<p>Floee, if your institutional EFC estimate is so far off from what the school calculated, you absolutely need to find out how they came up with the difference. Your mother needs to be involved in this as well. </p>
<p>Though there has been some relief for small business owners regarding financial aid, if your mother’s business does not fall into some exceptions to the rules, she might be assessed heavily. I know several friends who were in this situation. One family whose income was entirely from apartments they owned was told to sell the building to come up with the college money when that would clearly impact future income adversely. That this was their income source and pension did not impress Harvard at all.</p>
<p>Update - Today, my mom called the financial aid office and they told her to send an email. Email has been sent. No reply yet.
I talked to my counselor earlier, and she says that she will do anything she can to help me. I was thinking of having her send an email as well? She’ll well aware of my financial situation.</p>
<p>Update Numero Deux: My mom finally talked to someone in the financial aid office on Thursday. She was the secretary and says that the letter my mom emailed was very good and they are going to file me under a “special circumstance”. Basically, they will hopefully fund more than the number the CSS Profile spits out. She’s apparently put me as one of their top priorities because I need to get re-evaluated by the 20th so I can accept my EDII agreement.
Finally, we are getting somewhere. The secretary says that we probably have a better chance than most people because we do have proof for everything and such.</p>
<p>I am a bit confused. If your FAFSA EFC is as low as you say, your Pell grant should be in your package - it would be estimated, based on this year’s scheduled award amounts. Pell is based on FAFSA EFC, not Profile EFC. It sounds to me like the school found a mistake in your FAFSA info and corrected it. Otherwise, you should definitely have a Pell in that package. You should also have a $2000 unsubsidized Stafford included in your package, regardless of your EFC. </p>
<p>Please report back to us & let us know what happened. Good luck - I hope it works out well for you.</p>
<p>The most obvious thing that occurs to me is some confusion of gross reciepts for the business vs. net profit vs money paid as salary. If you do not routinely help your Mom with accounting for the business, it would be easy to make an error. You need to run your forms past an accountant. Ask nicely for pro bono or reduced fee. The accountant can probably get a small tax break for helping you, even if you can’t afford the usual fee. </p>
<p>Talking to the institution is also in order as has been noted above.</p>
<p>You can run $200,000 through the cash register and net nothing you can take home to your family in any way. I know. LOL</p>
<p>kelsmom - I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about. I was asking if the Pell Grant would have already been included in my estimated aid package, because the website is unclear about it. I am eligible (no mistake, trust me), but I was wondering if I would have it included AFTER they announced the 2009 amount or if they would estimate before. I have a feeling it was not been added in.
BigG - We do have an accountant, and she is amazingly unhelpful in this process. Whenever I have asked my mom to ask her for help, she would fill in a couple of boxes in then tell us she could not find our file and that we’d have to make due. I was VERY frustrated.</p>
<p>Hopefully this will all be over by February 20th so I can click that stupid little, “Yes, I will be attending!” link and send in my deposit. It’s been taunting me…</p>
<p>It would surprise me if a school gave you an estimated financial aid package without the Pell, if you are eligible. What I am saying is that when the school looked at your tax info, it is possible that they found that you had entered something incorrectly - and that they changed it, as they are required to do - and that you are no longer Pell eligible. I say this because it does happen. For example, the parent may say that she is eligible to file a 1040A or 1040EZ when she is not eligible to do so. Sometimes this mistake puts the family into a special formula that yields a low efc. When the FAFSA is adjusted to reflect the fact that the family must file a 1040, the efc can change a lot.</p>
<p>I am not saying that this happened - but I am saying that I can’t believe a school would NOT put a Pell amount on your estimated award if you are eligible. The Pell is the FIRST award subtracted from the COA when packaging financial aid.</p>
<p>The Pell is subtracted from the EFC?? I would think the Pell would be the first AID awarded towards meeting the difference between the cost of attendance and the EFC. I thought that finaid didn’t cover the EFC. Am I wrong?</p>
<p>I checked, and unless they filed the Pell Grant under the “[CollegenNameHeere] Scholarship”, it has not been added yet. Only that, the Stafford Loan, and workstudy.</p>