<p>Is the amount of aid you receive when completing the fafsa based on which schools you choose?</p>
<p>You do not "receive" any aid from FAFSA. FAFSA calculates your federal Estimated Family Contribution ("EFC") and determines your eligibility for federal financial aid.</p>
<p>Each college to which you apply (assuming they are FAFSA only) then takes that EFC, and calculates your "financial need" - that's based on the Estimated Cost of Attendance ("COA") for the college itself. COA-EFC = need. However, most FAFSA only schools do not meed 100% of that need.</p>
<p>If they are not FAFSA only, they have their own forms or take the CSS Profile, which makes additional calculations of your EFC. They then calculate your need as COA-their own EFC, and then determines your aid. Many schools do not meet 100% of that amount. The difference between your need and your award is called the "gap amount."</p>
<p>Take a look at FinAid</a>! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans for more detailed information.</p>
<p>Nice, thanks for explaining.</p>
<p>Federal aid is very limited. Grant aid is extremely limited. The main federal aid, the Pell, is only available to students with an EFC of below 4042 (for 2008-2009, 2009-2010 tables are not out yet). The maximum Pell is $4731 for a student with an EFC of 0. As the EFC increases the Pell reduces until it is 0 at an EFC of 4042. Other grant aid such as the ACG and SMART grants require Pell eligibility. If you are not eligible for federal grants, then the remaining federal aid consists of loans and work study.</p>
<p>I also have another question regarding the fafsa, when you input all of your parent's information how do they verify or confirm that it' legitimate?</p>
<p>If you had an EFC of 0 then why would you need grants? Or is it because like Chedva mentioned above that not all schools meet your need?</p>
<p>30% of FAFSAs are randomly selected for verification. When you are verified you have to provide supporting documentation for the information provide - signed copies of tax returns etc. Some schools verify 100% of their students.</p>
<p>There seems to be an interface of some sort between FAFSA and the IRS. CC posters have reported having their FAFSAs adjusted to reflect income they have omitted from their tax returns.</p>
<p>EFC means Estimated Family Contribution. If your EFC is 0 it means your need is high. Federal Grants such as Pell/ACG/SMART are only awarded to very high need students. A lot of aid may be loans. Students with and EFC of over 4042 will not receive federal grants, only loans or work study. Loans and WS are considered financial aid.</p>
<p>The majority of schools do not promise to meet full need. Those that use only federal aid generally cannot meet full need.</p>
<p>Ok, I'm understandig this a lot better. So lets say I have an EFC of 0 and therefore I am elligible for a Pell Grant and a Cal Grant. How does the school receive the money? Or how do I get the money to pay the school?</p>
<p>The money is paid directly to the school.</p>
<p>Oh, so the school doesn't use the grants to cover my financial need? The aid the school provides is separate from grants?</p>
<p>No interface with the IRS. If FAFSA's are adjusted, it's because the info collected on the FAFSA & verification documents allows the aid administrator to make the corrections.</p>
<p>"If you had an EFC of 0 then why would you need grants?"
Because having an EFC of 0 does not ... I repeat, does not ... mean that you do not have to pay anything to go to school. What it means is that the formula used to compute how much your family can be expected to pay (from income & savings) is 0. That's it. You will be awarded federal aid based on this fact, and schools may offer you other aid based on this fact. However, if the aid offered to you does not equal the cost of the school, you will have to find a way to come up with the difference. Most of the parents who post here will caution you to try to find schools where you won't have to come up with money you do not have. Always include a low cost school (such as a community college - where your Pell grant may cover the entire cost of tuition) in your possible school list.</p>
<p>You will only be allowed to borrow $5500 in Stafford loans freshman year. If you have to borrow more than this, you will have to find a private lender - this is not easy in these difficult times - and the interest rates can be quite high. Minimizing the amount you need to borrow is wise.</p>
<p>Schools use the federal grants to cover what you owe. They may or may not choose to offer you institutional grants, in addition to federal grants. They will most likely expect you to borrow the maximum amount of Stafford loans for your year in school.</p>
<p>yes the grants are used to meet your financial need. All the aid, including federal, is awarded by the school. State aid usually comes in the award letter from the school also. For instance if your EFC is 0 and your school COA is $25,000 then your 'need' is $25,000. If you are awarded a Pell grant of $4731 that will meet the first $4731 of your need leaving $20,269 in need. If you get the ACG that will be another $750 of need met reducing your need to $19,519. If the calgrant is $5,000 (I don't know what they are) then your need is now reduced to $14519. How this is met depends on your school. If they have no institutional grant aid of their own (many schools do not) then you may receive part of the balance with loans and WS. So for instance an award letter (totally fictional) from the school might read
Pell................4731
ACG.................750
Calgrant.........5000
WS.................3500
Stafford Loan..5500 (maximum allowed for freshman)</p>
<p>Total award 19481</p>
<p>This would leave you with unmet need of $5,519.</p>
<p>If your school promises to meet full need then it would depend whether they promise to meet it with or without loans.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No interface with the IRS. If FAFSA's are adjusted, it's because the info collected on the FAFSA & verification documents allows the aid administrator to make the corrections.
[/quote]
Thanks for the clarification Kelsmom. A poster mentioned a while back that their FAFSA was unexpectedly adjusted because of a couple of dollars they had not reported. They did not seem to know how the school knew of the amount, i did not think about verification (probably from before we had been through the verification process ourselves)..</p>
<p>There is talk of streamlining the whole aid process, and some would like to see a direct dump of IRS data to the FAFSA central processor - that way, it would be quick, easy, and accurate. That is not in the works, though, and at this time there is no interface with the IRS. The example you cited was probably a case where the family sent in info that supported a change - one reason I can think of off the top of my head would be a 1099 that the taxpayer submitted to the aid office but neglected to list on his 1040.</p>
<p>I have read of the proposals to try and generate it from tax returns. Hard to imagine how they would get information on things like assets that way though.</p>
<p>My Ds safety school, which has accepted her, sent her a letter basically saying she would receive a grant, but she had to do FAFSA. Her EFC will be 99999. My X does her taxes, and can not get her 2008 taxes done in time. Do they audit people with 99999 -- can I use her 2007 taxes and add 10% and send in?</p>
<p>You can estimate (make it as accurate as possible) to meet deadlines, put 'will file', then when taxes are filed go back in and make corrections.</p>
<p>The signature page for FAFSA contains this statement
[quote]
...the Secretary of Education has the authority to verify information reported on this application with the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies
[/quote]
. I suppose this means that if they don't crosscheck with IRS currently, they will be soon. </p>
<p>Last year I received a PIN to sign for child #1. This year the darn thing won't work for child #2. Turns out that by this year the system knew that my soc. sec. name was hyphenated and no longer let me use the name I used last year. I never received any notice, just an error message that my PIN was not recognized.</p>
<p>It's even worse when a young woman receiving aid gets married & changes her name! It's sometimes hard to straighten out.</p>