Hello,
I recently completed the FASFA and our Estimated Expected Family Contribution (EFC) is 865000. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t qualify for need based aid but correct me if I’m wrong…
My main question is if it doesn’t qualify for aid is there any point in sending the FASFA to colleges or no? Thanks
Did you mean $86,500??
You would need pretty large incomes/assets for that fafsa EFC, so consult with your adults. Normally an adult who would produce this EFC would not have you fill in the FAFSA for giggles, only for mandatory merit requirements,. and it would be unlikely you would have access to all the financial information that would spit out that number. Did you ask for information from your people or is it a guesstimate? What documents did you use? You have access to their brokerage and retirement accounts? Real estate investments etc?
You would need to have millions of dollars on income a year for that EFC and likely many millions of dollars in assets.
Are you sure you entered the fafsa info correctly?
Are your parents THAT wealthy?
@jnkam24 No 865,000 is what it says in the email
Once more…are your parents THAT wealthy? If they earn millions of dollars a year…and own millions of dollars in real estate…your EFC could be that high.
If not…you made a mistake someplace on the fafsa.
@thumper1 My parents don’t tell me exactly how much they make but I know their AGI is 1M+ and they own multiple properties to rent out
In order to have that EFC your parents would have to earn millions and millions of dollars per year and have millions in assets. Are your parents that wealthy or did they make a mistake?
@twogirls My parents don’t tell me exactly how much they make but I know their AGI is 1M+ and they own multiple properties to rent out. They filled it out by uploading a tax return so not sure how it can be wrong
You won’t get any need based aid…at all. You are right about that. And that is for ALL colleges.
Unless you want to take out a federally funded student loan in your name only…there is no reason for you to submit a FAFSA form.
Since your parent income is that high…aand you have indicated on other threads that you won’t be needing any financial aid at all…you don’t need to submit a FAFSA.
@thumper1 Do I need to submit a FAFSA to be eligible for merit aid?
Need based aid is futile in your case.
“is there any point in sending the FASFA to colleges”
IMHO, no. You do not need to submit a FAFSA to get merit aid.
A small number of colleges do require a FAFSA be submitted for merit aid consideration. You would have to contact YOUR college list to see if that applies to those colleges.
Are you still looking at out of state public universities? Or are you looking in CA now as well?
@thumper1 UC/CSU Applications have already been submitted. I applied to a lot of schools I had interest in to give myself more options, both in and out of CA
And really, parents in this kind of financial ballpark would normally have passed some financial awareness to their offspring. These kinds of parents don’t willingly fill in FAFSA. Did they fill it in? Either way, they would not want you posting this on social media. It takes some really big numbers to get to that EFC.
@Sybylla I would I’m pretty good with finances as I grew up trading bitcoin but regarding my parents’ income Asian parents in general don’t tell their kids. As for the FAFSA I just told my parents to fill out what was required as it might qualify me for merit aid and they simply uploaded their tax returns.
Since they presumably are in or near plutocrat-level income and/or wealth to have a FAFSA EFC of $865,000, the list price of expensive college is probably pocket change in comparison, and applying for need-based aid is pointless. If you still want to go for merit scholarships, you can check if the colleges with those scholarships want to see FAFSA for merit scholarship consideration.
My daughter’s school required filing the FAFSA in order to claim her merit award. We did not fill it out or file until after she had decided which school to attend. Her school requires the CSS for need based aid, and we never filed that.
What do you mean by “they uploaded their tax returns”? There would only be one tax return uploaded for your parents.
And one for you if you had income and filed a tax return.
@mommdc As in they could have either entered in all the info manually or uploaded their tax returns from 2016. And yes it was only one as they file taxes jointly. Sorry for the confusion. Also, I didn’t pay taxes as my income was well below the threshold (only a couple hundred dollars)