Can scholarships be subracted from EFC?

Paying for College
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<p>I'll attempt to get this question answered by presenting my own situation. </p>

<p>My parents make a combined $125K per year. Their estimated EFC is about $20K. However, they simply can't pay that. We live on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis. Most of the money they make is spent on the house payment, utilities, and 2 car payments. We have a nice house and all, but there simply isn't much money left over.</p>

<p>Is there any way that number (20K) can be touched? Can any outside scholarships I get make any dent in it? If I go to an expensive, selective school that doesn't offer merit aid, is there any way they could afford it?</p>

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<p>At the very most generous school, your family might get need based aid as these schools award it to families with incomes in the $150 range, sometimes higher, with typical assets. If you are applying to HYPS or the like…some of these schools have students int his income range pay 10% of family income towards college costs. If I’m not mistaken, Stanford is the most generous.</p>

<p>However, in most cases, outside scholarships will reduce your need based award at the school. In other words, if you get $10,000 in outside scholarships, your need will be reduced by $10,000 (and thus your aid will be reduced by $10,000). </p>

<p>If you really have the stats for acceptance into one of those highly selective schools that offers no merit aid, you should also look for schools where you would get significant merit aid with those stats. There are schools that offer guaranteed merit awards to very high achievers without regard to financial need. There are also other schools where you would have a shot at very good aid with a separate application required.</p>

<p>The short answer to your question…it’s not likely that your family contribution will be reduced by getting outside scholarships. What will happen is your need based aid will be reduced…usually by reducing self help first (loans, work study) and then reducing grants.</p>

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<p>Can any outside scholarships I get make any dent in it? If I go to an expensive, selective school that doesn’t offer merit aid, is there any way they could afford it?</p>

<p>Not likely. It sounds like your parents can’t contribute much at all if they live “paycheck to paycheck”. That means that they have no extra money at the end of the month…so little to nothing to put towards any college costs.</p>

<p>Also, private scholarships are often small, have a need component, and only for freshman year only. So any possible dent would only work for frosh year. But again, scholarships get applied to need FIRST.</p>

<p>* Is there any way that number (20K) can be touched?*</p>

<p>If schools are going to expect your family to pay $20k then you only have a few choices…</p>

<p>1) Go to a school that costs a lot less than $20k…like commute to a local public</p>

<p>2) Use your stats to snag a huge merit scholarship from a school that will be so big that when subtracted from the “Direct School Costs” your family will not have to pay much.</p>

<p>For instance…if a school has “Direct Costs” of about $30k and you snag a scholarship for $20k, then your remaining costs are $10k. YOU could cover 5500 of that $10k with a student loan and your family would have to come up with 4500.</p>

<p>You need a careful strategy because you have a very unaffordable EFC and if your family lives “paycheck to paycheck”** then that means even coming up with 400 per month (about 5k per year) would be very difficult.** </p>

<p>1) Find out how much your parents WILL pay per year. Once you have that amount, you’ll know what you’re dealing with.</p>

<p>2) You can apply to some TOP schools, but you have to assume that you likely will be expected to pay more than your family will pay. :(</p>

<p>3) What are your stats? GPA? SAT/ACT?</p>

<p>4) Are you a NMSF? </p>

<p>I know that this is disappointing, but thankfully you’re finding this out now and not next spring when many kids discover this unhappy news and it’s too late to do much about it.</p>

<p>edited to add…</p>

<p>*Reach:
Yale
Harvard
Johns Hopkins</p>

<p>Fit:
University of Chicago</p>

<p>Safety
Rochester University (I won the Bausch and Lomb thing)
Creighton University (it’s local)</p>

<p>I need perhaps 1 or 2 more for the “Fit” column. I plan on going on to med school, so my major will be what best prepares me.
These are my stats:
SAT: 800CR 790M 720W
ACT: 35
SAT subjects: not taken yet, but I plan to take Spanish, Math II, and perhaps Physics</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>Creighton is only a safety if you know ALL costs are covered. If you can commute, does that mean that you KNOW you’ll get a full tuition scholarship there? If you’d be on campus then how would you pay for the cost?</p>

<p>And at URoch…how much is the B&L thing for? how would you cover the $20k your parents would be expected to pay?</p>

<p>If you don’t know how these costs would get covered then these can’t be safeties.</p>

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This doesn’t look right. I would recheck the inputs you used for the EFC. The EFC should be around $30-40K for that income.</p>

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<p>All good answers and agree hopefully they carefully ran that EFC calculator because $20,000 would be on the lower side for most families with income in the $125,000 range but perhaps they have no assets outside of 401ks. </p>

<p>Follow Mom2’s points. The first thing you need to do is to confirm the EFC number and to find out how much they can afford to pay per year and work from there in putting your list together. You would also be smart to have them run an institutional calculator to get an idea of how some of the privates you are looking at would view your family finances.</p>

<p>If you are planning on med school you need simply to find a school that will give you your foundational education…there is no “pred-med” major and a school you can afford, do well and give you a decent med school test score. Look for schools that are good schools and have high acceptance rates into med schools and have potential for high merit. I don’t know what part of the country you are in, but in the midwest the top producers of grad school acceptances are often not talked about tons on these forums…so do your research for your safeties and think outside the CC box. I’m sure every region has these types of slightly off the radar colleges…it was the premise of some of the chapters of the Loren Pope books.</p>

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<p>Understand that at most colleges, your 20k EFC will be converted to a number the college feels your family can pay. Most of us experience that this final number is higher than the Fafsa EFC. As noted, use the college’s Net Price Calculator- and still know that actual expectations can go up, when the school has your full fin detail in hand. </p>

<p>Also, be sure you are carefully reading any college’s fin aid pages- some package loans as part of their assistance.</p>

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<p>UAB is an excellent school for someone in sciences interested in premed. Tier one research university…Incredible research opportunities and premed advising. Excellent sic/tech honors program. Your 35ACT will get you 15K per year against total cost of attendance for an oos student of 20-24K…therefore only 5-9K left over. [url=&lt;a href=“http://www.uab.edu%5DWelcome%5B/url”&gt;http://www.uab.edu]Welcome[/url</a>]<br>
if nmf then full ride (tuition and housing )</p>

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<p>I agree with #4- EFC is generally 1/3 to 1/4 of before tax income.
Our EFC is $20 & we make less than $100,000. ( more like $80K)</p>

<p>Also generally scholarships are deducted from what the college gives in financial aid- either grants or loans.</p>

<p>This calculator is reportedly accurate for schools using the PROFILE
[Princeton</a> University | Princeton Financial Aid Estimator](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/estimator/]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/estimator/)</p>

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<p>:o $20K not $20 … I wish</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>Since Princeton gives “super aid” (similar to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford’s super aid…and maybe Williams), would it be accurate to use for other CSS schools? The other CSS schools aren’t that generous. </p>

<p>However, by using the Princeton calculator with 120k income and family of 4 with 1 in school, no savings, no assets, no student earnings/assets…</p>

<p>Your Estimated Family Contribution</p>

<p>Parents’ Contribution… $17,500
Student’s Expected Summer Contribution…1,530
Student’s Asset Contribution… 0 </p>

<hr>

<p>Total Estimated Family Contribution $19,030 for Princeton using its calculator</p>

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<p>Our EFC (via FAFSA) is $14K…we have 1 house, not a lot of assets. </p>

<p>At Penn, our parent share is $8400. DS pays $2400 from summer (which he replaced with scholarships), $3200 from work study, and rest was grants/named scholarships from Penn. No matter how many scholarships he gets, they only reduce his summer share, his work study, or his grants/scholarships from Penn, never our share. He could use a student loan (unsub) to replace part of our share if we couldn’t afford it.</p>

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<p>Thats good info- I hadn’t ever used the Princeton calculator, when older D attended a school that met 100% need & used PROFILE, the Finaid.com calc was still good, but now I hear it is outdated.</p>

<p>Our FAFSA EFC is $20K for a family of three & $80K income- I would expect our PROFILE EFC could be higher.</p>

<p>Private schools use info other than FAFSA- they may use PROFILE as well as their own forms, & outside of combing through the PROFILE forms that adcoms use ( which has been posted before) I was guessing that the Princeton calculator would give an estimate, but looks like it may be overly optimistic for any other school without the endowments of HYP.</p>

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<p>I would argue that HYPS are often substantially more generous that any other Profile school, even those just a notch down in selectivity (eg. Brown, Dartmouth, Amherst, Pomona, WUSTL). At least that’s what I’ve found from 3 years of FA comparisons with a very straightforward financial situation.</p>

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<p>OP, where did you get that estimate? 20k EFC for a $125k income sounds *very *low to me. I would expect it to be closer to 30K for the FAFSA EFC. </p>

<p>Make sure you have entered all data accurately. Things you may not be aware of can make a big difference - for instance any contributions to a retirement account are added back to income when calculating the EFC, so you need to include that information.</p>

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<p>^^^</p>

<p>He may have used a Princeton calc or a H or Y one. Those schools would have a lower “family contribution” than most other CSS schools. </p>

<p>If he got into Johns Hopkins, the expected contribution would likely be much higher…probably $30K+.</p>

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<p>Recipients of UR’s high school B&L awards are only guaranteed a $2K scholarship, although they are eligible to compete against all the other high school B&L recipients for up to a $15K max award.</p>

<p>And $15K will not come close to covering UR’s COA which is hovering around $57K.</p>

<p>UR does have its NPC on its admissions site. There is an estimator for possible merit aid as well. At UR the ONLY guaranteed big merit goes to NMFs who get $18,000.</p>

<p><a href=“http://enrollment.rochester.edu/financial/estimator/[/url]”>http://enrollment.rochester.edu/financial/estimator/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Rochester does offer 15 full tuition scholarship each year, but the competition for these are fierce and requires more than just good stats.</p>

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<p>All (or most?) schools are required to have the Net Price Calculator up this month, no?</p>

<p>And, yes, the final number can also depend on the addl questions asked by a particular college on the CSS- eg, value of cars, costs of private schools, and more.</p>

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<p>I think a big factor why Princeton formula is generous because it doesn’t include prime home equity, other CSS schools do.</p>

<p>“EFC is generally 1/3 to 1/4 of before tax income”. – it looks like a home-buying guide. But I have 30 years to pay off home loan.</p>

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<p>@lookingforward</p>

<p>This is the “Net Price Calculator” I found from CB,
[Participating</a> Schools Using College Board’s Net Price Calculator](<a href=“Net Price Calculator (NPC) - Education Professionals”>Net Price Calculator (NPC) - Education Professionals)</p>

<p>Click college name, and run calculation. But I found Net Price number is only 1/n of my EFC number (NP is very low), I did several schools and double checked my input. can’t find out why. Does anyone find NP and EFC numbers are much different?</p>

<p>PS, thank you so much for replying my other posts :)</p>

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<p>I compared the NPC for the school D2 is attending as a fr this year to their actual FA package, it was only off by a couple thousand, which I’d consider pretty good. However, that’s only 1 school’s calculator, and my financial situation is very simple (no business, etc.)</p>