FA Advice?

Oh dear. I just… there are few words for how I feel right now. My family’s EFC nearly tripled between my first and second year, according to FAFSA. We haven’t gotten the CSS profile yet.

I took out a loan to cover the almost $4k EFC my first year, and will have to take out a loan for this $10k EFC as well, because my parents cannot help me. Is there anybody in the FA office I can contact to have these numbers checked? To… I dunno, do anything?

If my EFC is going to stay at this or increase in coming years, I will have to transfer. I can’t graduate with that much debt in student loans. I’m already working part time as part of work study, so working to pay off the loans while I’m in school isn’t an option. I just… I’m so distressed, because I’d finally settled into Vandy, and now it looks like I might have to leave. Please help, any advice from parents or students who have dealt with this would be much appreciated.

Something had to change to cause the EFC to change so much. You should still be able to talk directly with someone in the FA office. Maybe they can work with you or at least explain why it tripled.

Thanks for your advice @Work2Live My parents’ salaries certainly didn’t increase that much, and we didn’t make any sort of big purchases that I would think would add to our assets. I really don’t understand it. But hopefully they can explain and get this sorted out.

I think you can view previously submitted FAFSA forms, so you could go line-by-line and compare. Perhaps you made a mistake, either this time or last time.

From my understanding, Vanderbilt mostly uses the Profile to decide your award. FAFSA is primarily used to qualify you for federal funds. You may find that Vanderbilt’s calculation of your EFC hasn’t changed much. You’ll just have to wait until the award comes in, which will be a little while. At that time, your Financial Aid counselor will be able to tell you exactly why there was an increase.

Some obvious things I can think of that caused a similar change for me was a different number of dependents, or a different number of children in college.

On the practical side, if you work over the summer and during the school year, it would cover the majority of that increase!

Did you have any siblings finish school? That would impact it. Hopefully it was just a mistake and things can get worked out.

If your parents income/financials have stayed the same, it is probably one of thee things: a sibling finished school, you had a summer internship and made more money then last summer or an error in filling our FAFSA. Call your FA counselor (you have a personal counselor) and discuss the situation with them. Some are much nicer then others to deal with in the office…Good Luck

The financial aid forum here is the best place to post these sorts of questions, there are some experts there.

Go line by line to compare with last year and see what changed and check for input errors.

-check number in family and number in college is correct

-check that you reported work/study earnings on the special line for it in the student fafsa so it won’t count against your income. any non work study will count (after protection of 6,300)

-loans are not income so don’t report loan as income

-did the number your reported in your student assets go up? student assets are assessed at 20 pct

FAFSA is important because it is part of the data they collect, and part of any Pell award calculation. Also if you made a mistake on FAFSA you may have made the same mistake on CSS Profile.

I have no siblings in college or secondary school, and none have finished in quite a while. I’ve yet to have a summer job, so no income from that. I think it’s an issue on my FAFSA.

I had my mother help me fill it out since I needed someone to get me the info from their tax forms, and she ended up taking over and doing most of it. So… I’m ashamed to say I really don’t have a clue what went on it. I wasn’t at home, we mostly did it via FaceTime/calling. Clearly this was a poor choice by me, and one that won’t be repeated. I’m the first in my family to go to college, and none of us really know what we’re doing.

That’s not a poor choice at all. FAFSA/Profile can be confusing and complicated to fill out and require a ton of information that only your parents have access to. Being hundreds of miles away in Tennessee doesn’t making the coordination any easier.

FAFSA does allow revisions so again I would recommend you log in to your FAFSA account and view the previous year’s submission and just go line by line and see what has changed. Then work with your parents to determine if the changes are correct or not. You’re probably not going to receive a financial aid package from Vandy for several more weeks.

Did your parents have an IRA rollover? If so, and if your mom used the IRS Data Retrieval Tool to transfer tax info, that may be the issue. It has to be manually removed by the aid office. That is just one idea, of course. Definitely compare FAFSA’s line by line to see what changed - you can report back here or PM me (I work in financial aid at another school) for feedback. I always found Vandy’s financial aid office to be very helpful, so if you can’t figure it out … ask.