<p>This coming school year I will have 2 college students. How does this effect EFC and financial aid?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>This information is reported to each school and generally is taken into account in calculating the EFC for each one. It should significantly reduce the EFC to each one. Will the cumulative EFC will be equal to (or lower than) the EFC to either school in case you only had one student? That probably depends a lot on the schools.</p>
<p>Depends on the FA policies/abilities of each school. </p>
<p>1) If one of your kid’s school is very generous, but the other kid’s school may not have much aid to give, you could be gapped and have to pay a lot more…</p>
<p>2) If the schools are CSS Profile schools and FULLY meed need, then they typically don’t split family contribution in half. Typically they expect 60% of family contribution (if you had one in school). So, if a CSS Profile full need school expected you to pay $40k for one child, then for 2 kids in CSS Profile full need schools, you’d be expected to pay $24k for each child…so a total of $48k.</p>
<p>3) if neither kid attends a school that meets need, then you could really end up owing a lot.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. I think I’m not going to get much in way of FA
S1 goes to a SUNY and lives home, he gets Stafford loans
S2 wants to go away applied to High Point (they don’t give anything), University of Miami, Univ of Delaware, Siena (accepted with 9k Pres scholarship), Stonybrook, Towson (accepted)and Clemson.</p>
<p>This year the EFC was 13k. Although its only my salary (husband owns his business but has not taken a salary in 2 years) I do pretty well making over 100K so I don’t think we will get any need based aid.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>how do you have an EFC of ONLY $13k with an income of over $100k and only one in college? That seems impossible unless you have several children.</p>
<p>For an income of $105k with one in college…household size 4. No savings.</p>
<p>Estimated Expected Family Contribution (EFC):
Parents’ Contribution 18986
Student’s Contribution 0</p>
<p>TOTAL ESTIMATED FAMILY CONTRIBUTION: 18986</p>
<p>Unless your son has high stats and will get merit scholarships, he won’t get help from OOS publics like Clemson and UDel.</p>
<p>However, if he has high stats, he should submit some apps to schools that would give him ASSURED big merit for stats. Many have upcoming deadlines.</p>
<p>Do you think you can pay the $38k per year for Clemson? If not, then schools like that won’t work (unless merit will be awarded…but even with good merit, Clemson is still going to cost about $26k per year).</p>
<p>Often times if you get a financial aid package from a school, the dirty little secret is the package remains the same for four years, regardless if the tuition goes up and regardless if you have another kid entering college behind them. What can happen is you get gapped with the first kid, but the second college will be more generous with aid with the lower EFC. </p>
<p>Schools are facing a lot of financial pressures, lower endowment returns etc. So one of the ways they squeeze people is to pinch them in financial aid. Which means the minorities get really good financial aid if they have good stats and the middle class “majority” gets hammered. The rich don’t care. They either write the big checks or they have scholarships. </p>
<p>The cruel truth about financial aid is that is ANYTHING but just and fair.</p>
<p>When having 2 in college at the same time really lowers the cost is when both are high stats kids who can get into colleges that meet 100% of need.</p>
<p>*Often times if you get a financial aid package from a school, the dirty little secret is the package remains the same for four years, regardless if the tuition goes up and regardless if you have another kid entering college behind them. </p>
<p>What can happen is you get gapped with the first kid, but the second college will be more generous with aid with the lower EFC. *</p>
<p>That depends on the second school. An OOS public isn’t typically going to give you more need-based grants just because your EFC is lowish. </p>
<p>Even if these students end up with EFCs of $6500 each (which is weirdly low for the family income), that’s still too high for Pell and would likely just mean Fed loan and work-study at an OOS public (unless merit aid is given for stats).</p>