<p>We just got back from visiting U of Miami (great school, we put in her deposit today) and while checking our e-mails from last week we saw one from FAFSA saying it had been updated. It seems someone made changes to the form and now our EFC has doubled! This has wiped out some of her aid and I am so confused as to what is happening. The help line is closed now and I am so frustrated!</p>
<p>They changed my and my husband's wages for 2008 to $0.00 and my daughter's number of family members to 1 and student's number in college to 1 for questions #96 and #97. So now it says we made had no income for 2008 and daughter is independent and has no income and yet the EFC went UP to $7,000.00??!!! How is this possible and what is going on? Can someone explain? Please??!!!</p>
<p>That sounds very odd. Is she classified as independent based on any of the questions in FAFSA (over 24, has a dependent of her own, is a veteran, etc etc).</p>
<p>Did they change your husbands AGI to $0 or just the income from wages to $0. The income from wages is used in the formula to calculate allowances for work related expenses such as FICA. Only income from work should be put there, not income from any other sources. A reduction in the amount shown as income from work would increase the EFC as it would mean that allowances against income would go away.</p>
<p>I don’t think that is true and you should probably contact fafsa right away. Your info is password protected and technically you aren’t even supposed to know your child’s PIN and vice versa</p>
<p>Yes schools can go in and change your FAFSA if they believe there is something that needs correcting. In fact they are required to do so. They do not use your PIN but their own.</p>
<p>Were the amounts entered as income from work originally according to the instructions here?</p>
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<p>I am not exactly sure how self employed income is reported taxwise - is it W2s the same as other earned income? I don’t honestly know if they are correct in changing this on your FAFSA (hoefully Nikkil or Kelsmom will weigh in). </p>
<p>The fact that they have changed this number probably accounts for the change in your EFC. The only thing those numbers are used for is to calculate certain allowances for people that work. These allowances reduce your AGI so therefore reduce the income used by the EFC and reduce your EFC.</p>
<p>I still question how they can " correct" your information . I can understand asking for verification , such as not processing finaid based on estimates before taxes are filed.</p>
<p>We are not self employeed, but employed by the corporation that we own. Sort of a fine line that has proven to be an issue more than once for us . We were chosen for verification as I am told happens randomly in about 1/3 of FAFSA applicants.
I understand the necessity to provide documents as prepared by a CPA, but I do not understand how an employee of a university can go into your profile and change it, according to their own interpretation of legally binding documents…</p>
<p>And I also though EFC was more of a barometer than anything binding as far as awards go…our EFC has never been even close to what the colleges have billed us for.</p>
<p>I just checked and box 14 of form 1065 (the k-1) has the amount that used to be listed on the FAFSA. Someone changed it to zero. I can’t wait to call tomorrow morning when they open and find out about this!!!</p>
<p>Last time U of Michigan changed something and then I had to deal with their financial aid dept. in order to fix it. FAFSA would only tell me who changed it and would not fix it. The school who made the error had to. This could be a nightmare to fix!!!</p>
<p>SVMMom, good luck getting anything done. If you go through my threads on financial aid & scholarships, you’ll see I had the same problem this year. They set my dad’s income to 0, bumping the EFC up by 1100. I called and they said schools are allowed to change stuff at will.</p>
<p>Hey, guys … financial aid officers do not “get to” change info based on the info you provide … we HAVE TO. It is not a matter of being allowed to … it is a matter of being required to. Parents & students make lots of mistakes in entering info on the FAFSA. If the aid officer receives documents that indicate a mistake was made, that aid officer must (yes, MUST) correct the mistake.</p>
<p>I am not saying aid officers never make a mistake. My brother had one make a huge mistake last year. But before you jump to the conclusion that it’s a mistake, you need to talk to the aid officer to find out why the change was made. If the change is correct BASED ON THE REGULATIONS GOVERNING FINANCIAL AID then the change stands.</p>
<p>As for Box 14 of schedule k-1 … it is possible that the aid officer is not aware that this amount counts as income earned from work. Please understand that if this amount is negative, it is counted as 0 (no negative numbers are ever used in income earned from work - if it’s negative, it’s always 0 - the negative number shows up in AGI, but can’t be used in income from work because it throws off the tax calculations).</p>
<p>Just went back over OP’s post. Interesting … sounds like some mistakes may have been made, given the info about the dependency status. If someone checks off any of the dependency status boxes incorrectly, the parent info is automatically ignored in the formula. But that doesn’t make sense, because if she is considered independent & has not reported income, her efc would be 0. The school must not be on an automated system - the combination of errors would be impossible to make at the school where I work. Hmmm … you definitely need to have someone pull her file & look at it.</p>
<p>If you don’t get the help you want, pm me & let me know what they said. I’ll see if I can help you.</p>
<p>1 for daughter’s HH was because they put her as an independent. Did she fill out a verification worksheet & just list herself??? That happens a lot. The government lets us assume 3 in HH with 1 in college if there are married parents & the FAFSA has 3 & 1 - even if the student neglects to list the parents. The aid officer may have changed it based on the verification worksheet listing only 1.</p>
<p>I wonder if maybe a newbie did your file.</p>
<p>OHHH … I am thinking that your D may well have put 1 in HH size on her worksheet. The aid officer probably changed the HH size to 1. That would have picked up only the income listed - and attributed it to her, most likely. That’s a weird combination of events, but probably what happened.</p>
<p>I am trying to understand the process so when I call tomorrow I can have an intelligent discussion. I will pm you if things do not go well. Thanks!</p>
<p>SVMMom- one of my DDs has had quite a few errors in her aid over the years, mainly due to the problems of understanding the new and ever changing implementations of ACG etc.</p>
<p>When you do contact them, try to be extremely clear on the list of issues- you might even email so the person can look at what they did with your list in front of them and look side by side to determine why/how the errors were input.</p>
<p>I have had no problem getting errors fixed, but I find it worked best when I seemed to know more than they did (thanks, CC) and was able to be detailed and specific as to the issues concerning me…and of course, be very kind and gracious!</p>