<p>My question is for people who have gone through the financial aid process already or know something about it.....</p>
<p>Basically, my family's EFC from FAFSA is more than $50,000. I first got really upset about this cause, while my top choice, Penn, meets full need-based aid, but with this number, I wouldn't qualify for any.</p>
<p>However, I was reading on their website, and it looks like Penn uses its own formula to determine family contribution.</p>
<p>Is there anyone who had a high EFC but ws still able to get a significant amount of aid.</p>
<p>Your finaid award from Penn should be coming very soon. At this point, I would suggest you wait to see that. What someone else got doesn’t really matter. What matters is what (if anything) Penn gives YOU. </p>
<p>My opinion…you’re not going to see a lot of aid from UPenn. You don’t say what the amount you are hoping for is…but I would say that your expectations should not be very high.</p>
<p>Yeah, agree the best thing is just to wait and see what Penn comes through with. Our FAFSA EFC is pretty low - reflecting our fairly modest income and no assets - but our expected contribution as reckoned by my son’s college (private and meets-full-need) is actually somewhat lower than the FAFSA EFC. So that does happen, the opposite also happens, unfortunately. The difference between our FAFSA EFC and college-calculated expected contribution isn’t very big, though. My guess is you won’t see a tremendous difference.</p>
<p>The typical family with a $50K EFC would generally be expected to pay more under Penn’s institutional methodology. It counts more of the assets such a family will typically have such as equity in their primary residence. For a few families the EFC can be less, but that’s unusual.</p>
<p>In the majority of cases institutional EFCs come out higher than FAFSA EFCs as they may take into account assets that may be ignored by FAFSA such as the primary home. There are cases where the EFC may come out lower because they may take into account other costs that FAFSA does not. But i think that is more unusual.</p>