<p>I have a daughter in college at our state flagship scheduled to graduate in May '14. She will be in her 4th year. However, she is in a program where she takes grad school classes as well as undergrad classes and will be getting both undergrad and master's degrees in May. Her school has corrected her FAFSA designating her as independent because she is taking the grad school classes. This came as quite a surprise to me because I have another daughter in school and planned to claim 2 students in college on both FAFSA's thus splitting our EFC. The other daughter received a need/merit based scholarship based on this info.</p>
<p>I have already called the FA office (twice) and they say this is how it's done and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm appealing to you, the experts, here. Is this really correct? Since I'm still paying for undergrad classes, it's hard to believe I can't get credit for her still being an undergrad student. While she has been assigned an EFC of 0 doesn't that mean only loans will be offered since she is a "grad student"? She has only one small student loan because we have been paying almost everything as she went. Thank you in advance.</p>
<p>This issue goes into a gray area. First of all colleges have their own rules about what they consider undergrad courses in dual major programs and how the fund the graduate portion. That’s really up to them. You can talk to the department chairman and others who run the program and ask what advice they can give. Financial aid has the bean counters and they are not likely to be of any help here.</p>
<p>As for the FAFSA for your other student, there has also been differences in opinion as to how a grad student even in straight out grad programs should be classified on the form, and considered by a school. Some schools say that they will count the student as a dependent, but fall short at splitting that EFC in half. Some might do so. I would go with the two in college and see how it floats, but if your second DD’s school calls for verification and it turns out that such verification spells out that this is a graduate program,what happens next is up in the air.</p>
<p>My school used to have a 2/5 UG/med school program. The student basically went to the med school after sophomore year, but was not given the UG degree until after the third year. After that point it was all med school in terms of costs and classification.</p>