<p>Hey, does anyone know how accurate the Collegeboard's EFC calculator is for federal and institutional student aid? Just curious, I was wondering more about the EFC for colleges/universities that they give. Wouldn't this number vary a lot for each institution? What kinds of universities does the collegeboard's estimate best represent? Any thoughts/knowledge/experience would be appreciated. Thanks!</p>
<p>it was 100% accurate with regards to federal methodology. my fafsa efc was the exact same as what collegeboard predicted, but for institutional… i’m not sure</p>
<p>it is pretty close if you type exact same infos. For example, my efc on collegeboard’s calculator was 57 and my real efc is 47</p>
<p>We did a forecast (pretending D was a senior) in junior year, and the EFC turned out to be within a thousand of what the actual number (with slightly different data) was in Senior year.</p>
<p>That was really helpful, and I think more families should do this as early as middle school – it really lets you get a much better understanding of the expectations from a financial aid perspective.</p>
<p>BUT, it just tells you what FAFSA will project. Selective private schools generally use CSS Profile, and for our middle-class family, the colleges using Profile generally came in $8K -12K higher than FAFSA’s EFC. (Due to home equity in our case.) But, if D had been applying to Stanford, Harvard, or a few of the other colleges with exceptional financial aid packages, we would have been in the category of paying a lot less for college than the FAFSA EFC.</p>
<p>Thanks those who replied… still curious if anyone else knows more about institutional aid.</p>
<p>So I have done the Financial Aid Forecaster on the FAFSA website. I was getting an EFC of about 3700 with my son getting a PELL GRANT of 2000 and work study of 1745. Today, I did the real FAFSA and my EFC was 7800. Do you think I did something wrong or is the Forecaster that inaccurate?</p>