<p>At the end of the school year, my son was fortunate to obtain a summer internship paying approximately $13,000 for the summer.
On the financial aid application materials I estimated his summer income at $2000.
He attends a private university with generous financial aid and was also recently accepted at another private university as a transfer.
I sent an update with information on the income from the internship, living expenses (which I estimated at $5700) and a planned computer purchase, to both universities.
Unfortunately the transfer U sent out their package yesterday and said they will not be able to update it with the new information before he has to make a decision.</p>
<p>Any guesses as to how much this will change his financial aid packages?</p>
<p>Our family has low income (husband's business is still struggling to recover from the recession) and minimal assets, although we had fairly substantial college savings, thanks to grandfather.</p>
<p>I don’t know for sure, but I am interested in the answer. My take ont his: If a student gets a job of that amount, half over the allowable earnings goes onto the FAFSA EFC, I know. But if this is an internship with costs attributable to it, I don’t know how those costs would be taken into account. My understanding is that the allowance of about $5K and the half that is not used for the EFC is built in for living expenses, so your son will get hit for about $4k in EFC for this plus half of anything else he earns this year. This will be for the following school year 2012-13. Make sure that when the FAFSA is completed he has zero in his bank accounts, pockets, under the bed, investments, because all of that will be hit up for 20% to the EFC.</p>
<p>That is my interpretation, but could be wrong.</p>
<p>Thanks, cptofthehouse.</p>
<p>Unfortunately we got a very poor financial aid offer from the transfer U even before they take the additional income into consideration. We’ll try to appeal, but I don’t have much hope, and now I’m just praying that his original school still comes through with good aid.</p>
<p>I don’t think you should have sent that info to the financial aid office. You would have to report it on the following year’s FAFSA/PROFILE as 2012 income, but it’s none of their business what he makes this year until then. But when they know…they can use whatever info they so please for their own money. So his earnings will be taken into account, definitely, for the 2013-14 year. FOrget the appeal, they’ll just point to the money he is going to have in the pot from the internship.</p>
<p>My son regretfully had to turn down a very nice Wash DC internship even though it paid. By the time he paid for living expenses and other costs, he would have netted out very little or anything. By working locally at a run of a mill summer job, he could save at least half of anything he made. living at home cut out room and board.</p>
<p>It’s in many ways that those who need money are limited.</p>
<p>Update:
We were able to successfully appeal the financial aid offer from the transfer school, and we were also told by their office that the summer internship money would be counted in next year’s (2013-14) financial aid process, not this year’s.</p>