<p>Clearly how you have financed you debt can make a difference in your EFCC. If you take out an unsecured credit line to fix your house, it's going to take a pretty big disaster like Hurricane Katrina for colleges to give much weight to what you had to do. But if you take out a home equity loan and do the same thing, or even blow the money on something unnecessary and not house related, that transaction can lower the value of your house since there is now a lien against it, lowering your asset values.</p>