Efc ridiculously high

<p>Can’t help but mention that I have made this common observation. Folks that save for their kids future in a humble cars, non name brand attire and simple handbags have money in the bank at tuition time because they did without. Then there are the folks that send there kids to school with designer handbags, several True religion jeans, uggs, etc., i.e. no money in the bank…(because they tell you how much debt they are in when you see them at high school games) yet they more fin aid because they spend all the income they have and no money to report to fafsa :confused: Very interesting observation. Just sayin’</p>

<p>nitnat, that’s not the way it works. Most of the EFC determined from the FAFSA federal methodology depends on a family’s income. The next big piece is savings outside of protected retirement accounts. A fraction (around 6-7%) of any savings accounts owned by the parents is added to the EFC; a larger fraction of anything owned by the student is added on as well. </p>

<p>That’s pretty much the lion’s share of determining the EFC. If the ant family and grasshopper family have similar household incomes, but the ant family has savings while the grasshoppers have a closet full of nice clothing, yes, the ant family will have a higher EFC. However! If the grasshopper child isn’t admitted to a college that meets full need with grants, then the grasshoppers are in far worse shape than the ants. They’ll need to come up with enough $$$ to cover the gap between the aid offered by the college, and the cost to attend. Grasshopper Jr. may have to take out big loans, or might have to go to a cheaper school. </p>

<p>If the grasshopper kids are bright and hardworking they might get to have their Uggs and their college tuition too, courtesy of merit aid. That’s true for the ants as well. All’s fair. If both the ants and grasshoppers are admitted to one of the handful of highly selective schools that meet full need with grants and no loans, then the grasshoppers will indeed receive more aid. Not fair, but the odds of being admitted to those schools aren’t high. And if the ants and grasshoppers all want to go to NYU, then the ants are going to be enjoying a spot of schadenfreude at the grasshoppers’ expense. </p>

<p>As to what the grasshopper parents are telling all and sundry at football games, I’d take it with a grain of salt. Just sayin. :)</p>

<p>@Polarscribe
This isn’t the french revolution, I’m tired of your “#$@#@ richie” attitude.
Kids with low EFCs pay less for college even though they will have the same return as a kid paying the full thing.
You are very ignorant.</p>

<p>mom2collegekids - Perhaps if you got off your high horse, you might be able to actually read my post. I never said I was shocked that we didn’t qualify for financial aid. I said I was surprised at the EFC amount.</p>

<p>There was an earlier discussion in the thread about EFC’s as a percentage of income. That is why I posted our information.</p>

<p>This is our first child going to college. We filled out the FAFSA because the colleges asked us to, not because we expected a handout.</p>

<p>The thing I see in all these and other posts and threads about the shock of the cost of college and lack of aid, no matter what your income/asset level is, is that we are so accustomed to getting our children’s education for relatively “free” (school taxes are just a part of the landscape and do not stick out as some extra heavy burden). Now after 12 years of this “free” education, we are being asked to fork over massive amounts of money! It comes as a shock no matter what one’s financial picture is.</p>

<p>*This is our first child going to college. We filled out the FAFSA because the colleges asked us to, not because we expected a handout. *</p>

<p>then why did you say that you were going to talk to the FA officers about the money in the bank? You would only do that if you expected/wanted them to somehow take that into consideration so that you would qualify. </p>

<p>You now say that you didn’t expect any FA. Well, if that is true, then you should have expected that your EFC would be as high or higher than a school costs. You can’t have it both ways.</p>

<p>Anyway…if you thought you would qualify for some aid (which is what your post indicated), then you will still get what you would have likely gotten if your EFC was a bit lower than COA…and that is a $5500 student loan for your child.</p>

<p>Even people with EFCs of about $45k often find that a school that costs $53k will only give them a student loan and maybe work study…no free money.</p>

<p>mom2collegekids - Just because I didn’t provide you, a complete stranger, with the exact details of our finances does not mean I “want it both ways.” Or I am “talking out of both sides of my mouth”, as you first posted before you edited.</p>

<p>One of the schools that my daughter applied to is very expensive (50k). She knows the school exceeds our college budget so it was a “we’ll see what happens” application. For my daughter’s sake, if she really wanted to go there, we would provide additional information to the financial aid offices of that school. If the aid and/or merit package doesn’t work, we obviously have other options. I suspect that you would make the same effort for your children. </p>

<p>I think my EFC is ridiculously high because:</p>

<ol>
<li> No college even costs that amount</li>
<li> It is OVER 1/3 of our after tax income (as I state in my original post)</li>
</ol>

<p>BTW, thanks for making me feel so welcome. Sheesh.</p>

<p>meteman:</p>

<p>People with low EFCs pay less because they can’t afford to pay more.</p>

<p>You think low and middle-income students shouldn’t be able to afford to go to college because… what, they weren’t lucky enough to be born to a family in the top 1 percent of Americans? Only the rich deserve higher education?</p>

<p>Your elitist, anti-American nonsense is noted.</p>

<p>I think part of the situation is that in the past, people felt that if they were in the upper tier of income, that they would be able to afford to send their sons and daughters to private colleges.</p>

<p>But that has changed. Without financial aid or merit aid, many of those who fall into the upper tiers of income cannot afford to send their children to private schools. If you have 2 kids, you will have needed to save/ contribute upwards of $400K just for your children’s education. For many of the “rich” currently making $150K and above, this is just not a possibility. First off, take in to consideration that many families may not have had high income for more than a few years. For some, their income may have gone up because a spouse has gone back to work after raising young kids.</p>

<p>So now what you have are people deemed “rich” who can hopefully afford state schools but who find the privates out of their reach.</p>

<p>Instead, what they are seeing is that those with low incomes who are able to get good financial aid packages are able to send their kids to privates and they are not. So things have turned around.</p>

<p>In my own family, my husband was able to go to carnegie mellon almost debt free because of financial aid. Yet it IS a struggle to afford two private educations for our own children. Of course, that is a choice we make, but for those receiving financial aid now, you may see the other side when you cannot afford that quality education for your own children!</p>

<p>uskoolfish:</p>

<p>So lobby the private universities to lower their absurd tuition costs.</p>

<p>Love the scare quotes around “rich” there - fact is, anyone making $150k household income is rich. That’s about 95th percentile income.</p>

<p>polarscribe- maybe in Juneau Alaska $150k is rich, but where I live if you have that kind of income and 2 or more kids, that’s just middle of the road. And as uskoolfish said, “take in to consideration that many families may not have had high income for more than a few years. For some, their income may have gone up because a spouse has gone back to work after raising young kids.” Or gone down (and up and up again) because bad economy, layoffs, illness, etc. </p>

<p>My health insurance, today, just doubled from $520 a month to over $1000! That’s an extra $6240 a year I do not have to contribute my D’s education!!</p>

<p>“Instead, what they are seeing is that those with low incomes who are able to get good financial aid packages are able to send their kids to privates and they are not.”</p>

<p>Please read the many posts that explain why that’s a myth except for a very few.</p>

<p>setting a bookmark because I don’t know what I want to say yet.</p>

<p>upstatemom: Even in the highest-median-income state in the country, Maryland, $150k is more than double the median. Your income is at a level that the vast majority of Americans will never come close to. Tens of millions of families live with the same kids and less money.</p>

<p>We have choices in this country. We’ve chosen to slash taxes on the rich, spend trillions of dollars on foreign wars and the military-industrial complex while substantially defunding public education. Welcome to the result of those choices.</p>

<p>“My health insurance, today, just doubled from $520 a month to over $1000!”</p>

<p>Sounds like an argument for a single-payer system to me.</p>

<p>Your a communist. The rich make more because they earn more, the poor make less because they earn less and deserve less.</p>

<p>There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Poor people earn less because they deserve to be poor.</p>

<p>I really can’t add anything to that brilliant display of logic.</p>

<p>polarscribe, truer words were never spoken!</p>

<p>Polar, I do not think you are being fair. You can not look at income by state. Most states are larger, and cost of living areas are localized.</p>

<p>Getting back to a little more civility:</p>

<p>The frustration with FAFSA is that by trying to have a one-size-fits-all form, there are a lot of situations in which the formula just doesn’t seem fair. </p>

<p>A family could have had a very minimal income for many years, have one really good year just before filling out the FAFSA and suddenly the EFC is high. </p>

<p>Another family could be sitting in a house with a lot of equity and have millions in retirement savings and that’s not counted. I doubt if any woman has ever listed her diamond engagement ring as an asset for purposes of FAFSA. No one is going to be auditing the family heirlooms. </p>

<p>Debts are not counted.</p>

<p>Different tax structures, different costs of living and such vary by states and cities. That’s not taken into account. </p>

<p>I wish we could go back to the days when college was affordable without all this debt.</p>

<p>There’s no reason we can’t, TatinG. It just takes the political will to change our taxing and spending priorities.</p>

<p>Write your legislators. Elect candidates who will properly fund higher education. Vote out congressmen who’d rather spend billions of dollars on Blackwater mercenaries than on our university students.</p>