Help Needed! EFC Amount

Paying for College
1

<p>First off, I am very grateful for the school's generosity, but I want to know if I can make it more affordable. Rounding numbers, the cost of attendance is $60,000, I received aid for $54000, making my EFC $6,000. </p>

<p>Here's my my basic financial situation:</p>

<ul>
<li>My parents' adjusted gross income is $37,000 for a household of 4. My sibling is considered a dependent, but is attending grad school on his own loans.</li>
<li>We own our home and have no assets.</li>
<li>We have current savings of $5,000.</li>
</ul>

<p>Here are my concerns:</p>

<p>1) We have no health insurance and will be paying for my mom's dental work this spring. It will cost over $6,000.</p>

<p>2) I valued my father's business, a sole proprietorship, at $10,000 on the CSS. From a recent thread, it said that if the business had under 100 employees, the market value should be $0. My estimate was my guess for how much the business and the equipment would sell for today. </p>

<p>1) Will my EFC decrease if I provide the office of FA a copy of the receipt we got from the dental consultation? </p>

<p>2) Did I enter an inaccurate value for the business? I filed the CSS using 2012 tax estimates in early fall. After sending the IDOC to the school, the office of FA said I didn't need to send in CSS updates/corrections because all the necessary info was in the IDOC taxes. Do you think my business value estimation impacted my EFC in any way?</p>

<p>Also, is this EFC a reasonable amount? I'm not expecting a full-ride, but it just seems like a lot. </p>

<p>Thank you and please help if you can!</p>

2

<p>Your fathers business would not likely be included on the FAFSA…if it has less than a certain number of employees. It WOULD be included on the Profile. In addition, deductions allowed for businesses by the IRS are often added back as income for financial aid purposes.</p>

<p>Your brother would be considered an independent student for financial aid purposes. You need to inquire with YOUR college whether they will consider his enrollment or not for you. Some do and some don’t. </p>

<p>You got an excellent aid package. What is the breakdown of your aid? Was a Direct loan included in your aid package? If not, you would be able to take $5500 as a Direct Loan. Can you earn some money by working now and during the summer? Also, it is very possible to reduce personal expenses that are part of the cost of attendance.</p>

3

<p>It does not hurt to appeal, and anything you learn from the process can be useful to you in future years. So do call and ask for a phone appointment with the financial aid officer. It can hep if find out who your admissions officer was, call and thank him/her and discuss how to best approach the financial aid situation. Do position it as a fact finding mission on your part rather than trying to get more aid. </p>

<p>Usually with medical expenses, any adjustments made are done after the expenses are PAID, not billed, owed or anticipated, but actually PAID out. But ask. Doesn’t hurt, so do ask. </p>

<p>You say you have no insurance. Is that just no dental insurance? Because if you have no health insurance, you might get a hefty bill as a lot of colleges require it and if you don’t have a policy covering you to the extent required, you HAVE TO buy into the college’s plan. The prices are sometimes way up there. You might want to address that as well, if indeed you do not have health insurance.</p>

<p>My sympathies to your mother regarding her upcoming dental work I’m going through the same, I do have dental insurance with not inexpensive premiums. The maximum coverage is a big $1500 a year, so yeah, I know.</p>

4

<p>We were just talking about health insurance requirements on another thread. If you have no health insurance the school will likely require you to purchase theirs. Otherwise if your aid is all grants/scholarships and you only need to pay $6,000 I’d say you did very well financial aid-wise.</p>

5

<p>Sometimes the cost of the school medical insurance is included as part of the cost of attendance. Check YOUR college to see if this is the case.</p>

6

<p>Look carefully at the cost of attendance. Often, it is artificially high. I suggest pulling out just the mandatory costs: tuition, fees, room, board, health insurance (if required). What is the total? You will need books - you can keep costs lower by buying used textbooks or even renting them. You will have miscellaneous personal costs, but you can work (work study, perhaps) to meet those costs - or maybe your parents will help with those (talk to them). It may be that your real cost won’t be $6,000 if you watch your finances. </p>

<p>And the suggestion to talk with the aid office is good. It never hurts.</p>

7

<p>will be paying for my mom’s dental work this spring. It will cost over $6,000.</p>

<p>So, your family hasn’t paid for this yet? Has the dental work been done yet?</p>

<p>Were you given student loans? If so, how much?</p>

8

<p>Thank you for all the replies everyone! I didn’t know what to expect in FA, and when my brother saw the EFC, he thought it was a little high. Since he probably isn’t a dependent for FA purposes, I can see why I’m paying a bit more than he did. </p>

<p>@thumper1
My aid package is grants and a work-study. Very generous as I can see now, but again I had no idea what to expect. What is a Direct loan? I usually volunteer during the summers, but I will look into finding a job instead. Thanks for the advice.</p>

<p>My cost of attendance is broken down into tuition, books and supplies, housing, and transportation (What is this by the way? Airplane tickets?) It all sums up to $60,000. No health insurance seems to be included.</p>

<p>@cptofthehouse
I do not have dental nor health insurance. My parents cannot afford it, but I know my college requires a health insurance plan. My school’s health insurance is $2,500, which is indeed expensive.</p>

<p>@PhotoOp
Thank you for the perspective. My brother probably isn’t taking into account our new circumstances. </p>

<p>@kelsmom
Tuition is $44,000, Housing is $14,000, and the Health Insurance that I just discovered is $2,500, again bringing the cost of attendance up to $60,000. So does this mean even if I am a super saver on books and supplies, I’ll still have to find a way to come up with $6,000? I’ll talk to my parents about what feasible amount they can contribute towards the costs.</p>

<p>@mom2collegekids
Have not paid yet. X-rays were done this week. Extraction occurs the first week of May, so the expenses will be coming soon. Once we receive the bill in May, won’t it be too late to adjust my FA package though? No student loans.</p>

9

<p>No student loans.</p>

<p>You can take out a 5500 loan to cover your share.</p>

<p>I don’t know if schools will adjust for an expense that might or might not happen.</p>

10

<p>

I imagine that the school is assuming you will contribute around half of that $6000 from summer earnings. After all, they aren’t about to subsidize your volunteer work. That leaves a very manageable loan for you, so it’s hard to see why the school would increase your already extremely generous aid.</p>

11

<p>I valued my father’s business, a sole proprietorship, at $10,000 on the CSS. From a recent thread, it said that if the business had under 100 employees, the market value should be $0. My estimate was my guess for how much the business and the equipment would sell for today.</p>

<p>I think that rule is for FAFSA, not CSS.</p>

<p>What kind of business is this? The equipment may not sell for much, but the business may have value that the school determined to be higher than your guess. I don’t think the student should be “guessing” how much their parents’ business is worth because students aren’t likely able to determine that. </p>

<p>For instance, my in-laws had an independent insurance agency. Their equipment wasn’t worth much at all. But their client list was worth a certain amount of money. So, when they retired, the business was sold for X amount because the new owner was going to immediately benefit from buying an established business (he wasn’t going to have to start from scratch). </p>

<p>If one of their high-school-aged children were to guess the value of their business, the child wouldn’t have come close. Your dad’s business generates an AGI of $37k (likely a much higher gross). To say that the business only has a value of $10k may not be accurate and the school may have determined that. </p>

<p>Anyway, you can work over the summer to earn most of that “family contribution,” and borrow a couple of thousand if needed.</p>

12

<p>Is that $2500 included in what you know you have to pay? I ask, because often when you get that first bill from the school, the full premium is frontloaded and due the first term. You might want to go on a monthly payment plan if your school offers it and start it right away. For a relatively small fee, it will divide your annual costs that are payable directly to the university into monthly payments usually starting this summer, so you can a start on paying the college. Those expenses not going through the bursar’s accounts like transportation, books, sundries, toiletries, pocket money, you have to come up with on your own, but your family might be able to scrounge a lot of it from their own cupboards or work them into their regular shopping budget. </p>

<p>Usually these payment plans have calculators that you can play around with and see what your payments will be for each month.</p>

13

<p>Can you get a job with a national company and work locally when home and work at the same company at a location by your school? IF so, then you might be able to get health insurance thru them.</p>

14

<p>@mom2collegekids
It’s a food truck business. The vehicle itself is extremely depreciated, almost 20 years old. The business contributes a profit of $4,000 each year. My mother therefore is the bread winner of our family and brings our AGI up to $37,000 through her own job. I guess I’ll never know what the school’s opinion was on the market value of the business though. And since my parents speak little to no english, as a high-schooler, I had no choice but to estimate the market value myself and get through this FA process alone.</p>

<p>My personal preference is to take up the work study I received and pay for the insurance plan from the school, but thank you for presenting another option. </p>

<p>@cptofthehouse
My school splits the payments into the fall and spring semesters. No monthly payment plan. My first bill should come in July. I’ll work with my parents to see how much of their current savings they can contribute, and what we can do this summer to increase those savings.</p>

15

<p>What major school does NOT offer a payment schedule? They usually subcontract it out. If it will help you, call the bursar’s office and look for info. I’m pretty sure there is something. I don’t know a major school that does not offer one.</p>

16

<p>OP, congrats on getting into a good school, and receiving a great financial aid package. I do have to say however, that if coming up with $6000 is going to be that difficult for your family, maybe you should consider attending a community college for a couple years instead? Although, cc could cost close to that. Did you get any Pell grant as part of your FA package?</p>

17

<p>$6,000 is easy to come up with if there are no loans at all in the aid package. Assuming that you are eligible to file the FAFSA, you will qualify for $5,500 in federal loan money for your freshman year. Whatever summer job you find should net you at least $500. You are good to go.</p>

<p>You do need to look at the institution’s break-down for the COA. Is the $6,000 you are to come up with the total for books/personal/travel, etc.? Then you will need about half of that up-front in order to get you to college in the first place, and to pay for your books. And, since you won’t get the loan money until you are at college, you will need to make some money starting right about now to cover those start-up costs. The good news though is that you might not need $3,000 just to get to college and to buy your books. Those costs are somewhat under your control.</p>

18

<p>Having your house paid-off is actually hurting you if you are applying to a profile school. You have a great offer. Use loans to cover the difference.</p>

19

<p>That varies by school. Not all Profile schools use home value in the same manner; some cap what they count toward the institutional EFC. And with no other assets, owning the home isn’t always an issue. In my mind, having a paid-for home is never a bad thing!</p>

20

<p>Sinking money into a house to pay it off is a bad thing when the housing market takes a dive and you loose liquidity of your hard earned dollars.</p>

<p>When it comes time to sell your house, your stuck until home values go back up.</p>