This discussion was created from comments split from: Financial Aid/ College payment advice please.
My family has an income of $76,000.00. We claimed six exemptions for 2016 tax year. Do we stand a chance of any kind of financial aide help?
@penny2969, Welcome to the forum.
Please start a separate thread. Posting your own questions on someone else’s thread is called hijacking, and it’s something you want to avoid. You’ll get better help with your own thread and awkwardcity can continue to get help relevant to his situation on his.
Split this off into its own thread
ED
@Penny2969, You can run the FAFSA4caster to see if you might qualify for Pell. Also run the net price calculator on the website of any college you’re interested in to get an estimate of what it may cost your family. If parents are divorced or own a business, the NPC may not be accurate.
The best aid comes from the colleges. Students’ standardized test scores and GPA are important; they’re used to determine eligibility for merit aid.
What state are you from? What’s your yearly budget for college? If you have a student applying in the fall, post his/her stats and people can help you better.
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My family has an income of $76,000.00. We claimed six exemptions for 2016 tax year. Do we stand a chance of any kind of financial aide help?
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first of all…who are those 6 exemptions? Are any of them adults? Grandparents? Relatives?
Are they all living in your home?
If any of them are adults or grandparents, do they have any income (pension, Social security, disability, part time job, etc)
Secondly…most schools will not give you much aid NO MATTER what your EFC is. Even if somehow you ended up with a very low EFC, most schools will not give you much aid.
Thirdly…even if you got “some aid,” would it be enough?? If a school costs $30k per year, and you got $10k in FA, then how would you pay the other $20k per year???
What is your home state?
What are your stats?
How much can your family contribute towards college each year?
You can estimate your FAFSA EFC by going here:
https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/pay-for-college/paying-your-share/expected-family-contribution-calculator (federal methodology)
^If your parent(s) contribute to 401k account make sure to add that back in where it asks for “untaxed income/benefits”.
Tax paid can be estimated here (depends on age of your siblings) https://www.taxact.com/tools/tax-calculator.asp or 2015 tax return info can be used (that your parents should have completed by now).
To see what a particular school might offer in grants (sometimes that is listed together with federal/state grants and sometimes separately) for your family size and income, use the Net Price Calculator on college websites.
Who are the six exemptions?