<p>So I just went onto a finaid calculator and my EFC for FM is 53,000. IM on the other hand says 83,000. I have a sister full pay in college right now so even the 83k wouldn't be that bad. How do I know which schools use what? I mean 30k is kind of a big discrepancy.</p>
<p>If a school requires CSSprofile as well as FAFSA then they will use IM for their own institutional aid (based on CSS info) and FM (based on FAFSA) for federal aid. </p>
<p>How would 83k not be bad? There are no schools I am aware of that cost $83k a year, so you would be full pay with an EFC of 83k. You will probably be full pay with an EFC of 53k as well. Did you enter that there will be 2 in college on the calculator? If so the EFC is your own personal EFC and has already taken into account that you have a sibling in college.</p>
<p>As far as federal aid is concerned you will only be eligible for unsubsidized student loans with such a high EFC (the biggest federal grant, the pell, requires an EFC of around 5200). For institutional aid it would depend on the school and their aid policies. Some of the very generous schools offer need based aid for incomes in the range of up to $180,000. But your EFC indictes a higher income that that.</p>
<p>@raiderade – That amount is per year, not for all four. I made the same mistake when I first saw ours.</p>
<p>I thought that the EFC was a combined EFC (so like between both myself and my sister). Oh well, that’s what we expected. I was expecting to not get 1 drop of aid. Sad thing is my parents make around 120k combined, but we cannot manage to sell a rental property we have at the beach (worth roughly 10x my parents’ combined salary and there’s no mortgage on it). But it’s all good.</p>
<p>And some FAFSA only schools use the FAFSA EFC to award their own institutional aid as well. Only about 300 schools use the Profile. Many schools above that number award institutional aid, but they use the FM FAFSA EFC to help them make the determination of need based institutional aid as well.</p>
<p>To the OP…your rental property value should have also been reported on the FAFSA. I’m not sure why there is such a huge difference. BUT it’s not only the rental property value. That is reported on BOTH the FAFSA and the Profile.</p>
<p>Well either way I’m not getting an ounce of aid. I guess there’s something that’s making a big difference. I just used the collegeboard EFC calculator. There are a lot of savings in my name, does that make a difference?</p>
<p>Yes. On FAFSA 20% of student assets go to that student’s EFC. only 5.6% of parent assets impact the FAFSA EFC </p>
<p>But if your parents have a rental property worth over $1,000,000 you are unlikely to be in the running for need based aid.</p>
<p>Full pay for 2 kids at $120K per year income…yikes! I hope they have more liquid assets than the beach house!</p>
<p>They’ve got 160k in savings just for me for college. Worst case I take out 40k in loans but I probably won’t have to. I’m genuinely not financially needy, I just thought I’d throw my numbers into a calculator and see what happened.</p>
<p>$160k in savings isn’t bad at all. You could live on campus at most state universities or live off-campus in a student apartment without using all of that up. Privates might be a little trickier, but only the most expensive (significantly above $40k a year for tuition) will be completely out of reach for you.</p>
<p>0 aid might be kind of annoying, but I think most people would trade full Pell and a bunch of loans for $160k dedicated to college in the bank any day of the week and twice on Sunday’s.</p>
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<p>That is terrific. If you add the Stafford loans to that mix, you should be able to fund many schools with no problem. Only the very most expensive would be out of reach. </p>
<p>With that kind of college savings, added to your parent income…you probably will not get need based aid. BUT the good news is your family planned well for your college finances.</p>
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<p>OP, what is the COA that you are talking about? There are about 8 distinct tiers of college COAs out there (I learned that at a FA seminar) from CC to top 20 elite private.</p>
<p>Full pay at an Ivy League (Columbia).</p>