<p>It asks about a lot of things but does not necessary make positive adjustment for them. For instance, primary home ownership questions are there so that your home equity amount can be used as an asset. FAFSA does not include any home equity of a primary home. As for medical bills and expenses, you can often get a FAFSA adjustment for them. If a PROFILE school takes them into consideration, the fin aid office will make a FAFSA adjustment, which their are allowed to do. Fin aid officers love to get that FAFSA EFC as low as possible because any federal funds the applicant can get means less funds that the school has to give to meet need as close as they can. </p>
<p>PROFILE does produce a higher EFC most of the time by far. That is a fact. The whole reason that there is a PROFILE is to get additional information on assets and income that FAFSA does not include so that the colleges can tap into them. </p>
<p>Just thought of another PROFILE item that might not be on FAFSA, and cannot be adjusted on FAFSA which are loans that a parent may be paying for education. </p>
<p>How did you get a lower need number from PROFILE, BillyMC? How did the school handle it, in terms of integrating the awards with the federal money? This might be of interest to the OP as an example s/he might be able to use for her school in terms of methodology. </p>
<p>The way most schools meet need is that they use all of the Federal/state monies they can first and then layer on the school funds. Because the FAFSA EFC does tend to be lower than the PROFILE, this sort of situation that the OP has does not tend to happen often.</p>