<p>You know that CSS question # SR-160, the one that asks how much your parents would likely pay for your education in 2013-2014? It's haunting me.</p>
<p>My child has landed on waitlists at need-aware schools and now I'm afraid I put down too low a number. I saved up funds to pay for school but am now unemployed and though I can probably pay most of the bill for at least a couple of years, I entered a middle-of-the-road number for SR-160.</p>
<p>If a college sees a lower number on SR-160, but sees the parents are able to pay more, do they go ahead with their admissions decision and note a higher EFC, or would they adjust their admissions decision (i.e. move student to waitlist) thinking that the parents are unwilling to fund the difference? We of course would find a way to fund the difference.</p>
<p>I doubt it was considered at all. I don’t think they care what someone puts for that question. Need based aid is based on what the school thinks you can pay based on your income and assets. They don’t care what you think you can pay.</p>
<p>I like to think that it didn’t make any difference, and with my head I believe it to be true. But with my heart, I wonder… DS applied ED to a “need aware” admission school, and was rejected. Was it the number I put on SR-160? I wonder now because, as it turns out, I will be paying about $10,000 more per year. The change was the result of a combination of my own learning curve - and progress through the “seven stages of financial aid” - and financial decision-making around what my only child’s success was really worth.</p>
<p>onesonmom - NO. As others have said, it wouldn’t have made any difference.</p>
<p>I suspect this number matters only when a family states that it is able to pay MORE than what would be expected . . . due to a contribution from a relative, family friend, or whatever. Otherwise, no one is going to look at it.</p>
<p>No one knows whether it mattered or not. But unless you have some secret stash somewhere that would have made a huge difference, how would you have come up with the money if asked? </p>
<p>Fwiw, I’ve been told that ED students often get full need met and are admitted on a need blind basis even at school that do neither on a RD basis. These are the students that the college wants to lock in, and for a base for the rest of the admissions.</p>
- and financial decision-making around what my only child’s success was really worth.</p>