<p>Okay so my parents just completed the fafsa, and in the confirmation email that was sent to me, the estimated efc is over 200,000...266344 to be exact. I was a bit confused by this figure, as everywhere I looked online seemed to suggest that the max efc is 99,999. I'm not saying I was expecting to get a lot of financial aid, but I'm just trying to figure out what would cause such a high estimation. The only thing I could think of was if that number was for all 4 years, but I don't believe that's the case. If anyone has any ideas please do let me know...</p>
<p>I do not know if a max efc is 99,999 or higher, but the number is for one year.</p>
<p>Are your parents multi-millionaires? </p>
<p>Perhaps the FAFSA was not filled out correctly.</p>
<p>That is a bit strange. Unless something has changed, i also thought the max was $99,999.</p>
<p>Do let us know if you find out.</p>
<p>With a $200,000 EFC your family income would need to be about $800,000!</p>
<p>no thats the thing, their income is around 100k. They have a fair amount of assets, but not enough to justify that high of an expected contribution. I’m not sure if I should try to call now and see what happened, or wait for the SAR to see if the number is back in the expected range…</p>
<p>How much is their “fair amount of assets”?</p>
<p>I don’t know if the EFC limit for FAFSA has been raised or not. It makes sense to raise it. Otherwise someone with an EFC of 99k with 1 in college may wonder why their EFC doesn’t split right when they have 2-3 in college.</p>
<p>Google EFC Formula 2015 to find the link for the formula itself. Print out the PDF, and work through it on paper. That will show you what your number should be. </p>
<p>Then you can look at the data you entered, and see what went wrong.</p>
<p>^See <a href=“http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/091913EFCFormulaGuide1415.pdf[/url]”>http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/091913EFCFormulaGuide1415.pdf</a></p>
<p>Thx for the link. I’ll try to work it out using that formula, and see what I get. According to this article ([Do</a> You Know What Your Expected Family Contribution Is? | The College Solution](<a href=“http://www.thecollegesolution.com/do-you-know-what-your-expected-family-contribution-is/]Do”>Do You Know What Your Expected Family Contribution Is?)), there isn’t actually a ceiling to the EFC figure. A lot of people seem to believe there is a ceiling at 99,999 though, so I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Wait for the SAR, it will only be a few days. With that kind of error something in the line by line amounts entered will stand out very quickly.</p>
<p>If their before tax income is 6 figures, an EFC of $26,000 wouldn’t be unreasonable, is it possible there is an extra digit?</p>
<p>I cannot find any info from the Dept of Ed that says there will be EFCs higher than 99,999 … so this is new. I have a question for the OP: Did your parents have an IRA rollover in 2013?</p>
<p>I am not sure what was actually done here when getting the estimate. The maximum number that is usually calculated is $99,999. That is not because that is the maximum possible but it is instead just the highest number that the computer program will put out because when created it was not believed any higher number was needed because $99,999 exceeded any possible amount of annual college costs. It is possible the program has been changed although I cannot think of a reason it would have been at this time.</p>