<p>It is my understanding that cost of attendance (COA) will include most of the expenses such as tuition, room and board, books etc etc. When college gives you Financial aid, does it consider COA and then come up with FA package or financial aid is based on the tuition only? </p>
<p>How does need based FA assessed? Based on COA or based on tuition portion only?</p>
<p>Need based financial aid is based on COA. A school can have and usually does have more than one COA, by the way. Commuters do not have the same COA as those who live on campus, and some colleges break it down further after freshman year for those who live off campus but not at a parent’s home and are not commuters. </p>
<p>Though, yes, COA is used for calculating financial aid, the answer can get a bit complicated.</p>
<p>The main purpose of the COA and the reason colleges must have an official one is for federal loan and grant purposes. What the federal government permits in what it gives to students and parents in terms of loan procedes and PELL grants does depend on the COA. By federal law, you cannot get more money than your COA where federal funds are involved. </p>
<p>For a simple example, if your parents decided to borrow the entire COA for your school year, through PLUS (Direct Parent Loan), if they qualify, they can. However, that amount would be reduced by any scholarships and aid YOU the student gets. They and you cannot double, or multi dip over the COA where federal funds are involved with some exception for the PELL Grant. The amount is reported to the Federal government and is used as the maximum over the funds so released.</p>
<p>Now colleges can do what they please with their own money, but if they are using federal funds for their aid packages, they do have to be careful to integrate according to the law. </p>
<p>The way financial aid usually works is that nearly all US ad permanent resident students must complete a FAFSA for financial aid. The FAFSA come up with an Expected Family Contribution (EFC) which is for federal fund purposes and for those schools using just that form, tells them what your family is expected to pay based on the income and asset info on that form. It guarantees those eligible for PELL grants (those with the lowest EFCs) and allows for Stafford Loans for the student and PLUS for the parents (if parents pass the credit check) up to COA amounts. $5500 is the max for freshmen with $3500 subsidized if the need component is met, and $4K more unsubsidized if a parent is turned down for PELL. That is all that is guaranteed by the feds.</p>
<p>School also may have Perkins, SEOG and work study funds that are also federally backed, but they do requires the schools to “buy into” them, so they are limited and each school decides how to distribute them But when distributed, they have to go by the federal guidelines in terms of need and COA as well. There may also be State money in the mix and of course, the schools own funds.</p>
<p>There are some colleges that will require a supplement to FAFSA or a PROFILE to be filed to get any of their funds or the discretionary federal funds. PROFILE schools as a group tend to meet a larger percentage of a student’s need. They also take more things into consideration and the contribution expected from the family is usually, though not always, more than the FAFSA EFC. That is because home equity is usually taken into account, and often NCP info and family owned businesses are assessed differently. You get your federal entitlelments according to your FAFSA EFC, then your other awards according to the school’s own calculations is how it works when a school uses info more than the FAFSA EFC to give out awards.</p>
<p>SO what you get is an EFC, Expected Family Contribution, from the FAFSA form that tells you what your family is expected to pay for college. Any college. If your EFC is $10K, that is what federal methodology says you can afford to pay regardless of what schools you are examining. That is the COA your family can afford according to the FAFSA. Getting a school to fund that is a whole other issue, however. They can fund more or less, as they please. but for federal money, your family has to come up with that $10K, so that pretty much represents the minimum you will have to pay without giving up federal monies or getting merit awards to cover most of your COA. </p>
<p>Be aware that is is rare unless you are looking at local state commuter schools to just have to pay your EFC or less.</p>