It is my understanding that the EFC set by FAFSA is reached using a set formula (The Federal Need Analysis Methodology"). Some posts on this site about asking a school for a better financial aid package mention asking for a “financial review”, and to ask the individual college financial aid offices to make a “professional judgment”. The latter (Professional judgment) seems to refer to the authority of a school’s financial aid administrator to make adjustments to the data elements on the fafsa. I am very confused: Are we to ask a school to use its professional judgment only to overcome a fafsa EFC determination? I would be OK with paying my estimated EFC, but none of the schools that my kids applied to (I have triplets) seem to have taken this into consideration. Even a school that claims to meet 100% of the demonstrated financial need does not cover $10K/year over our EFC.
What is the appropriate procedure and most successful arguments when we are OK with paying our EFC but the school is not meeting it?
Thank you!
You can ask a college to review the package they have offered you for any reason. They can say yes or no; they can modify your award or not.
“Professional judgement” comes into play when factors such as a special needs sibling with extraordinary medical care mean that the snapshot of your finances that the college has used to evaluate your need doesn’t accurately portray your ability to pay.
If your kids have applied to schools which do not guarantee to meet “full need”- and in fact, have not- then you can certainly ask for a review, but keep your expectations in check. If they state upfront that they do not/cannot meet your need- and in fact “gap” a significant number of students, the likelihood that your package will be adjusted upward is small.
Some colleges just don’t and cannot fund every student who has “need”. Even when they want that student and would be happy to admit him/her.
Thank you, Blossom!
Others may correct me, however, the true purpose of the Fafsa is to determine the EFC which is used by the government to determine eligibility for Pell Grants, Subsidized Stafford loans and I believe Work Study. The colleges themselves determine the university grants etc. They have the control to determine how much financial aid they will give a student beyond those federally guaranteed. I believe the EFC for the college purposes is at best a guideline and in most cases a goal for them to meet with loans, grants, scholarships etc. to show that they have determined a way for you to pay them for your education. I’ve never liked the term expected family contribution because I think it implies something it doesn’t.
Professional Judgement is for “special cases”…such as a parent died, or lost his job, or sudden serious illness. It’s not for cases where the family wants the school to meet EFC.
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Even a school that claims to meet 100% of the demonstrated financial need does not cover $10K/year over our EFC.
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Usually schools that make that claim also ask for CSS Profile. Did this particular school ask for CSS Profile?
Nice summary in post #3 by @lvvcsf EFC is a qualification number for federal aid.
Right.,the CSS Profile delves much deeper into your finances.
Even the 100% need met schools almost all have a student contribution from summer work and work study ranging from $2000-5000ish. They generally do have some flexibility so you can ask for an appeal to see if they can give any more. Perhaps they didn’t fully reckon with the triplet situation? For schools that don’t meet 100% need you can always ask for a review but they probably won’t change anything. We will have 2 in school for 3 years and in terms of financial planning and not trusting I’m assuming if both go to 100% need met schools I’ll probably end up paying $5K-10K more than my EFC per kid.
Thanks ivvcff! Yes, mom2collegekids, they asked for the CSS Profile. We can contribute up to 5K over our EFC for each kid, but in to cover anything else, we’d have to take the ParentPlus loans, which we are unwilling to do for a number of reasons. It would be unfair to take a parent plus loan to enable one to go to her dream school and not for the other two, and if we take loans for the three of them, we would go bankrupt. Thank God they also got into all the SUNY schools were they applied, I am trying to push in that direction!.