http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19865041#Comment_19865041
I wonder where is the article that the OP wrote regarding her earlier inquiry.
Your EFC cannot be “miscalculated.” You can screw up by putting in the wrong info, but that’s your fault- not the form’s.
No to all of the questions.
Since I am a male and the post is explicitly requesting input from women, my answer can be ignored!
Financial Aid letters are excellent sources of information for parents, especially when they are addressed to the kids telling them how much their parents need to pay, some times every dollar.
Some of them are misnomers because they are called aid letters but every dollar in aid is part of a loan.
The generous aid decreasing should be a standard phenomena under the following conditions since they impact EFC:
- Parental income goes up (the aid has to be reapplied for each year).
- Family conditions change - you might be second or third concurrent kid in college and suddenly there is no one in college other than you.
Loan counseling from who?
OP: An EFC cannot be “miscalculated.” That’s a false premise. The EFC is what the federal govt. says it is. A formula is applied to the info students provide. Of course if they provide inaccurate info, the EFC will be inaccurate. Garbage in, garbage out. If you, in your article, put forth the notion that an EFC can be “miscalculated,” that’s just wrong and bad journalism.
After getting students’ stories are you going to ask for response from the colleges? I do think there’s an attempt to mislead in the case of some for-profit colleges. But by and large, the issues you lay out above result from a less-than-adequate understanding of the process.
I agree with most of the previous posters that a well informed person should understand EFC/loans, etc, but it frustrated the heck out of me while visiting some colleges this summer with my D, and attending the admissions dog and pony show to hear admissions tell parents, yes they meet need of all admitted students, without telling the parents, “we determine your need” and “it may include loans”. I can’t tell you how many parents I overheard talking who obviously did not get it.
Yes and no.
There is one given EFC from FAFSA. The schools almost always recalculate based on their own guidelines which tends fall completely outside of the FAFSA one. Some schools want you to contribute equity from your home or even parts of your retirement while FAFSA EFC usually leaves those out.
For primary residence equity and qualified retirement accounts, FAFSA always leaves those out.
^ Right. Ultimately for a student the ruling EFC is from school and I have seen schools come up with those very close to FAFSA one while there were others who came up with outrageous numbers which can only mean they are counting other stuff in based on your supposedly protected assets.
The FAFSA EFC is the same regardless of which school. No variability.
However, that does not necessarily correlate with the amount of need based aid you will receive FROM THE COLLEGE.
Schools that don’t meet full need, and use the FAFSA only to determine the awarding of need based aid can do whatever they want with that info on the FAFSA in terms of awarding institutional need based aid. @texaspg that is why you see a variety of need based offers based on the FAFSA. The schools can award institutional need based aid in any fashion they choose…using any formula they choose.
In terms of federally funded Pell Grant, this won’t change regardless of the college.
Schools that use the CSS profile have lots of additional information they can choose to use in their institutional EFC calculations.
Yes…Profile schools have a lot of additional info they look at…and the Profile does ask the equity amount in the primary residence, for example. Schools use this amount in varying ways,
Non-custodial parent income also is NOT reported on the FAFSA…but many Profile,schools DO require the non-custodial Parent Profile…and do include that financial info in their calculations.
But this is getting far away from the OP’s initial questions for their article.
EFC is a Fafsa term. Each school can do whatever they want with a given EFC.
Your EFC can’t be miscalculated. It may not be what you think it is. It may not be what you expected it to be. It may not be what you want it to be. But it can’t be “miscalculated.”
Many schools also calculate their own EFC (yes, they call it the same thing) for the purpose of distributing institutional aid. So very often the same student will have two different EFCs for the same school – a FAFSA EFC and a school-calculated EFC.
Absolutely correct. The FAFSA EFC is really for determining eligibility for federally funded need based aid.
Your FAFSA EFC might be $1000, but that doesn’t mean that college will only cost you $1000.
Most schools using the FAFSA only do not meet full need…so the school could very well calculate YOUR family contribution to be a LOT more than that…and most do.
Even if the school calls it EFC (which I’ve never seen but I’m not doubting it exists), I still very much doubt that the institutional aid can be “miscalculated.”
It may not be as high as you want but that doesn’t mean something went wrong with the formula.
Why would a woman’s magazine set out to write an article to blame financial aid offices for what may very well be misunderstandings on the part of the families? As a broadcaster, I find these questions extremely leading. The magazine needs to follow up with the financial aid office of each student who responds to the interview if they hope to have a balanced article. And I’m not sure the FA offices will be able to respond unless the students sign a waiver.
This is how I would have phrased the questions:
- How much grant aid did your award letter say you would receive? How much did you actually get?
- What was the net cost listed in your award letter? What was the actual net cost?
- Did your circumstances change between the time your award letter was issued and when you received aid? If so, how?
- Was your family selected for verification?
- If there was a gap between the cost of attendance and the amount of grant aid you were awarded, how did you plan to make it up? How did you actually end up paying for it?
- If you took loans, what kinds did you take and how much did you borrow? Did you consider other alternatives (gap year, community college, less expensive school...)?
cont…
- What was your FAFSA EFC? Did the amount of Pell you received reflect the FAFSA EFC?
- Did you have to file a CSS Profile? What was the amount of the parental contribution listed in your award letter? How much was the parental contribution in your final bill?
- Did the information you submitted on the original FAFSA and/or CSS Profile application change after you filed? If so, how?
- If you believe the FAFSA EFC was miscalculated, what led you to that conclusion? Did you apply the federal formula to your financial data to calculate your EFC? What were the results?
- Do you believe the parent contribution calculated by your college was accurate? If not, did you apply their formula to your finances to calculate your contribution? What were the results?
Because it’s human nature to want to blame others, especially when the person most responsible can be found in the mirror.
cont…
- Did your grant aid change in subsequent years? If so, how much did it change?
- Was there a specific GPA you had to meet to keep the aid? If so, did you meet it?
- Did you meet the Satisfactory Academic Progress required to keep your aid?
- Were you registered in enough credits to count as a full-time student so you could qualify for full-time aid?