<p>Next year I will be doing my first year of undergrad. My brother will be in his senior. He attends a state school that my parents have been able to afford mostly out of pocket, so they never filed fafsa for him. I plan on attending Fordham, so they filed fafsa for me and listed that I had a brother in school. Our EFC is reasonable, but I will be taking out some loans. Before I make my choice, I wanted to know how our EFC will be affected by my brother's graduation? I can definitely afford to go to Fordham if my aid remains the same or close, but will our EFC double with only one student in school? (My parents are taking out loans of their own for next year to make sure they can contribute some to both, but after my brother graduates they are just going to move the money they used for his school to mine.)</p>
<p>Your individual EFC will double, assuming you and your brother have similar income and assets of your own.</p>
<p>For your parents – if they had filed a FAFSA for both your brother and you, they would have received an EFC for each of you. For example, an EFC of 10,000 for you and 10,000 for your brother. That makes their total, combined EFC 20,000. The total was divided by 2, but still totals the 20,000 the federal methodology calculates they can contribute. When your brother graduates, their EFC will still be 20,000, but will not be spread out over two students. Your individual EFC will total the 20,000.</p>
<p>So, normally, their total, combined EFC doesn’t actually raise or lower depending on the number of kids in college, it just gets redistributed.</p>
<p>In your case, they may be seeing an artificially low EFC since they filed yours listing 2 students in college, but didn’t file one for your brother. Using the example numbers above, they’ll be getting the 10,000 EFC for you, but of course not the 10,000 EFC for your brother since they didn’t file a FAFSA for him. When they file the following year for you only, they will see their (theoretical) 20,000 EFC with just one student in college.</p>
<p>The EFC actually could more than double when the older sibling graduates. Remember, not only will he not be a college student, but likely he will also not any longer be a counted as a household member. SO instead of having four members of the household (mom, dad, bro and sis) there will only be three (mom, dad, sis). In addition, there will now only be one in college instead of two.</p>
<p>And if your parents’ incomes increase, that will also add to your EFC.</p>
<p>We were in the same boat. Our EFC more than doubled this year. DS is no longer a member of our household, AND he no longer is in college.</p>
<p>Not necessarily the nicest news to hear, but thanks for the insight. Might a private school’s methodology be more forgiving in terms of aid? And do you think it would be worthwhile to contact the school’s financial aid office and explain our situation, or do you think this is something I just need to face realistically.</p>
<p>It is not the usual way it goes, but occasionally people do get a somewhat lower expected contibution from private schools that use the CSS Profile as well as the FAFSA. This is usually because of heavy medical debt or something like that.</p>
<p>If you think there’s something a financial aid office might not understand about your family’s economic situation --something that the FA applications do not show-- then it’s always fine to call them and explain your circumstances. They’ll let you know if an adjustment might be considered. </p>
<p>But, yeah, it is also good to understand that it may be tough to make the money pieces all fit together. It is for most people.</p>
<p>You can ask at the colleges…but I would not expect them to say “sure…when your sibling graduates from college, your need will be the same and we’ll give you the same amount of need based aid.” That’s just not likely. You need to apply for need based aid annually and if your circumstances change, so does your need, and therefore likely your aid.</p>
<p>What you SHOULD ask is if any of the aid your are receiving is merit in nature. DD got a grant to school and we were concerned that she would lose it when DS graduated. This came as part of a need based financial aid “package”. Oddly, at her school, some “grants” are a combination of need and merit. She was assured that if she kept a certain GPA, she would NOT lose her grant for the full four years. We got that in WRITING. To be honest, we were mighty surprised!!!</p>
<p>Thumper, I never heard of that, what a nice surprise for you!
My son’s grant was so mercurial, it really went up and down with fluctuations in our income.
I took advice I think from you and others to ask about a son in grad school and having children as freshman, etc. and did get varied answers. As expected, many colleges said, we would have 3 in household for children, but in college only 2. Three schools said they would go by the fafsa which says “3”, but we will see. I save all emails about FA and one helped me “remind” the FA office they said they would lower my bill after we spoke of a special circumstance.
Getting things in writing, saving an email (although they try to be vague sometimes) is always a good thing.</p>