We have put two kids through three years of college each, but have never filled out the FAFSA because both of them got full tuition scholarships and our EFC was higher than the room&board for both of them combined.
Now our youngest is getting ready for college next year. She wants to go out of state and I fully understand her reasons behind actually needing to leave the south (does not have ability to sweat and passes out when the temperature is over 80 degrees, which is year-round in Texas).
She applied to four schools, three in NY and one in TX (safety). She got into her top two NY schools with scholarships of 50-60%, but even that isn’t quite enough. She also got accepted at her safety and we’re not expecting any award at that school. We are hoping that her 3rd choice school will provide a substantial award because she is in the 85th-90th percentile there.
So my FAFSA questions:
Will our 22yo count as being in the household? We are providing greater than 50% support as she is living at home. She is saving all of her salary (part-time, minimum wage) to get a car and afford to be able to live on her own eventually. She lost her scholarship when she had two very bad semesters. We would have paid for her to go back this school year to finish her last 9 classes as long as she maintained her grades, but she chose to work instead.
Will our 20yo count as being in the household? Spring 2016 is her final semester. She has already done her graduation audit and will apply for graduation as soon as the school opens up again for the spring. She is currently working on grad school applications. We have paid for everything so far (tuition covered by scholarship). We do not currently plan to pay for grad school, although we want to help with rent and groceries. If she is able to get in the grad program (20% acceptance rate in top school for her MS degree), then her scholarship from undergrad can be used to pay for the first year of grad school tuition. Otherwise, she will have to get a loan for tuition.
Will our 20yo count as being a sibling in school? She will be undergrad for spring 2016, but will be in grad school for fall 2016 (assuming she gets in, which isn’t automatic even with a 3.9 in speech pathology; it’s very competitive).
The numbers we get from fafsa are very different depending on whether or not our 20yo and 22yo count as being in the household and whether or not the 20 yo counts as a sibling in school.
Our daughter’s scholarship have brought the COA down from about $60000 to $35000 at her top two schools. We know that she can get a $5500 loan. We were hoping for bigger scholarships than she got. We are hopeful that her 3rd choice school will offer a bigger award. It’s about the same cost as the other two.
The state school is about $24000 with no award (and we don’t expect one from them because they have really high stats and are public).