<p>When colleges want to find out about your financial aid do they just look at your EFC or do they look at your entire fafsa like income, etc..</p>
<p>At FAFSA only colleges they use your EFC. For the 300 colleges that use the CSS Profile or other schools that have their own FA forms, they look at more.</p>
<p>You should not assume that the EFC is all you’ll have to pay. Most schools do not “meet need” meaning that you may have to come up with money in addition to the EFC.</p>
<p>A better name for it would be the Minimum Family Contribution.</p>
<p>For federally funded need based aid, the colleges look at the FAFSA EFC. However, there are many FAFSA only schools that also disburse their own institutional aid based on information provided on the FAFSA. Honestly, there is no way to know whether they use the EFC only or if they use the information FROM the FAFSA to figure out how much of their own money to dole out.</p>