<p>I have been admitted in Cornell. Cornell says they are 100% need based school. Is it possible to see detailed calculations to see how they have arrived at the Financial aid package? </p>
<p>I would like see which assets and income they have used towards EFC. </p>
<p>If you call and talk to a financial aid officer, he/she may share that info with you.</p>
<p>Did you run their NPC? You can play around with different scenarios to see how components affect the award. If you are low income the aid is usually ‘super aid’ One student I know this year was able to go for 2,000 a year in work/study only, no loans. They had 0 EFC but did have savings, and where other schools required student use about 10,000 to 12,000 of that, Cornell didn’t ask for any.</p>
<p>So if you haven’t, the first thing is to run the NPC for your families expected contribution and you can see what they consider your ‘need’ to be.</p>
<p>Some schools do require a student contribution regardless of a zero EFC or low income/assets. Some formulas do have certain fixed components. As Brown Parent writes, playing with the NPC can give you some idea what affects the contribution requirements. You can see the break point on income/ assets, by running scenarios through the formula. If your situation is not coming out to what your package is, you can bring that up with the fin aid officer, who may, as Kelsmom says, share some infor with you.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably most or almost all schools have a student contribution (expected student loan or work earnings). For example, Harvard expects a student contribution of $4,600, and Stanford expects a student contribution of $5,000, even though these are among the schools with the most generous need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>College…on one of your other threads you refer to the EFC. Cornell uses the CSS Profile as well as the FAFSA. Their institutional need based aid awards really have nothing to do with the FAFSA EFC. Cornell uses the information from the Profile to determine your need based aid award using their funds.</p>
<p>I’m guessing that Cornell’s package was less than you anticipated. It is highly likely that the information on the Profile, which delves deeper into finances, was used.</p>
<p>Things that can make a difference:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Divorced parents. The FAFSA EFC only considers the income and assets of the custodial parent, plus any child or spousal support. The Profile has a non-custodial parent form as well…so both parents are used.</p></li>
<li><p>Primary home equity- the FAFSA does not even ask for information about primary home equity. The Profile does. Colleges use home equity to a greater or lesser degree when computing need based aid.</p></li>
<li><p>Simplified needs- for FAFSA, you might qualify for this if your income is below a certain amount and you satisfy another requirement. Your assets would not be considered at all. For Profile, your assets would be considered.</p></li>
<li><p>Self employed or business owners- deductions allowed by the IRS for self employed or business owners are often added back in as income for institutional financial aid purposes.</p></li>
<li><p>Rental properties- if your family owns these, you could also see deductions allowed by the IRS added back into income for financial aid purposes.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>How about retirement accounts such as IRA/401K? are they considered part of asset or they are off the list even when using CSS</p>
<p>The balance IN your accounts is typically not counted as an asset. BUT the contributions you made in the tax year used for the FAFSA or Profile are added back in as income. </p>
<p>There is speculation that Profile schools might look at the balances in those accounts and if they are excessively over funded compared to your income, they might question that.</p>
<p>Thumper, if they haven’t questioned that, does that mean they didn’t consider balance to be out of proportion? I don’t know how you would overfund retirement account, if you are employed, you can only contribute, according to limits. </p>
<p>Would it make sense to invest in Roth IRAs for next 4 yrs? so the amount you will be investing will be less as the taxes will be taken out before investing and taxes you pay will be high, which will lower EFC? </p>