<p>it's useless if you have a high EFC, and it takes way to much time to basically be told you make to much for government help but not enough to pay for it completely.</p>
<p>Is this true because my parents are trying to figure it out</p>
<p>If you have a high EFC it will still qualify you for unsubsidized loans.</p>
<p>If you have no intention of taking out any loans (and won’t need to take out any loans), then there probably isn’t a reason to do a FAFSA if your income is too high and your EFC is too high. We’ve never done a FAFSA ( I don’t even know what the form looks like).</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Actually, there are some colleges who will not consider you for merit aid unless you complete FAFSA. Also, if you don’t complete it the first year, you may not be eligible for aid later if your financial circumstances change.</p>
<p>Once you gather up the basic documents, completing FAFSA is not that burdensome. And as hmom points out, it will qualify you for unsub Staffords if nothing else. There’s no reason NOT to do it.</p>
<p>As LasMa said, many colleges do require you to fill it out to receive any merit aid. It can seem like an overwhelming task, but if you take it step by step, it isn’t bad. And after the first year, it saves your information, so the next year you only have to fill in things that changed.</p>
<p>Put it this way: if it takes 5 hours and you get a $10,000 aid offer, do you think it was worth $2,000 per hour? Actually over four years that would be $8000 per hour. </p>
<p>Tell you parents that if you have to write the essays, they have to fill out the fafsa. There is no reasonable excuse for not doing it.</p>
<p>You also should sit down with your parents and run some of the FAFSA and CSS Profile calculators. There are good ones at [College</a> Calculators - savings calculators - college costs, loans](<a href=“http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/401.html]College”>How Much Will College Cost – BigFuture | College Board) and you can find others elsewhere on the web including at [FinAid</a>! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org%5DFinAid”>http://www.finaid.org)</p>
<p>Talk with your parents about how much money they actually do indeed truly have available for your education, and how much money they expect you to come up with personally through loans and/or work. Help your parents create a login here, and have them spend some time in the Financial Aid and Parents Forums. They will get lots of ideas there.</p>
<p>Wishing you and your parents all the best!</p>
<p>lynxinsider, we thought of it that way too – an hourly rate. Except that it takes more like one hour, which makes the rate even better!</p>
<p>Well we already know our ERC and have an EFC of 42K so many people have told us its pointless to put the effort in because all well get is loans, and were NOT doing loans. </p>
<p>So yeah, I don’t know…</p>
<p>That EFC is not out of the question. Ours was not that much below and still got some need based money. Plus, as mentioned above, you may need to file it to receive merit money. Do it anyway.</p>
<p>Ha, my grades aren’t good enough for merit aid… but
Ill tell them this</p>
<p>I have also never bothered with FAFSA with 3 kids because we could see no value for our family given the schools our kids were interested in and other factors. But if my EFC was in the 40’s, I would file it. That situation could change from year to year and some schools will give you something with that EFC. Many merit aid schools will discount at that EFC level knowing many there will choose a state school if they don’t get their price closer.</p>
<p>Make sure that your state doesn’t have a lottery scholarship or other entitlement aid program. If it does, you are likely required to file FAFSA to be eligible for it. </p>
<p>Also, how do you know your EFC if you haven’t filed FAFSA? If it’s an estimate someone has given you, I wouldn’t trust it as far as I could throw it. The federal methodology for estimating EFC changes every year and frankly can’t be accurately calculated without all the information that FAFSA requires.</p>
<p>If you don’t file it you will likely be leaving money on the table.</p>
<p>Like i stated before, we are NOT doing loans.</p>
<p>Okay, well it was an admissions counselor at my father’s university that did it for us, he said its likely around there or higher.</p>
<p>Well…</p>
<p>If you’re not doing loans</p>
<p>If your EFC is too high</p>
<p>If you’re not applying for merit that needs FAFSA</p>
<p>If your parents’ income is stable</p>
<p>If your state doesn’t require it for some tuition program…</p>
<p>Then, don’t bother.</p>
<p>Why would my state require it, if im not applying to a school here?</p>
<p>You should always fill out a FAFSA. I don’t know where people are getting this idea that it takes forever. It takes about 15-30 minutes if you have all of the information in front of you. Spend the half hour it’ll take you to find all those papers and the other half hour filling out the form.</p>
<p>The FAFSA isn’t just used by the government to determine your federal aid; it’s also used by the vast majority of institutions to determine institutional aid (the ones that don’t ask for the CSS PROFILE).</p>
<p>Honestly, it takes far less time to complete the FAFSA than it takes to sit down and do all of these EFC calculators and post on CC and wait for answers :)</p>
<p>Also, you keep saying that you are NOT doing loans. You don’t know if you are NOT doing loans because you’re not even through college yet. If you don’t have to take out loans that’s great, but things happen and it’s possible that you’ll need them. I thought I wasn’t going to need any loans either.</p>
<p>We had a similar EFC this year. DD still got some aid that required the FAFSA including federal work study…which is only awarded to students completing the FAFSA.</p>
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<p>Yeah, I don’t get that. The FAFSA is quite easy to fill out; my son and I did it together. The CSS/Profile took a little longer, but it wasn’t onerous, either. People talk about these forms as though it takes hours! It just doesn’t. Easily done in an evening, with plenty of time left over for watching TV, baking, and annoying your kids/parents. They are just not that hard!</p>
<p>Agree with Juliet and Owlice. I can never understand why people carry on as if filling out FAFSA is some onerous difficult time consuming task. It takes us less than half an hour. The most time consuming prep part is calculating the value of assets - not because we have a lot $ wise (unfortunately!) but because we have several small items that have to be valued (some savings bonds, a little in stocks, bank accounts etc). And even that does not take that long with the internet to help us look up todays values.Everything else is either from tax forms or personal info. And after the 1st FAFSA the personal info from the previous year can be automatically carried forward. For most people it should not be that difficult a task.</p>