@bgbg4us pm’d me numbers, and doing manual calculations matches the College Money calculator. The federal calculator in Federal Student Aid yields a MUCH higher SAI. I redid the calculations with 0 assets & all three calculations roughly matched. Again, this supports the idea that something is wrong in the federal calculator in terms of what it’s doing with assets.
People without assets should get a good estimate with the federal calculator, but those with assets may get a number that makes them cry. I would suggest using the College Money calculator or doing the calculations manually for now.
I used @bigelom3’s inputs, and the federal calculator seems pretty wonky even without assets. In this particular case, the student had quite a bit of income that was attributed to scholarships/grants, so the simple federal calculator isn’t going to work even if it was calculating correctly - it’s not set up to handle anything but the simplest situation. But when I used just the parent information (which had 0 for assets) & used all 0’s for the student, the SAI came out lower than expected.
The moral of the story … I don’t know what to think. I’m out on this one. Hang tight & let’s see if changes happen in the near future.
So I guess I just want to put it out there that it doesn’t hurt to ask the financial aid office how they will handle the change to the FAFSA regarding siblings in college, even if they don’t use the CSS profile. GVSU is planning on still taking into account the number of siblings in college, even though the only use FAFSA. Now, in addition to the FAFSA, they will be creating an extra form to fill out that asks for number of siblings in college and amount paid out of pocket for their college.
The question about siblings in college is asked on the FAFSA, it just won’t be used in the SAI formula. So schools will see if there are extra kids in college, and if they choose, they can take it into consideration when awarding institutional aid. In addition, I think that it might be okay to make certain allowable adjustments to take sibling educational costs into account - it would be under the professional judgment umbrella. Schools can’t have a blanket policy that they will adjust, so they have to consider each situation on its own merits. That may be why GVSU says it will collect that information. To be in compliance if they do that for federal aid, they would need proof of what is paid for siblings (USC recently got in trouble for not collecting proof when they did PJ adjustments). The effect would not be halving the parent contribution, but it might be helpful.
Pretty sure that how you explained it is how they explained it. The form is for the parent to state how much they are paying for each child’s education out of pocket. Siblings that are in college that do not have out of pocket expenses for their education will not be taken into consideration.
Not necessarily if they will outprice all middle class family, some LACS may loose a lot of students. If middle class family can pay say $75k a year for 3 kids ($25k per kid) - show me middle class family that can pay $225k a year… That is physically impossible. There are no loans for college that size. For family with twins 75x2x4= 600k… No middle class family can afford it.
Schools perfectly understand that.
Here is the wording regarding additional students in college: “The number of family members in college is no longer a factor in the need analysis, when calculating the new Student Aid Index (SAI), which replaces the Estimated Family Contribution (EFC), or Pell Grant eligibility. However, while schools may not change the SAI formula, they may use PJ to adjust data items related to cost of attendance or data items on the FAFSA used in the need analysis to account for the costs associated with additional family members enrolled in college.” As I mentioned, this will not result in the large change to parent contribution that the prior formula did, but it’s better than nothing (for some - as always, a decrease in SAI doesn’t necessarily translate into an increase in aid). Schools that choose to make an adjustment are required by regulation to collect actual documentation of the amount parents are paying for their other kids in college, so parents need to be prepared to provide that.
I am so glad that we were proactive and negotiated in one school out of 3 my kids attend grant to be fixed for all 4 years regardless family income etc. (2 other kids have 0 FA.) We did it because we know about new FAFSA rules and school uses only FAFSA. I would loose my mind trying to predict FA for next year and risk education opportunity for my children or end up with huge loans. It is going to be a mess this year for many families and private colleges.
Oh, we did it last year before committing. I said we cannot commit without guarantee since grant was significant and with 3 kids in college family could loose it the year after with new FAFSA. They totally understood situation and guaranteed grant for all 4 years.
