<p>I just submitted my FAFSA, and my EFC was around 6500. Am I somewhat promised that i'll be paying this amount of money for school? Or is it mostly determined by the financial aid, grants, loans I would receive from the actual schools?</p>
<p>Just how accurate is it?</p>
<p>Actually all it really does is determine your eligibility for federal financial aid. With that EFC I believe the only thing you can count on is some federal loans. You may also qualify for work-study, but that will depend on your school since it’s up to individual colleges to determine how they allocate work-study.</p>
<p>The acronym “EFC” stands for Estimated Family Contribution, but it very often has little to do with the amount you’ll actually have to come up with for your college costs. The problem is that even if the FAFSA determines your family can only be expected to pay $6500, there is nothing that says a particular college has to make up the difference.</p>
<p>There are some colleges that will meet need. Sometimes they meet it with huge loans, sometimes with more reasonable loans (there are even a few that won’t make you borrow at all, but they’re usually really hard to get into … think like Harvard or Princeton), but there are many, many colleges --in fact probably most colleges-- that don’t meet the financial need of their students.</p>
<p>So the only thing the EFC is accurate for, is what sort of federal aid you might get. It won’t be much, and will likely just be loans with a maximum amount of around $5500.</p>
<p>If you can borrow that much and your family can contribute their EFC, that gets you to $12000. You may be able to get other aid from the college you attend based either on need or on merit (grades, test scores, talents, etc.) Whether it’s enough to cover your costs depends on the school you attend, on whether you live on campus or commute from home, how much you can add from summer earnings, how well you control your personal expenses, and so forth.</p>