Do financial aid calculate non-need based aid or need based aid depending on your parents income or they calculate both ?
What are you trying to find out? And is it for Texas colleges only? You have three threads with the title “financial aid”.
Here is how it usually works.
You go to the financial aid page on EACH school’s website, and see what they require for financial aid application submissions. So…start there.
You need to find out from your parents what they CAN and WILL pay for you annually to attend college.
If you have financial as defined by the FAFSA…this would be a FAFSA EFC below $6000…you might get a portion of the Pell Grant, and a $5500 Direct Loan if you are a first year student. Some states and some colleges also have grants for low income students as well.
Need based aid is largely based on parent income and assets. I believe your parents are divorced, right? That being the case…be honest, and use the parent with whom you resides greater than 50% of the time for the year prior to the FAFSA filing date.
Then there are colleges that have MERIT aid. This is based on the strength of your application…so…how strong an applicant are you? High GPA? Or what?
At some schools, if you get a merit scholarship, this will be applied to your need first…thus decreasing your financial need. At these colleges you will get less need based aid because your merit scholarship makes you less needy.
Merit aid usually does not have a need component…but some specific merit aid awards could have a need component.
At some colleges, you can stack need based and merit aid…up to the cost of attendance.
So…what do you really want to know?
I want to know how much will it cost … okay so Fasfa website stated for the need based aid they take the COA(cost of attendance)-EFC= your need based aid let’s say Someone get the Pell Grant which is 6,095 and a student loan 5,500 and there efc is 00000
FAFSA can give you max $6,095 grant and $5,500 loan. Your school uses your FAFSA EFC and parents’ income and assets to calculate how much need based aid they will give you. We can’t tell you how much your school will give you. However, a good thing to look for is whether or not schools meet need. You can run the net price calculators on each school’s website, as well. Hope this helps!
It helped thank you!?
Are your parents divorced? I thought you said they were. If that is the case, the net price calculators might not give accurate results. If the net price calculator does NOT ask about your parent marital status, the results will likely be inaccurate.
How will you pay the balance of the costs if you only get $6095 Pell Grant and $5500 student loan? That IS the question you need to answer.
Yes they aren’t married
And it doesn’t ask about parents marital status
No I don’t get that much it was an example …
No one knows what the school will give you they put together a aid package for you
To meet ur need as close as they can
Do you live with your mom? If her income is $80k or more, I don’t think you’ll qualify for a Pell Grant. You can get the ~$5500/year federal student loan though. How much can your parents pay per year without borrowing? That plus the student loan is your budget (unless you also qualify for Pell). What are your stats (SAT and GPA)? Do you qualify for merit aid anywhere?
I think she said she lived with her dad who had the lower income…
Is that correct? And is it true?
Gpa 3.0 rn
I live with my dad mom on weekends if I use his income I’m available for Pell Grant if I was to use my moms no eligible for Pell Grant
the COA for Sam Houston is about $18000 per year (those are the billed costs for tuition, room and board). You’ll have some other costs, but use the billed costs to compare.
This is the amount YOU will be expected to pay or borrow. The school will put together a financial aid package to try to get you to that number. Pell grant? maybe $6000. The school might award you an SEOG (supplemental federal grant), maybe about $2000. There might be some state grants, maybe $2000. The school might have its own grants. Will you get any merit aid? You will qualify for the loans ($5500). That is $15,500, so you would need at least $2500 more (and that’s if your EFC really is $0, so that you’d get full Pell; if not, you’ll need more).
Go to the Sam Houston site and under ‘financial aid’ there is a link to the net price calculator that all Texas schools use. If you don’t need to live on campus, you’ll save a lot. If you take the lowest room and meal plans, you’ll save more.
I plan on staying on campus but I will get the lowest meal plan and lowest room as possible … so if all that is possible you saying my parents will need to pay about 2,500 out of pocket ? If so that’s okay I talk to my parents they said they can put in about 3000-4000
@twoinanddone the OPs parents are divorced…and the net price calculator does NOT ask marital status. It’s very possible the NPC results will not be accurate.
What affect does my parents marital status have on my fasfa ? Does it make me receive less since there separated ?
The NPC is accurate if one parent is correctly filling out the NPC as the custodial parent. The NPC on the Sam Houston site is used by all schools in Texas, and isn’t great, but it did ask for marital status and income of the custodial parent. The OP has said she has an EFC of $0 this year, assumed that she completed the FAFSA correctly this year, so the father must be low income. If she doesn’t have an EFC = $0, then she’s not going to get a $6k Pell, and may not get the other things either (SEOG, state grant). Really, she has to fill out the NPC and use correct info, not just estimates. I threw in some numbers (divorced, income $20k, one in college) and it said there would be about $10k in grants, so assume that is the $6k for Pell and some school/SEOG grants.
OP, you can’t assume you’ll only have to pay $3000. I was using an example as YOU said your EFC is $0. USE THE NPC! The NPC is using a billed cost of $19k per year and an overall COA of $24000. YOUR costs are going to be between those two. The NPC will assume you are going to take the $5500 in loans and that YOU will contribute $2-3k from earnings in the summer or work study earned while in school.