<p>I'm really confused about FAFSA right now. I recieved an e-mail yesterday that "The Financial Aid Administrator (FAA) at your school has made corrections to your application..." and now my EFC has jumped $7,000 because of the change that was made!!! It was previously around 7,000 and now its a little over 14,000. I have looked over my SAR millions of times and I can't make out what was changed and why? Should I called the financial aid office and ask? I have accepted my enrollment at Duke University.</p>
<p>My thoughts is that it's because of scholarships? I have applied to a couple that ask for SSN but I'm not even sure if I have won those yet. Could this be the culprit?</p>
<p>You could certainly call the college and ask. If you have a copy of your previous SAR you might be able to compare that to the current changed numbers to see what was changed.</p>
<p>Most schools make changes to the FAFSA because there is an inconsistency between what you reported on your taxes and what you put on the FAFSA form. You should be able to view the changes online. Go line by line and see what they changed. It’s hard to give you advice without knowing what exactly the “change” made to the FAFSA was.</p>
<p>It won’t be anything to do with scholarships. they have no impact on your EFC.</p>
<p>Go through line by line with your original SAR and the new one and compare everything. There are things other than numbers that may have an impact. If there is no change to income and assets there could be things like the type of tax return your parents filed, number of students in college etc. All these may impact your EFC.</p>
<p>Yeah alright thanks…I was able to see that the college changed the ‘Parents’ Payments to Tax-Deferred Pensions & Savings’, ‘Parents’ Untaxed Portions of Pensions’, and ‘Parents’ Other Untaxed Income or Benefits’. All of which were increased except the ‘Parents’ Payments to Tax-Deferred Pensions & Savings’ which went down a lot.</p>
<p>Making Work Pay is most likely the source of the other untaxed income … or a home buyers credit, if you had of those & didn’t include it. </p>
<p>Untaxed portion of pensions is line 16a-16b (or if filing 1040A, line 12a-12b). This amount has to be reported UNLESS it is a qualified rollover. If you had a qualified rollover, contact your school to tell them that the amount was a rollover. They will remove it if it was. It should be noted as a rollover on the return, and they may have missed the notation.</p>
<p>Payments to untaxed pensions is W2, box 12. The reason the untaxed payments to pensions was reduced is because only certain codes in Box 12 are reported. You probably reported a code that shouldn’t have been reported, so they removed it.</p>