We were just looking in my son’s portal for UW-Madison. They do not use the CSS Profile. The EFC that Madison is showing is nearly double the amount that was shown when we completed FAFSA. Has anyone else had that happen? For context, this is related to my DS22’s application and we also have his brother in another university. Do some FAFSA-only colleges change the EFC from what FAFSA says it is?
I’m not sure if this will address your question, but, there is no guarantee that any given university will offer the amount of the EFC. Public universities tend not to meet full need.
If you are out of state, that would easily explain the difference, as I’d guess Wisconsin doesn’t give aid to out of state applicants.
Thanks for the response. We are not expecting any aid from Wisconsin under any scenario. My question is related to the EFC that is downloaded from FAFSA. Has anyone else experienced the university saying your EFC is (for example) 62,000 when the FAFSA said it was 30,000 (again for example) and for a college that only uses the FAFSA and doesn’t use the CSS Profile?
A college may calculate an EFC for its own purposes that is different from the FAFSA EFC, even if it only uses the FAFSA form.
The FAFSA EFC is used to determine federal aid like Pell grants. Colleges may use it for their own purposes, but are not required to.
In the near future, the FAFSA EFC will be renamed FAFSA SAI (student aid index) to reduce the expectation among parents and students that the number is what they will have to pay for college.
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Schools can recalculate it if they feel you have made a mistake. If they doubled it, it may be that they don’t see that a second child is in school. Call the UW financial aid office and ask what happened and tell them your second child will be attending school too (and which one if you know).
The FAFSA EFC in no way actually relates to what a family can expect to contribute for a student to attend any particular college. It doesn’t reflect reality, so good on UW-Madison for putting out something that has got be more realistic. And thank goodness that the FAFSA term will be changed to Student Aid Index.
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