EFC didn't decrease with 2 kids in college!?

Paying for College
1

Oldest daughter, 19, is a freshman at Holy Cross. Our EFC for 2018-2019 was 52K
Did 2019-2020 FAFSA last night. Will have 2 in college next fall. Same income, no changes to financial situation (except we used up all of 19yo’s college fund which I thought would decrease our EFC)

Each FAFSA lists EFC as 42K. So that is per kid?
If that is true our EFC increased from 52K to 84K despite adding an additional student. Does this sound correct? I double checked all the numbers and even looked over last years FAFSA to see if there were errors there. Everything is accurate (assuming the IRS didn’t make mistakes in transferring info from our 1040…)

Working on the CSS Profile now. I did run some NPC’s at colleges my high school senior is looking at and they say EFC would be closer to 32K per student.

I’m a little panicky.

Thanks!
Jennifer

2

Did you have an IRA/401K rollover? There is place to indicate on Fafsa forms, but easy to miss, then shows up as additional income.

3

The FAFSA is per student. If your EFC for one was $52k, then for 2 it would be $104k. If it’s $84k, it’s dropped $18k (or $9k/student).

4

Your family contribution at HC would be 60% not 50%.

But for fafsa, yes…did you go an IRA or TSA rollover in 2017?

5

I thought if it was 52K for one student last year, for the two students this year it would be 26K each. Our income didn’t double.

6

No, no rollovers.
I thought if we were at 52K for one kid, then it would be 26K each for two kids with no changes in income.

7

Are you sure that you indicated in EACH FAFSA that there would be TWO in college?

Please review and make sure that on each FAFSA you listed that there will be two in college.

You may have just retrieved last year’s info into this year’s FAFSA and when info populated into the form, the number 1 for number of kids in college may have been put in.

8

And are you sure on last year’s FAFSA (not the HC result), the EFC was $52k??? Are you sure that was the FAFSA result last year? Are you sure that wasn’t the amount that HC told you to pay (which is a different scenario.

9

Yes, per kid.

But, you mention a college fund for Child#1…is there a college fund for Child #2??? Was that listed in last year’s FAFSA as well? Or was it only listed this year?

10

With a total EFC of $84k, assuming minimal assets, is your income about $225k+

11

But back to the comments about HC. HC is a CSS school and CSS schools don’t split 50/50. They split 60/60 (but not using FAFSA).

How much did HC say that you’d have to pay last year (not what you actually paid to them, but the amount that they said that your costs would be.)

12

I found the same issue today.

Our EFC was $20K the past two filings for one child in college. Completed my eldest son’s FAFSA yesterday - EFC $20K per year. Did my youngest son’s FAFSA today, who’ll be entering college next year, and the result was $20K EFC per year. No changes in finances, reviewed both applications for mistakes, none made, two children were marked as attending college for 2019/20.

Our new FAFSA EFC is $40K per year for two in college. I don’t get it.

13

Google for EFC formula 2020 and you will get a link to the PDF of the FAFSA formula for the 2019-2020 academic year. Print it out and work your numbers on paper. Thay way you will be albe to see which factors are causing this situation.

14

Based on scenario described, there MUST be something different in the input this year vs. last year…another thing to do is go to College Board’s free EFC calculator and simply put in last year’s FAFSA input and this year’s FAFSA input and compare…that should help you narrow down the cause…

15

It’s possible that there is a processing issue. I am not saying that there is, but it is a possibility. With two different people saying this, it piques my interest. I will see if there are any other reports of this tomorrow & report back.

16

I tried to use the aid administrator demo site to simulate this situation, but the demo site unfortunately does not generate an EFC. I looked through my listserv emails, and I don’t see anything about this particular issue … but it is VERY early in the process, and most schools are not yet importing the data or working with it. My best advice is to do a quick estimate - go to fafsa.gov, hover over FAFSA: Apply for Aid & then click Estimate Your Aid. Plug in your numbers with 2 in school & see if it’s close to what you got on your SAR (you’ll need to search for the EFC - it’s there, but it is in the middle & it’s in tiny print). Then do it with 1 in school to see the difference. You’ll get a sense of whether or not there is an issue this way. If so, please contact your child’s school financial aid office & ask to speak with an aid officer. If they don’t seem helpful, you may want to bring it to the attention of a manager. They can investigate, and if there really is an issue, they can bring it to FSA’s attention. Issues do pop up with processing at the start of the cycle, and it’s good to double-check. I’m not saying there IS an issue, just that there COULD be.

17

The EFC is correct. :frowning:
My husband received some untaxed disability benefits through the VA in 2017. Because the money is not taxed, more of it is considered available for us to contribute to college.

18

Did you forget about this?

The devil is in the details. There was a change to your financial situation.

Is this a one-time payment? Does it include a sort of “back pay”? Anyway, try appealing to the college for Professional Judgment to have that excluded it if was a one-off.

Sounds like EFC will only be affected that one year. Where is that money now? If it’s in savings then that also affected EFC.

19

Check the college/university website for “Special Circumstance” paperwork. That will let you explain to the FA offices what your current financial situation is like, and they will be able to make decisions with more information.