<p>My DD had work study all four years…in fact, her WS award increased in dollar amount each year (and she was able to earn it all). This is something that may vary by school.</p>
<p>Calmom’s question list is a good one.</p>
<p>BUT the most important thing to remember is for NEED BASED AID…every year is a NEW application and a new year’s worth of information. What you receive on year has no bearing on what you will receive the next. You have to reapply. Most schools will tell you that if your financial situation doesn’t change, your aid won’t either. But if your financial situation changes even a little…your aid could change too.</p>
<p>Actually, I think the policy at most schools is that the self-help portion will increase incrementally over the years, even with all else being the same. The increases are generally not very large – as I posted before it may be that the loan amount simply goes up to track the FAFSA amount, and the work-study might only increase by a couple of hundred dollars each year. </p>
<p>But for a family who is projecting out 4 years, even these small differences are important to keep in mind.</p>
<p>I mean… I think the greatest personal cause for celebration I had this year was that I do NOT have to fill out a FAFSA (ever again!). Meanwhile, unfortunately, dd has discovered with her first paycheck that – guess what? – you don’t actually get everything you earn. Seems that there is a thing called “withholding”. (And d. is lucky, her employer pays 100% of health insurance costs, so all she has coming out of her pay check are FICA and state & local taxes.)</p>
<p>Those are great questions! Like calmom, I’m a single mom and self-employed. I have several in college, though and, um, thumper, I’m under 45… very little asset protection here.</p>
<p>haha Thanks-- but, to this day, people don’t think my kids are mine. More than once, I went to a parent-teacher meeting and had the teacher think I was a friend pretending to be the parent. Good for the ego… not so good for financial aid!</p>
<p>Our EFC for 2008 from the FAFSA we submitted during our D’s senior year was appox. 6700, not 20K as someone stated. And it’s true, we did think that school was going to take our actual 2008 tax return info since husband lost his job Nov. 1 2008. I still think that award was so generous because although D had snall loans, and work study the grant portion was very high. And I do think that that was because she was a very desirable candidate to them.</p>
<p>To respond to the self employed issue. My H never intended to be self employed so we were not set up for that tax wise or otherwise. He was offered work and he took it to keep our family going. The goal was slways to get a full time job which he did finally August 1 2009.</p>
<p>I guess the question is, for the 2009-2010 school year – was the school meeting that 6700 EFC? If, after all the grants, loans and work study were accounted for, you still had to come up with at least $6700 – it makes sense that you would assume that the college would meet the federal EFC. If the financial aid was better than that, then perhaps you should have inquired.</p>
<p>What was your FAFSA EFC based on the 2009 return? </p>
<p>If you are looking at how much you were “gapped” - that is, how much the college expected family contribution exceeds the FAFSA EFC amount – what happened from one year to the next?</p>
<p>Connecticut College meets full need. They use loans as part of their packages, but the do not gap. They compute a family contribution and meet full need above that. </p>
<p>It sounds like the OPs family had a $6700 EFC per FAFSA and my guess is that Conn’s family contribution was similar. That was for LAST school year. </p>
<p>This coming school year, the EFC was presumably higher due to the actual 2009 income. The financial aid for the upcoming year was based on the 2009 income…and assets as of the FAFSA filing date. Sounds like the 2009 numbers were higher and thus the family contribution for the upcoming year was higher.</p>
<p>Conn College gives need based aid only…NO merit aid. Any awards that Conn gives are based on family financial need, not on the student’s GPA, class rank, SAT scores, etc. Those academic criteria got the student an acceptance as a freshman but they are not used to determine the AMOUNT of aid the student received. Perhaps the “packaging” of that amount was someone based on the stats, but not the overall amount. Need based schools do not award aid based on stats.</p>
<p>Then Thumper, why do the need based calculations vary so radically between schools using the same forms? (Not rhetorical btw. I’m really asking. ;))</p>
<p>Curm…I’m going to give you my guesses and what I know.</p>
<p>The FAFSA uses the same formula to compute federally funded aid regardless of the school you are attending. Things considered:</p>
<p>Income, assets, investments, equity in real estate OTHER than the primary residence. We know there is an asset protection AND what the %age of assessment on student and parent assets are.</p>
<p>For Profile Schools, the formulas vary. These schools use the information on the Profile ANY way they choose. One notable example of variance is the way home equity for the primary residence is used. Some schools use none…others use varying %ages of the home equity. Another variable we know is different is the way self employed folks have their business assets viewed by each school. As you know…the self employed have both expenses, and debits…and things that the business owns. These are viewed differently by some Profile schools.</p>
<p>Some questions…how do Profile schools assess income? My guess…not the same way. Ditto assets. Ditto asset protections. These numbers are likely determined BY each school and likely vary from place to place. </p>
<p>There are supplemental questions asked on the Profile which some schools use. These include things like the value of your retirement accounts, and cars. Truthfully, I don’t know what the schools do with this information, but my guess is they have something in their formulas that incorporate this information.</p>
<p>And we know that what SOME schools consider “low income”, others would scoff at in terms of need based aid (e.g. Stanford gives need based aid to students with income in excess of $100,000 a year…most schools don’t come close to that…and certainly the federally funded aid isn’t provided to students in that range).</p>
<p>Don’t they also use the CSS profile? Profile schools generally do NOT define meeting full need as meeting the FAFSA EFC, so it is very common that there is a “gap” between the FAFSA EFC and what the college sets as family contribution.</p>
<p>That’s what I was referring to. (And please don’t tell me it doesn’t happen – the “gap” between FAFSA EFC and family contribution ran between $10-$16K during the 4 years my daughter was in college, including 2 years that she qualified for Pell grants. The college was very happy to take the federal money while at the same time looking at my home equity as an “asset” pushing up our theoretical ability to pay). </p>
<p>From what I understood of the OP’s earlier posts, it sounded like the college also looked at projected income for the following year, which is something that the CSS Profile forms ask. So that in 2008 the family earned X, and they predicted that, with the husband’s loss of a job, that they would earn considerably less in 2009. It sounds to me like the family earned more than anticipated in 2009, and that the college is now not merely basing the financial aid for 2010 on the 2009 income, but they may also be trying to recoup some of their “overpayment” for 2009 based on the under-projection. I got that impression from post #69:
</p>
<p>So it sounds like the college may have either made a professional judgment adjustment to the FAFSA to lower EFC for 2009, or else they adjusted whatever projection they rely on with CSS. In post #82, the OP says she owns a house – so another possibility is that due to the financial hardship, the college opted to forego counting the house as an asset – but since income in 2009 actually exceeded 2008 income, they are back to counting the house again. Whatever it is, for 2010 they are looking at current figures and giving the OP the benefit of any special consideration.</p>
<p>My kids profile schools differed very little in the awards they received. There was an array, but the top and bottom didn’t differ by more than $3K a year.</p>
<p>And at the same school as Calmom’s D, my D retained her work/study job for senior year. Maybe it was paid for by different funds; I don’t know. But she worked in the same office all four years.</p>
<p>Well, I made the “mistake” of paying down my mortgage by about $40K over the 4 years my daughter was in college (not paying extra, just that I’ve been in the same house for 20 years and finally hit the point where more money is going to principal than interest). Also, I forgot to hire a hit man to get rid of my ex-husband, so he was out there plugging along earning income and pushing up the CSS Profile calculation. And then there’s the whole self-employment thing. </p>
<p>I see 2 things with the OP that raise similar issues: home ownership, and self-employment (freelance) income.</p>
<p>I do think that the Cobra payments are something that might be considered and could possibly have been overlooked in the calculations – so it is definitely something to be discussed if requesting reconsideration of financial aid. But that probably would only pull in a small amount of extra grant money.</p>
<p>Actually, home equity alone would be enough for that type of difference – you would get that differential with about $180K worth of home equity. Depending on where they live, that could be a modest home – for example, a family living in a home valued at $300K, still owing $120K on the mortgage.</p>
<p>Can I just ask a basic question of those of you who are so well informed and experienced in this?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>D is applying to schools where we expect she’ll get 3/4 tuition to full ride in merit aid.</p></li>
<li><p>My $ situation is complex: single mom, sole custody, no other children and (here’s the big whammy), self-employed business that varies wildly year-to-year in income.</p></li>
<li><p>Even in leaner years, though, I know I’ll make too much to qualify for need based aid on whatever portion isn’t covered by merit aid.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So my question is: although they encourage everybody to fill out FAFSA, Profile, etc, can we just skip the pain, take the merit $ she’ll receive and not hassle with all the paperwork for need-based aid I know we won’t get anyway?</p>
<p>Some colleges want you to fill out the FAFSA even for merit aid – their policies vary.</p>
<p>Here is what I would suggest: fill out the FAFSA – but if the noncustodial parent has a good income – you can skip the CSS Profile. You won’t get need based aid from the colleges, but it is possible that in a lean year for your business, your daughter might qualify for a subsidized Stafford loan, and in a bad business year for you may even qualify for a Pell grant. Unlike the CSS Profile schools, the FAFSA determination is not going to be auditing your Schedule C or adding money back in, so the ups and downs of your business may work to your advantage in some years. </p>
<p>The FAFSA is fairly easy to fill out, so I don’t think you will find it to be too burdensome. You might be surprised, and if you see your FAFSA EFC coming in as significantly lower than expected, then you can always go ahead with the CSS Profile. </p>
<p>I do think that with a fluctuating income, you are right to encourage your daughter to look for merit money – but keep in mind that merit money has its own set of questions to ask. The two big ones that come to mind is what, if any, is the minimum GPA required to keep the aid, and whether a merit scholarship will be increased to keep pace with tuition. (That is, will the 3/4 tuition scholarship in year #1 still be a 75% tuition scholarship in year #4)</p>
<p>Thank you calmom for trying to explain the difference in EFC’s. I have to admit that this has been as clear as mud for me. I’ve been following this and trying to make sense of everything but it’s been hard. I’m sure the OP is trying to give us information without telling the whole cyber world what her particular financials are.</p>
<p>My D was admitted to two profile schools. The difference in aid was 10,000 just for the first year so I know there is a big difference is how schools determine aid. The difference for FAFSA only schools (private) was even bigger.</p>
<p>I hope that in an appeal that the school would consider COBRA payments. </p>
<p>One thing we considered was the cost of our instate public. The OP has an EFC approximately the cost of my state’s public college cost. We figured that if we could send our child to a better school for the price of our state’s school, we could live with that.</p>
<p>Calmom, schools that use the Profile use their OWN calculations to compute the family contribution. The family contribution using Profile information is usually not identical to the FAFSA EFC. FAFSA doesn’t use home equity at all, as you noted, or non-custodial parent info (not the case for the OP, but is for others)…and the formulas vary. BUT Profile schools that meet full need (and Conn College is one of those) take the family contribution THEY COMPUTE and they do not gap the students when using this formula. We know several Conn students who got need based aid from the school. Their family contribution as computed by Conn College was very close to that computed by the FAFSA. </p>
<p>The OP’s story seems to have a missing piece somewhere. My guess is that it is related to the “self employed” factor of her husband’s work for the year. Profile schools view self employed income in varying ways. I don’t know how Conn does it, but the family income rose significantly due to the self employed status of the dad. But income is income.</p>