<p>My FAFSA EFC was 55,000 - that is more than my mom makes in one whole year.<br>
We did the FAFSA with a financial planner and entered everything correctly according to our taxes. Help! Help! I am freaking out because I might not be able to go to college with no aid at all.</p>
<p>Unless you have enormous assets it sounds as if you may have made some mistakes in the FAFSA. With an income below $55,000 your Mom would have to have reportable assets in the several hundred thousand dollar range for your EFC to be that high. If you have income assets they can contribute to the EFC as well - 50% of student income over @$4,000 and 20% of student assets go to the EFC.</p>
<p>Print off your FAFSA and go through it line by line and try and see if you can find an error. Come back here and ask questions if you need to.</p>
<p>That doesn't sound right. Have you done an estimate from the college board website? Unless your Mom has a ton of assests, equity in a house, property that she owns, etc., an income of $55,000 should give a fairly low EFC. When I plug in those numbers, I get an EFC of approx. 8,000 to 12,000 based on a single mom with 1 child...no others in college living in a midwestern state. I had to guess, but that gives an example.</p>
<p>It doesn't look like we made any mistakes. My dad passed away last year and the only big number on there is his pension - $87000. Does the government really expect us to use his whole pension to pay for college? My mom needs that to live!</p>
<p>What sort of Pension? Pension income? Or an asset of some sort? Retirement savings are not reported on FAFSA but $87,000 in assets would not account for such a high EFC. If it is some sort of one off income that might account for a high EFC.</p>
<p>Was it an insurance pay out maybe? If so you may be able to ask the school financial aid officer for some sort of adjustment.</p>
<p>I went to an EFC calculator, entered the EXACT same numbers on the FAFSA print out I got today and the calculator said my EFC is supposed to be $10,029. Now, that sounds right. What happened with the actual FAFSA?!</p>
<p>I know the feeliing, our EFC is to high, I'm concerned because my school is too expensive. Don't know how I'm gonnna come out with the money...</p>
<p>The school I want to go to is really expensive and they won't give me any merit aid (even though I have extremely high grades.) I just dont understand how they expect us to pay more than we make in a year. IT MAKES NO SENSE.</p>
<p>It sounds like there must be a mistake on the numbers you entered.</p>
<p>Yeah- input error somewhere.</p>