<p>The College Board requires a home state when you're looking to calculate your EFC but I'm an international student. How can I bypass this?</p>
<p>Does your state even play a part in determining your EFC?</p>
<p>The EFC is something that is given to students who use the FAFSA. Once the FAFSA is completed, an EFC is computed. If you are an international student you can NOT complete the FAFSA.</p>
<p>I see.</p>
<p>Then what do colleges tend to use to calculate international students’ need?</p>
<p>You need to research your colleges. Some colleges do not provide any need based aid to international students. Some colleges provide limited need based aid to international students. Some colleges provide the same aid to international students as to others (the ones I know that do that also require the Profile). </p>
<p>I’m not sure what a FAFSA only school uses to compute need based aid, but my guess is that someone else here will know.</p>
<p>Korg, most American colleges don’t need to calculate an international student’s “need” as they don’t offer any financial aid to them. Therefore the EFC would be the full cost of attendance at that school. </p>
<p>However, there are a few exceptions, because each school establishes its own financial aid policies (and may or may not have a large endowment fund to cover scholarships). So if you do need financial aid, you’ll have to do some careful research to make sure that the schools you are applying to will provide assistance to an international student.</p>