As far as I know student earnings are assessed at 50% over like $6 k, student savings at 20%.
If the OP’s daughter makes $12 k a year, her student contribution would be about $3 k.
If she saves $10 k of her earnings, $2 k of that would be added to that for a total of $5 k.
Her pay is pretty good for freelancing, I assume she also enjoys this job?
I agree to run the net price calculators, the parent income and assets alone might already disqualify you from any FA.
The parent asset protection allowance amount (for non retirement savings) is supposed to be drastically reduced next year, to the tune of a family of 5 with $75 k income APA going from over $30 k to $6 k.
Just remember as well that car insurance tends to be higher on a new car than older car, especially with a young driver.
The above numbers are for FAFSA calculation, private schools might use their own formula, and usually include primary home equity in their calculation.
There are many reasons a college may require a FAFSA for merit aid recipients. My daughter is on a full ride merit scholarship at a private college in Georgia. They require FAFSA each year because there are state-funded benefits (HOPE Scholarship) they want to ensure students receive.
My daughter receives $2,000/year HOPE Scholarship from the state (merit-based also, based on at least 3.0 GPA) and the school is able to deduct $2000/year from her scholarship as a result. With about 200 students on merit scholarships, the college is able to save as much as $400,000/year by requiring students to submit the FAFSA and obtain the state scholarships.
^ To add to @BobWallace my older D had to file FAFSA in order to get her schools merit aid only NMF scholarship. In that case, I believe, it was so students who were entitled to get some federal aid would get it. Since we weren’t Pell eligible we didn’t have to file beyond freshman year.
<<<
Any portion of student earnings that is work study is excluded from income for FAFSA EFC calculation.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
Very true. however, I don’t think @ohiovalley16 's student qualifies for Work Study.
And, the OP’s DD earns her $1k per month in some sort of business.
[QUOTE=""]
that's 4K saved, not "grossing" 12K per year.
[/QUOTE]
OP- help us with the math.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
@blossom
It’s getting confusing since there are 2 parents posting about their DD’s and their earnings.
The OP’s DD earns $1k per month, $12k per year. @ohiovalley16 's DD earns a lot less.
@mom2collegekids The ohiovalley16 parent added her own questions to my post. That is why everyone gets confused here. My DD earns 1K per month freelancing and she plans to continue in college. She would need to earn more while in college to help us with the bill if she gets into the lottery school. That is why I was planning to file FAFSA so she can get WS. I did not realize the need component of WS.
We filed FAFSA this year although our family income was well above the point at which D would have qualified for financial aid. It is not true that the vast majority of colleges are need blind. In order to be truly need blind, a college needs to either not give much in the way of financial aid or have an endowment so high that they can afford major swings in the percentage of students being awarded financial aid. Many of the top 50 colleges in the US with endowments well over $500K/student are need blind but below this few are need blind. In hindisght, since we knew we would not qualify for finanical aid I wonder if we would have been better off being obviously full pay. If you do complete the FAFSA it is probably a good idea to list the colleges in alphabetical order so that colleges cannot read into the FAFSA some perceived ranking on the student’s part.
Ballerina- unless your D ends up on a tiny, rural campus you should not sweat too much about her being unable to find a non-work/study job. My kids were all in cities; none qualified for WS, all had many opportunities for paid employment beginning Freshman year. The jobs ranged from well paid and interesting (editing a professor’s book; fact-checking/organizing and verifying citations for appendices; creating a catalog for a university museum art exhibit, doing a statistical study for a longitudinal research project) to “slightly better than minimum wage”, i.e. library help desk; housing office “grunt”.
I don’t think they ever felt “shut out” of good work opportunities. Big city colleges are complicated places which require an enormous amount of labor to run- archives, museums, research institutes, hospitals, affiliated think-tanks, plus the day-to-day of food service, alumni relations, athletics, etc. I remember tutoring middle school kids when I was in college- none of my kids had to resort to that, although those gigs can pay very well.
Need blind for admissions- this means the school does not consider the student ability to pay when looking at their application. The VAST majority of schools are need blind for admissions. Admissions has NO IDEA what the applicant’s ability to pay is when reviewing the admissions application. This is an admissions term and has nothing to do with financial aid.
Meets Full Need for All Accepted Students- these are the schools that have the huge endowments and can afford to meet the need of all accepted students. This is a need based financial aid term, and has nothing to do with admissions.
There are:
Schools that are need blind for admissions AND meet full need for all.
Schools that are need blind for admissions but do NOT guarantee to meet full need.
Schools that are need aware but do meet the full need of all those students they do accept. In other words, if they can't meet your need, you won't get accepted.
Schools that are need aware and do not meet full need for all.
And remember, that the schools that meet 100 % of need, can use work study, and loans as well as grants to do so.
Although if you dont qualify for need based aid, that might give your student a bump in admission at a need aware school.
<<<
. My DD earns 1K per month freelancing and she plans to continue in college. She would need to earn more while in college to help us with the bill if she gets into the lottery school. That is why I was planning to file FAFSA so she can get WS. I did not realize the need component of WS.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
Yes, because a portion (half?) of the salary for work-study is paid by the fed gov’t, there has to be “need” according the federal formula to qualify.
We never submitted FAFSA, but my kids had campus jobs while in college. The jobs weren’t WS, but the jobs enabled them to earn some “pocket money.” They each worked about 8 hours a week. However, neither of them worked their Fall Frosh semester (wanted them to “adjust” to college), and S2 only worked 2 hours a week during the two semesters that he took OChem (he was premed and needed As).
I don’t know how much time your DD spends each month earning the $12k per year. You’re saying that she’d need to earn more than that if she gets into a “lottery school”. I think your DD wants an Eng’g major. That is going to very time-consuming…likely more than high school. Your DD may not realize that and she may think she’ll have time to earn more than $12k per year. But…what if she can’t? If she gets into her lottery school and believes that she can earn more than $12k per year, but finds that college level work is so demanding that she can’t, what then?
@mom2collegekids it is a good question. I don’t know. She works 15 hours per week now and maintains all AP classes schedule. Why didn’t you submitted FAFSA? This is something I am trying to determine: forms that need to be filled and the ones that are not applicable in our situation.
We didn’t file because we knew that we wouldn’t qualify, even with 2 in school at the same time. None of their merit scholarships required the submission of FASFA. So, why bother?
However, if you want your DD to take out unsub loans, then you have to file FAFSA.
[QUOTE=""]
She works 15 hours per week now and maintains all AP classes schedule.
[/QUOTE]
My eng’g son was also able to do that in high school (work, AP classes, straight As). However, as an eng’g major, he would not have been able to work 15 hours a week, get As, and have a minimal of a social life. He graduated from college with a 3.99 GPA (one A-), but he felt that he “had to” because of the med school app process.
One, we knew we wouldn’t qualify for need-based aid, and two, we weren’t comfortable disclosing our financials to our son. Therefore, the FAFSA-requiring merit schools got dropped from DS’s list.