<p>Can someone tell me if I can check EFC before submitting CSS/FAFSA? I am filling the forms now, and have not finished them. I am wondering if it is possible to get a rough number/estimate based on the unfinished forms.</p>
<p>I know there are EFC calculators on the WEB. But the actual forms have much more information.</p>
<p>I don’t know of a way to do that, collegekidsdad. In my experience you have to submit and then get an EFC number on a post-submission screen. A day or a few days after that you’ll get a Student Aid Report with that same EFC number, along with your answers to all the questions that you can print out for your records.</p>
<p>I would be helpful, though. My kid came in just $72. above the Pell cutoff. If I’d known it was going to be that close I’d have phoned her and told her to run out and spend that $200 in her bank account!</p>
<p>With FAFSA the numbers are not run through the formula to produce the EFC until you submit it. </p>
<p>I think FAFSA4caster gives you an estimated EFC. But I don’t know how it works or if you can do one if you already have a FAFSA in progress.</p>
<p>I found that the EFC calculators on the WEB were pretty accurate. It seems to me that they took into account income and assets.</p>
<p>FAFSA4caster actually gave me a higher EFC than the actual FAFSA did on the same numbers. That’s why I wasn’t expecting to be as close to the Pell max-EFC cutoff as it turned out to be.</p>
<p>^^ When did you run the 4caster?</p>
<p>Golly… I’m not totally certain. Sometime over the weekend (Jan. 9-10), and then I submitted the Pell yesterday (Jan. 12.)</p>