<p>S goes to a private. He has workstudy in his FA package so was thinking that FAFSA was used to determine our EFC. It however seems that the school's determination of EFC is higher than what we found with the calculator. We have an e mail in to FA to see if this is an error but I was wondering if this is unusual and why this would happen.</p>
<p>Does this school use only the FAFSA, or do they also require the Profile or a school financial aid form, as well? If they require more than just the FAFSA, the EFC may very well be recalculated using the information from the additional forms. FAFSA is only for federal aid; schools can use their own method of determining EFC for other aid.</p>
<p>If the school is FAFSA-only, did they collect your tax information for verification? If so, they may have made changes to your FAFSA based on verification.</p>
<p>The school uses both forms. As I understood it though, which may be incorrect, that federal methodology needed to be used to award fed work study. Is that correct?</p>
<p>If they use Profile, they will use FM to award govt money but use their own approach to award institutional money.</p>
<p>Work study is a pool of money given to the school to award as it sees fit. If the school wants to use the Profile EFC for awarding WS, they can do so. That may not be what they did, though … we do first-come, first-serve using only EFCs below a certain number. Again, schools can award it using whatever criteria they choose (they just can’t award it if there is no need).</p>
<p>So I guess both methodologies can be used and WS awarded if the institutional calc of EFC is higher than the FAFSA but not if it is lower. I am amazed, no more disheartened that our institutional EFC is $12,000 higher than our FAFSA EFC. Does that sound right?</p>
<p>It could be right. Profile colleges factor in assets, including home equity in different ways. You could always call the college FA office and ask. They could explain their calculations for you, and if it seems completely out-of-line to you, maybe there was a mistake. Who knows… can’t hurt to ask.</p>
<p>That’s very common. FAFSA only used by schools that don’t meet need, don’t be mad at the institution, people need to calculate IM before choosing a school.</p>
<p>Agree that it’s common that EFC and Institutional aid calculations differ. There are items that are excluded in the FAFSA calculations that are included on the institution’s methodology and without asking it is difficult to extrapolate what pecentages of available assets the colleges expects parents to tap. I remember filling the CCS and it asking what cars we drove though not exactly sure why they needed to know that. The wealthiest people I know drive the oldest vehicles so maybe they ask to get an inverse relationship?</p>
<p>LOL - maybe so! We were also asked that question on Profile, and as I recall, it was for the school that gave us one of the most loan-heavy packages!</p>
<p>Its really hard to budget. Last year the school used both but it somehow it worked in our favor. This year we bought our first home and income was a little higher but the increase doesn’t even begin to touch the cost of the home. The school told us that our home didn’t count as an asset but somehow EFC went up where we thought it would go down since to our thinking a large portion of liquid assets were converted into our home. Its hard to even guess about what to expect for future years. I guess we could use the max cost using the IM method as the worst case scenerio, but based on that kiddo will be transferring out or taking a gap year the year after next. I have already broached this possibility with him. I thought I understood how calculations were done last year, obviously I didn’t.</p>