<p>As I posted before, a relative of mine took out a 529 account for benefit of my child. The 529 has about $25K in it.</p>
<p>Will colleges assume that the entire amount of this 529 be paid out to cover as much as possible of the first year tuition, or will they assume that that total amount is to be paid out over the four years of college?</p>
<p>I recognize that I am asking this in an awkward way, but I just don't understand how this works!!</p>
<p>I should say that my relative plans to continue to put a few hundred dollars a month into the fund in the coming years, and my kid is a high school senior planning to go to college next year.</p>
<p>My impression is that they just work out the formula for this year's EFC, then when you apply next year your EFC is redetermined all over again, so it doesn't matter what they assume...</p>
<p>It's considered a parental asset and assessed that about 5% is available for college. If it's owned by a non-parent, I'm not quite sure how it's reported.</p>
<p>Thanks, everyone. The difficulty is that we also have a kid in a private school (middle school) and have to fill out the Princeton forms for financial aid for <em>that</em> school. (We plan to keep our younger one in that private school for one more year, until she graduates from 8th grade. We have received financial aid for this school every year since kindergarten.) The Princeton forms ask how much $$ each of our kids will get for tuition help from relatives and "other sources" for next year. We realize we need to claim the 529, but don't know if we are obligated/supposed to fill in the entire amount of that 529 as "money coming from another source."</p>