correct?, but will have the calculation?
The graph threw me off a little, on page 19, but I had previously read the “percentages”. That seemed to help. I’m going to have to read the whole thing. I have a number of former students” families (with younger siblings) that some of this will affect.
Thanks for the info @Kelsmom. Going to be really helpful to refer back to you when this blows up in Fall of 2023. It should be interesting!
I’m waiting for someone else to figure it out and give us the TL;DR summary!
All I know is that the new calculation boosted our EFC/SAI by $5K, all else equal. But I’m glad that the new formula seems like it will help low income students more.
Yes, it’s SAI or student aid index, beginning 2024-25. The goal FSA has for the future is to have a formula that will allow families to actually compute their Pell grant based on income & family size. This gets them closer (I haven’t spent enough time going over it to know if this formula allows it, but I don’t believe so).
Eventually, NASFAA, the organization for aid professionals, will publish a useful synopsis. I’ll post it here when that happens.
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If a student qualifies for the maximum pell grant, do you know if they will still have to fill out the rest of the form? Will they also have a calculated parent and student contribution or will they just automatically get a zero SAI (whatever that means)?
I went through the worksheet and according to step 1, it appears that the kids will qualify for the “Maximum Pell Grant Eligibility.” Does that mean that we’ll just stop at Step 1? I also try eyeballing the calculation for “Step 2 – Student Aid Index Calculation,” which results in a scary high parents’ contribution --almost twice the EFC from the FAFSA that we filled out for this year (2022-2023). Scarier still since I will have two in college starting in September 2024. Obviously, I was just eyeballing and estimating and I could have done the calculations wrong especially since I haven’t filed taxes or gotten a w2 for 2022 yet, but I am curious about how it works. If we can stop at Step 1, hopefully we should be fine (assuming my D24 ends up at a meets need school that funds her a similar way as my D22’s college) does though the CSS is also still an unknown. My D22 has a small pell grant this year not the maximum.
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A college’s net price calculator or financial aid offer may use the term EFC (calculated by the college, not FAFSA), so one has to be careful to note whether a reference to EFC is for a college-calculated EFC, versus the SAI which used to be the FAFSA-calculated EFC.
Perhaps eventually, when people get used to saying SAI instead of EFC for the FAFSA-calculated amount, then it may be less ambiguous in that EFC will always mean a college-calculated (and college-specific) EFC.
But changing terminology comes slowly. Posters here were still using SAT II to refer to SAT subject tests long after the name change up until they were discontinued.
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https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/how-having-multiple-children-in-college-affects-financial-aid
This isn’t exactly hot news because the die was cast in 2021 with the FAFSA Simplification Act of 2020, but it won’t take effect until 2024/25 so it will affect all families with multiple children in college at the same time beginning with the 2024 class (It was going to take effect in 2023/24 but was delayed one year). No more cost reduction for families with multiple siblings in college at the same time. This is going to affect a lot of families and I’m wondering how other afected parents are planning to deal with this change that will effectively double, triple, or even quadruple the cost of sending kids to college at the same time.
The present FAFSA rule is as follows: " Under the current FAFSA formula, a family’s EFC is divided equally by the number of children they have in college simultaneously."
The situation for 2024 and beyond is that there will no longer be any such allowance or discount.
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I first posted the above as a standalone topic b/c I didn’t see this one. Mod folded it in here which is fine but also why it is redundant to what others are saying.
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The change in formula is going to severely impact our family, effectively tripling our costs due to 3 in college at the same time come 2024. We’re not wealthy by any means but have earned and saved enough to price us out of any need-based aid to Michigan public universities under the new formula. This probably means we’ll have to completely spend out our 529 in the first two years. Then What?? It’s a real financial body blow for us.
Do Michigan public universities* take FAFSA SAI / EFC at face value as the basis for their financial aid amounts?
*Other than University of Michigan, which also uses CSS Profile.
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University of Michigan uses the CSS Profile. As mentioned above…no one knows what the Profile schools will do.
The remaining Michigan publics don’t meet full need for all accepted students anyway.
Perhaps the state will come up with some tuition program for lower income families or families like yours.
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I can’t say for all of them but I’ve plugged in our partial $ data for what is supposed to be a pretty close estimate with the NPC (Net Price Calculator) on various school websites (probably 8 of them by now, have not filled out a complete FAFSA yet) putting ONE student in the ‘how many in college’ question, and they all basically calculate full freight.
Michigan did pass a new State aid bill recently called the Michigan Achievement Scholarship which grants $5.5k to any public school, $4k to any private school, and $2,750 to any community college, per year, but it’s a bit of a misnomer since it doesn’t seem to be achlevement-based at all but rather strictly on need. The cut off to qualify is an EFC of $25k.
Regarding CSS profile schools, I haven’t yet seen what they will do on this point.
You are doing net price calculators that are set for students starting college fall 2023. Please be patient, and wait for the new ones to come out for the year this change takes place. No one really knows what colleges will do regarding their own formulas for awarding heed based aid.
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