<p>The IM calculators on finaid.org and collegeboard.com gave me wildly different numbers. I gave them both the same inputs and got almost identical FM values, but on finaid my IM number is considerably higher, and on collegeboard it is considerably lower, to the point where my finaid number is almost twice my CB number! Any idea which is more likely to reflect what schools like MIT, CMU, Cornell, RPI and WPI will come up with? I will try to find calculators on each of their sites too!</p>
<p>Buy a used copy of “Paying for College Without Going Broke” 2010 Edition by Kalman Chany. (try amazon) The IM Calculation is in there, but not in 2011 Edition, the Collegeboard did not cooperate with Kalman Chany for the 2011 Edition.</p>
<p>That is so interesting- slumom-- about CB not cooperating with Chany because I noticed that when I ran the numbers on the college board’s efc calculator recently it only gave me an estimated number with no details. I looked back on a calculation I did last summer and I was given the efc plus a breakdown of how it was calculated. Last summer’s used 2010-2011; the recent calculation must have used an “update” for 2011-2012. The CB probably didn’t like that people could actually see the hocus-pocus involved in calculating these fantasy numbers (I actually posted a query about this somewhere else on CC).</p>
<p>I have the 2010 edition but was hoping not to have to do it by hand 
I guess I’ll try that too to see which number it ends up closer to.</p>
<p>Upstatemom, I was also surprised to get no details from the CollegeBoard calculator. I guess if they are the ones in charge of the Profile their calculator should be the correct one? I wonder if the finaid.org uses an older formula because it <em>did</em> give details.</p>