<p>What does it mean if the SAR form implies that your EFC is 0. Do I have to pay for anything?</p>
<p>Most colleges will still expect you to work summers and perhaps parttime during the school year, and some will give you more loans than grants. However an EFC of 0 does mean they will not expect your family to contribute anything.</p>
<p>basically a "0" efc means that you family may not have to contibute anything up front. </p>
<p>However, it by no stretch of the imagination means that you will go to school for free (there is a huge difference between these 2 concepts). As Susan stated, at some schools, your "0" EFC could mean that you will walk away with a massive amount of debt especially if you attend a school whose FA packages are more loans vs. grant/scholarship aid.</p>
<p>You will get alot, expecially if you go to a need-blind school</p>
<p>You will still probably get a very small loan and some work study</p>
<p>Need blind only refers to the admissions process. Need blind means that your needing FA or the amount of FA you need is not a factor in the admissions process. </p>
<p>There are plenty of schools that are need blind which may end up giving you the money that you need to attend.</p>
<p>Yes, most need-blind schools will make sure you can come</p>
<p>Most need blind schools have money, so they could afford to pay/greatly help for the unmet need.</p>
<p>Need blind and giving you a package that meets 100% of need are two very different things
Need blind just means they don't consider how much they would have to give you for you to be able to attend if they admit you.
They may not meet 100% need, and so your packages could cover 90% of your need or 10%.
Personally, I would rather a college be need aware- and commit to meeting 100% need, so if I am admitted, I know that I will be offered a package that should make it possible to attend.
Rather than be admitted with zero money.
Unfortunately as I have seen on these boards however, some schools state they meet 100% need, but the students still aren't offered a package that would enable them to attend.
So the mileage apparently varies quite a bit</p>
<p>felix, our family has an EFC of 0 based on FAFSA(when Profile is considered and my son's other parent comes into the picture, everything changes - schools asked the non-custodial parent to pay up & luckily she's willing to). My son still has to come up with around $5000 a year between work study, loans and summer work. That figure was fairly consistent at all the schools he was accepted at, with one exception which was a school that did not ask him to take out loans (MIT)..there his contribution would have been around $3000 a year. But just at the FAFSA schools, each school had very different idea as to what we could afford - ranging from 0 to several thousand dollars. The UC system was the worst in terms of the amount of loans he would have had to take out.</p>
<p>Most need blind schools WILL meet your money because they are filthy rich, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Emory.</p>
<p>Many colleges don't have the resources to meet the needs of students who can't afford to pay anything toward their college education. Some such colleges take financial need into consideration when making admissions decisions: Consequently very low income students may be rejected simply because they need a lot of money to attend.</p>
<p>Some colleges that guarantee to meet 100% of students' financial need may do this by providing loans of up to $30,000 a year, which is a staggering amount of debt for most students to consider accepting.</p>
<p>Consequently, you should:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Check the financial aid web pages of the colleges that you're considering to find out their policies. Also check things like the US News site (which costs about $15 a year to have full access to) to get detailed info about the schools' financial aid.</p></li>
<li><p>Make sure that you apply to a financial safety, which often is a local 4-year or 2-year public where you could live at home and go to college.</p></li>
<li><p>Apply for every scholarship that you might qualify for. Usually, one's best chances of getting aid are through locally-sponsored scholarships. There also may be merit aid at various public and private schools. Often such scholarships have earlier deadlines than the admission deadline.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Also use CC"s search function (at the top of the page) to check back posts on scholarship and financial aid info.</p>
<p>Yes Yale, Princeton and Harvard are among the schools that are need blind and will meet 100% of need, I will take your word on Emory.</p>
<p>However for families making $42,000 and lower..
[quote]
Across the board, though, no school in the Ivy League enrolled more than 11.3 percent of students from this bracket, which approximates the bottom two-fifths of the income distribution.
[/quote]
At Yale- 42 % of students recieved some aid- the flip side of that is 3 in 5 students come from families that can afford to pay $40,000 a year without assistance</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=32912%5B/url%5D">http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=32912</a>
THe good news is- if you are one of those low income students that the Ivies are going to fight over, you can be assured that your family won't have to contribute anything.</p>
<p>Another thing is HYP has admission rates that are in the single digits so there is over a 90% possibility that you *** won't*** be admitted.</p>
<p>Need blind just means that all of the applications go through the decision process without regard to what you need financially. It means nothing about what you will get, which is a whole new ballgame, once the decision is made that you are admitted. Most schools do not guarantee that you wil get 100% of your need, even by their interpretation and computation of need. In fact, very few schools make that guarantee. Even those schools who do give 100% of their definition of need, may give loan options that are unattractive and inadvisable. Then, you get into the definition of need which can differ widely from school to school. Your EFC is not necessarily the number that a school, even a need blind, 100% need guaranteed school will use to come up with your financial aid package. Your EFC entitle you to certain government grants and loans at given breakpoints. The colleges can make their own decisions on how they want to spend their own money and what their definition of need and 100% are.</p>
<p>What is even trickier is that schools that are need aware are not necessarily schools to avoid for top, needy students. Need aware does not mean that you will not mean admitted because you need financial aid. It means that there is a limited amount of money, and the school historically has not been able to meet demonstrated need of all applicants, and does not expect to do so this season. However, many such schools have some merit scholarships to sweeten the pot for the students they most want. And that can bring your financial aid package up higher than even a school that guarantees to meet 100% of all admitted applicants aid. There are also, keep in mind, schools that, on average, do not meet 100% of need, and their percentage of need met in previous years can be found in any number of college guides. However, that figure of need met is taking the all of the students into account. There will be students who will get much more, much less that that percentage. </p>
<p>Nothing is simple about college admissions, and nothing more complicated than how colleges dispense their aid.</p>