<p>This item asks:</p>
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Enter the amount your parents think they will be able to pay for your 2011-12 college expenses.
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<p>the detailed instructions state
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Give the best estimate of the amount of money that your parents plan to pay toward your 2011-12 college expenses from income and assets. College expenses include tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board, transportation, and personal expenses. Don't include contributions from your noncustodial parent or amounts your parents plan to borrow.
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<p>The suggestion in Kalman A Chany's "Paying for College Without Going Broke" book is to use the forms in the back of his book to compute your Institutional Methodology expected parental contribution, and then take 20% off of that.</p>
<p>However, I do not think that we can realistically cover even 80% of the IM expected contribution <em>without borrowing</em>. Should I put down what I really think we can pay out of income and assets? Should I count money we might borrow against assets (i.e. HELOC or loan from retirement funds)?</p>
<p>I know there is a disadvantage to putting a number here that is too high -- is there a disadvantage also to putting a number that is too low (you look greedy?) </p>
<p>What if a school's particular methodology (based on a calculator on their website) produces a lower number than IM calculator on finaid.org?</p>
<p>(Yes, we have 2 financial safeties where my son has already been offered admission, that we can afford without need-based aid as long as my son advances from NMSF to NMF which we absolutely expect that he will.)</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any insights on this item!</p>
<p>I think this is a dumb question. We put down 10k, our EFC was 32k. I don’t see how the number is useful. If you can afford the entire COA why would you be doing FA forms? If you can’t afford it, why wouldn’t you put the lowest number in the box that would make it easy to pay. I would put a low number. What is the worst thing that is going to happen? They are going to tell you that you need to pay more, that’s my take on it anyways</p>
<p>I put our FAFSA EFC, but I agree with splat11. Just put down what you honestly think you can pay without borrowing. School’s aren’t going to be so subjective in their aid policies that “looking greedy” will be a factor. Need-based aid awards are computed according to a school’s policies. The place where more subjective considerations come into play is during the appeals process when a family asks for another look at their circumstances.</p>
<p>Yes I also agree it’s a “dumb” question. I used our FAFSA EFC number.</p>
<p>If you’ll need to borrow to meet your EFC, it seems perfectly legit to do as the instructions say and only put down the amount that you’ll be able to come up with out of pocket, keeping in mind of course that your household expenses WILL decrease somewhat with a kid out of the house – fewer lights left on, fewer gallons of milk guzzled out of the fridge, fewer looooooong showers being taken, no more music lessons, or weekends (or weeks) spent in hotels for sports tournaments or other competitions, lots fewer miles put on the cars, etc, etc.</p>
<p>It IS a dumb question, and I really wonder what the point of it is.</p>
<p>I wonder if the only purpose for that question is to find out if parents might be willing to pay more than the college determines they can pay. If you put a low figure, it’s not like they increase your aid based on that, but if you put a high figure would they think, “Hmm… these folks think they can pay more, let’s let them!” :)</p>
<p>Thanks all. I was just curious why Chany’s book said to put IM EFC minus 20% instead of something like “don’t put anything <em>higher</em> than IM EFC minus 20%”</p>
<p>Maybe it’s so they know they can try to “sell” you parent loans when they tell you how much more than that you need to actually come up with ;-)</p>
<p>'rentof2…that was my thinking…if they even look at that question. I figured that the least amount someone would be asked to pay is the EFC, the EFC is documented through the FAFSA and it was a “safe” number even if we could afford a few thousand more. Now if you can’t afford your EFC that is another issue.</p>
<p>Using some of the calculators our IM contribution comes out to LESS than our FAFSA EFC. I don’t know enough about the differences between the methodologies to know why, exactly, that would be the case. But we don’t have much equity in our home, so that may be one factor in not making the IM contribution MORE at least.</p>