My husband did both my and our son’s FAFSA today, and the initial emails we got show a ridiculous EFC. I am hoping he made some big mistake that is fixable. We do not have a lot of money, our AGI is about 55k and no crazy assets or anything, yet my EFC is 19208 and our son’s is 42117. Clearly, this is nowhere near an amount we can afford. We made about the same last year and my 18-19 EFC was 1301. I received enough grant money to pay for all of my community college tuition for the year. How difficult is this to correct and how long will it take? He is supposed to have his early action application done by November 1, including FAFSA.
Those EFCs on a $55k salary are most likely wrong.
- Did he put parents' income in student section?
- Did you have an IRA/401k rollover in that tax year?
- Did he put a decimal point in the wrong place?
Your son should keep completing applications and try to fix the FAFSA as soon as possible.
Did you use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool to input your information from your 2017 tax return?
Agree with above poster.
- Did you parents do a IRA or TSA rollover in 2017?
- Did you put the parent income in the student section also? It only goes on ONE place.
- I think if you put the numbers in yourself, you can see the actual figures and can see if there is n extra 0 (for example making $1000 into $10000). Or a misplaced decimal point.
- Did you put the balances in your retirement accounts in as assets?
Check…and check again.
Yes we did the retrieval tool and had a 90k rollover, did that somehow count as income possibly? Certainly sounds like that may be the problem. Do we fix this with fafsa or the individual schools?
There is a specific question on the FAFSA that asks about Rollovers. In addition, there is a box you need to check.
You aren’t the first one to miss it.
I believe the college financial aid department has to fix it. You will need to show them proof that this was indeed a rollover…because…yes…it was included as income.
Call the ED college tomorrow!
I’m pretty sure that I corrected my daughter’s FAFSA myself two years ago because I kept making mistakes. The only problem was that it took a few days for the correction to be confirmed.
You can correct lots of things on the FAFSA, but unless something has changed, this rollover thing is NOT one of them.
But the OP should check to see.
Once the FAFSA processes, he or she can go into that FAFSA and see if they can make this change…and resubmit.
@kelsmom can this be corrected by the person who submits the FAFSA? They forgot to indicate that $90,000 was a Rollover!
You “might” be able to go back & indicate that it was a rollover (although I am not sure if you can). No matter what, though, you need to contact the school to let them know you had a rollover & ask what documentation they need so the rollover amount can be documented. You cannot remove the rollover amount yourself.