Grandparent assisting low SES, high stats grandson

[melvin123]

I’m not the best person to talk about financial aid, but I didn’t see anyone else mention it. You said in post 13 that you have a bit of money saved up for him. It’s my understanding that if you give A or his parents money, or if you pay part of his schooling, this is considered income on their financial aid application, so A could get less FA due to your contribution. This is only true for Freshman and Sophmore year, since FA looks back 2 years. I think you can get around the issue by co-signing a loan for those 2 years, and then in the second 2 years you could pay off that loan and you could also help pay for Junior and Senior year if you want. Hopefully someone more in the know can address this, but I did want to point out the issue to you as it could be relevant when looking at colleges EFCs and how your family is going to pay that.