<p>
</p>
<p>That’s very difficult with you, since all you have posted is so obviously fiction. </p>
<p>Hint: if you want to write fiction and pass it off as fact, it’s very important to keep the facts straight-- otherwise everybody else can see the gaping holes and contradictions.</p>
<p>Kelsmom, I never would have picked up on that and I can’t imagine that many NCP’s, especially those with liberal visitation, would keep track of how much money they spend on their own child. That’s just ridiculous considering the gaping loopholes for excluding other types of income. Anyway, as you said, Auto 0 doesn’t look at any student income, so it’s a moot point in steve’s case.</p>
<p>Calmom, not to be argumentative, but you seem to be contradicting yourself. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you a tax professional? It seems that you’re saying that he doesn’t have to file a 1040 if he doesn’t choose to claim his losses. Yet, in the next paragraph, you’re saying that NYU should deem him ineligible to file a 1040A. I guess it’s not clear to me why you think that schools are in a position to rewrite tax law. In the absence of an actual error in the filing, I’m not sure that would, or should, be the case and would be interested in knowing what kelsmom’s opinion on that is.</p>
<p>Or you could send your kid to McGill University…a very similiar school, with similiar presitge and a similiar urban setting.</p>
<p>And you could save upwards of 40K a yr all told.</p>
<p>NYU is such an overpriced money hole of a school…Pell Grant fraud so you can have your kid cavort around Manhattan for a few yrs??? </p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Please dont tell me he can only study X at NYU…there isnt anything that specific you study in regards to a career as an undergrad anymore really outside engineering, lets get real.</p>
<p>sk8ermom, gifts are expected to be reported (that is in the directions). If the NCP pays for clothes, school fees, lessons, etc that would not be something I would be looking for in terms of unreported income. However, paying child support TO the child in order for the custodial parent to get out of reporting it as untaxed income … yeah, I’d expect that to be reported. For a FAFSA school, the amount the NCP pays toward college is also considered untaxed income, because it is not “expected” per the FAFSA formula & thus is a gift (and gifts are supposed to be reported).</p>
<p>And yes, if the grandparents give the kid money for college, that is also supposed to be reported.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, I’m saying that NYU can interpret the FAFSA regulations as they want, consistent with the standards of professional judgment, and that allows them to do things that may look arbitrary outside the system. They aren’t telling Steve he has to file a 1040 - they say that they are treating him as if he filed a 1040 whether he does or not, because of special financial circumstances that apply in his case and differentiate Steve’s son from other financial aid applicants. (In this case the fact that the father is sitting on a boatload of bonds, with well over half of his bond sources coming from tax-exempt sources.) </p>
<p>They have the legal power to do that. That power is specified in section 479A of the Higher Education Act: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In plan English, that law states that financial aid administrators have absolute authority to make changes to the FAFSA, IF they have adequate documentation, and if the changes are made because of factors that are individual as to that student – AND that they have authority to use supplementary financial information in making that determination. </p>
<p>
Source: Federal Student Aid Handbook at AVG-105 </p>
<p>What has happened is that the NYU aid administrators can see that the applicant’s father has $37K worth of income from tax-free bonds – on top of other bond income – and the bond income alone is enough to put him well above the 0 EFC threshold. So there is a “special circumstance” – (a) it is documented, and (b) it is something that applies to this applicant and no others. They also have come to the obvious conclusion that it would be unfair and inequitable to disregard the $37K worth of income and the assets they represent for this applicant, but not to the same for an applicant who had less overall income, but happened to have all their money invested in taxable instruments. (For example, an applicant with $40K worth of income from taxable bonds). Since Steve obviously has more money than the hypothetical $40K taxable bond earner, it stands to reason that it makes sense to consider the income in calculating federal aid eligible. Any other result is manifestly unfair to everyone else. </p>
<p>Now, NYU has an alternative way of fixing the form. They can leave the 1040A box checked, and simply add $37K to the AGI. They very clearly have power under the law to do so – the PJ handbook explicitly provides examples of using PJ to adjust the AGI figure. I’m pretty sure that the result would be the same as choosing the 1040 option – that is, the total AGI would pull Steve out of -0- EFC category, and mean that the full value of his income and assets would be considered. </p>
<p>They didn’t happen to do that, in part because if they had adjusted the AGI, they would have gotten inaccurate results because taxable income is calculated differently than nontaxable income – so somewhere along the line they would have also had to do some other compensating data override.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t matter. NYU has followed the law. The law says that “nothing” in any other part of the financial aid law limits NYU’s authority to use PJ to change any of the data on the form, and that NYU’s financial aid decision is final and nonappealable. </p>
<p>Again… this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with IRS. It has to do with the fact that nothing is hard-coded into the FAFSA, because of the broad discretionary power given to financial aid administrators in the exercise of professional judgment. They can’t change the formulaes, but they have very broad power to change any entry into any data field in order to influence the way that results come out.</p>
<p>Honestly Steve, I have a few points to make (and i can’t decide if you are a friggin’ genius and should be managing the US budget crisis or should be audited for all of eternity, or perhaps both), anyway…</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It is your son’s EFC, not yours.</p></li>
<li><p>It is your son’s Pell grant (or not), not yours.</p></li>
<li><p>It is your son’s FAFSA application to fill out, not yours.</p></li>
<li><p>It is your son’s decision of what school to attend… (and thus his responsibility to pay for it), not yours.</p></li>
<li><p>It is your son’s college education and his life. This has proven to be some sort of vendetta at NYU to prove a point over a piddly net in $3,500 for the year in Pell regardless that it defines logic or reason… and this DOES define logic and reason… honesty. You can claim foul all you want, but everyone else sees it. </p></li>
<li><p>Paying this much for a bachelor’s degree with plans of a PhD is questionable. If he listens to you, you should give him lots of options to consider so he is attending a school he can afford and doesn’t end up like that gal who graduated from NYU with 200K in debt and a useless degree and nowhere to go but down.</p></li>
<li><p>The sheer amount of thought and time you have put into this scares me. Not particularly because of any legal issues about it, but I have seen things like this happen many times before, and your extreme vested interest in this tell me something about what is likely going to happen. I hope for his sake I’m wrong, so please keep us updated. I want very much to know if your son’s FAFSA (and his EFC) is changed and if they give him the Pell, what school based aid they offer him. I also want to know if he actually ends up at NYU.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My long developed (and usually correct) “beep beep beep beep” warning light is going on all over the place for your kid. I see this happen more than I’d like to admit and I’ll spare you the gory details of the half a dozen “usual” outcomes. If you have never had a kid in college, I don’t know how to describe it, but I guess you’ll figure it out, eventually.</p>
<p>Again, I can’t decide if you are a friggin’ genius, (I picked up your millions in assets within the first few posts despite you not disclosing it until about page 14- lol) and it prompted me to register. Not that a cool mil is a bad thing, Congrats! Having money and resources and most importantly the WILLINGNESS for you to pay for your son to go to an expensive private school is very commendable. I’m curious if you have a degree and in what?</p>
<p>Good luck and please keep us updated as to what your SON gets in aid and what he decides.</p>
<p>There’s too much mis-information here for me to deal with. NYU does not necessarily have a vendetta against me. They are simply lazy and probably a bit mean spirited in general. They want to discourage people who need financial aid probably because they see many of them as unable to complete their program. If half their students quit, that would be a red flag for applicants and they would not have 40,000 people apply. Then they could no longer charge so much. Game over. So they just rough people up when they ask for aid in hopes that the next rich kid will come along and pay the freight. They never took any time to really look at my situation. If they want to use pj to adjust it down but not up, they probably have authority to do that. But they need to be careful to demonstrate that it is policy driven and they did not re-write my actual fafsa. Maybe someone there has the actual time to look into this, maybe they don’t. They’ll probably let me know in May, so anyone interested in the outcome is going to have to wait a long time. But they do not have authority to adjust NYS aid. I filled out the form correctly according to the rules and I’ll just wait and see what happens at this point. For anyone who would like to create fictions and throw them around on this or any other thread, enjoy yourselves. It does not have anything to do with me. Thanks.</p>
<p>I never said NYU had a vendetta against you. I said you have one against them. :-)</p>
<p>And I have all the time in the world to find out the outcome for your kiddo. Most of those in the fin aid business have been around a very LONG time and I’m not going anywhere. </p>
<p>But a word of advise…stop filling out your son’s FA forms… less you plan on doing his homework and research papers too. The whole process of success in college (and life) is doing things yourself and now it’s time for him to grow up. If he has a question, he can ask you, let him do that and let him grow to be an adult.</p>
<p>Also, I can see where someone might misinterpret something a FAA might say as, “It is my job to lessen your (dependency on) financial aid” which if you took the whole conversation in context actually MEANT, “I don’t want you and your son to take out a crap load of loans you can’t afford so you don’t end up on the front page of the NY Times complaining about the cost of your degree and your inability to repay it because I can tell from your FAFSA your AGI is less than 40,000 a year”, but i can see where someone who WANTS to hear something different might misinterpret this statement to hear, “It is my job to give you as little financial aid as possible.”</p>
<p>Again, FAA’s are there to help your son… they WANT him to be able to attend their school, ANY school that is the best fit for him… HIM!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you serious? This student apparently has little/no financial info of his own to report. PARENT info is intended to be filled out by parents…that’s why FAFSA and other FA forms require the parent’s signature/PIN. Few HS seniors have any experience or experise with financial matters and many parents would not choose to divulge the details of their financial lives to their offspring. That is their right. And that’s a loooongg way off from doing the kid’s homework and research papers.</p>
<p>Okay, I am going to get back into this conversation–</p>
<p>“But a word of advise…stop filling out your son’s FA forms… less you plan on doing his homework and research papers too.” from FAFSA4EVER </p>
<p>Maybe this belongs on a new thread all by itself, but…I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW FAOs, GUIDANCE COUNSELORS, THE COLLEGE BOARD OR THE FOLKS WHO BROUGHT US FAFSA CAN EXPECT A 16-18 YEAR OLD TO FILL OUT THESE FORMS!!! Look at all the postings from parents who can’t figure it out!!! The whole process is insane. And yes, I am filling out the financial information for my D. I’d rather do that and have her spend her time getting her A+s in College Calc, AP Lit, AP Java and College Economics which will help her get merit scholarships. And no, I do not do her homework or research, too.</p>
<p>I hope FAFSA4EVER is not some poser. Im begining to smell a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>Could find a lot of ■■■■■■ today, many kids are out of school, due to holiday!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am very familiar with NYU and financial aid. They are NOT lazy and NOT mean-spirited, but they have very FIRM and INFLEXIBLE standards. They do NOT deviate from their well-established policies. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They want to manage their financial aid budget in the way that works for them, and has been working very well for them for years. As I posted before it is leveraged, tiered system – they assign a student to a tier based on their perception of student qualifications, and within each tier there is a maximum amount of money available for financial aid and no more. The top 5% get their full need met or more with merit aid. Everyone else gets bupkis, but there are a small percentage of moderate need families who might actually be able to make the combination of a $10K grant & Stafford loan work for them. </p>
<p>
That’s obviously not going to happen. Their strategy has worked well for them. They have people lining up at the door willing to go into massive debt to get in. One fool after another.</p>
<p>
Nope, they’ve got everything figured out, they know how many students they need to admit within each tier to fill their class and to meet their budgetary demands. Your son isn’t a priority for them, they are very happy to see him go. The more that you call and argue with them, the happier they will be. </p>
<p>
Yes they did. You just don’t agree with the outcome. </p>
<p>
They can use PJ to do anything they please.</p>
<p>
No, they don’t have to demonstrate that at all. I quoted the law in my post above. They have to demonstrate that it is supported by documentation, and that they have made the changes because of circumstances unique to your son. Those things exist. </p>
<p>That being said, they DO have a policy. Their POLICY is to take all income and assets into consideration, whether or not reflected in the FAFSA. If assets are typical in relation to income shown – for example, a family earns $28,000 and has $12,000 in savings – they leave the formula that leaves a 0 EFC in place. Most families who have low income from earnings supplemented by higher income from investments have that money coming from taxable sources, so usually the whole 0 EFC thing still doesn’t become a “special circumstance” – but if their policy would probably be the same for anyone who had a large source of income from a non-exempt source that results in a significantly higher real income than reflected in the AGI.</p>
<p>In YOUR case you have an income of $43K, of which about $23K comes from nontaxable sources. That amount is too high to qualify for 0 EFC. </p>
<p>In theory, with the filing of a 1040a, the $43K would still qualify you for simplified needs test, but the NYU staff has decided – in their exercise of PJ - to override that option, which puts all of your assets on line for consideration as well.</p>
<p>My guess is that most private colleges would do the same. I may be wrong on that though, so it could be worthwhile for your son to apply to colleges that are known to be generous with financial aid. NYU definitely did not fit that categor</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They HAVE looked at this. They made their decision. I bet if you put it up to a vote on CC everyone who understands the situation would vote the same way.</p>
<p>
No, your son applied ED. They HAVE let you know what their decision is. They have been very, very clear in explaining it. They are NOT going to change. </p>
<p>You have 2 options: agree to allow your son to attend NYU at full cost, or turn down the ED spot and have your son apply to other colleges. I suppose you can cheat on the ED thing and have your son accept the ED spot at NYU and also apply to other colleges, but that’s unethical and in breach of the promise to NYU.</p>
<p>Steve posted that the date for accepting ED has happened. My guess is his son accepted the ED offer. They will now wait and see IF the son gets accepted to Wisconsin or Illinois (Steve said…50/50 chance of acceptance) and then Steve and hopefully his son will make a decision.</p>
<p>NYU won’t give a hoot if he walks at any time. As noted, they have made their decision. If he were a strong accepted student with high stats who NYU REALLY wanted, they would have offered him a small amount of merit aid…NYU didn’t do that.</p>
<p>At this point there is nothing else to say. This is all on auto pilot. The FAFSA will get filed…NYU will make a final decision regarding professional judgment, and the OP and his kiddo will decide if they really want to fund NYU at $51K per year (plus that $5000 or so Pell to round out the cost of attendance). </p>
<p>My guess is taht if this kid does NOT get accepted to Wisconsin or Illinois, Steve will pay for NYU…even if he has to come up with that $5000 himself. Clearly, he doesn’t want his kiddo to “end up” at Albany or God forbid, a community college.</p>
<p>This is a loathsome, offensive thread, yet I can’t look away…</p>
<p>susgeek- so agree with you. This thread has become my guilty pleasure! Steve123–do hope you let us all know how this all turns out for you and your son.</p>
<p>Calmom,</p>
<p>You have done slightly better with your facts, but there is still quite a ways to go. I would make the following suggestions:</p>
<ol>
<li> It is impossible to draw a valid conclusion based upon invalid assumptions.</li>
<li> As a general rule, one first determines the facts and the draws the conclusion after the facts are validated. Reversing the order of drawing the conclusion and then going out to look for the facts is considered a dishonest approach.</li>
</ol>
<p>Issues with facts:
<p>Again, first review facts and insure their accuracy. Next draw your conclusion and support it based upon fact.</p>
<p>
I am personally familiar with NYU’s financial aid practices due to past experience.</p>
<p>
Their current tuition and fees are competitive with other similar universities, plus they are a very large university and in addition to the 5% of their student body offered very generous aid, they allow the offspring of faculty to attend for free. Given the size of their faculty, that means they already have a lot more spots filled with subsidized students than are reflected in their published stats.</p>
<p>In any case, like most large private universities, they work with professional marketing consultants to determine their enrollment management need. (If you aren’t familiar with the phrase, “enrollment management”, look it up.) They will tweak their policies as needed, and do so well ahead of the game based on statistical projections. </p>
<p>
They don’t have to look at your situation with 0 EFC, because as far as they are concerned you don’t have a 0 EFC. They have already made up their mind on that. Their decision is final.</p>
<p>
They didn’t use PJ to exclude your son because of race, color or creed. They used PJ to adjust the FAFSA so that it more accurately reflects your true economic situation, given the extent of your assets and the income that you derive from them. That is exactly what they are SUPPOSED to do – it is the whole point of having “professional judgment”. </p>
<p>FAFSA is designed to be a streamlined, formulaic process that works well for most people with common financial profiles. Most people at the low end of the economic scale do not have much in the way of actual income from untaxed sources, so it works well in most cases.</p>
<p>However, Congress knows that some people’s circumstances don’t fit the formula, so they set up a system which empowers college financial offices to look more closely at the data and make adjustments as appropriate. This is to provide a way to make the system fair and equitable – so that federal aid dollars only go to individuals who are on the bottom end of the economic scale. Congress made the decision to fully delegate this authority to colleges, giving them the last and final word, but only as to their own students. This makes sense because the college financial aid department is in the best position to work closely with the student and family, and because the student always has the option of attending a different college if he doesn’t like a determination made by his own college. </p>
<p>
They are only audited in a spot check manner --some colleges are selected for auditing, and the selection is based at least in part on overall statistics. But in any case, NYU is not doing anything “improper” – to the contrary, it has done exactly what the DOE would want them to do under the circumstances. The sought additional documentation of assets and they made the adjustments based on the documentation. </p>
<p>
The goal of the financial aid system is to provide aid to those who need help the most. In order to have a high amount of income from assets, the person must by definition have a large amount of assets (often called “wealth”). The system also does take into account assets, and denies financial aid eligibility to people with a large accumulation of assets.</p>
<p>The FAFSA formulaes are based on the assumption that people with low incomes typically also have few assets. Congress & the DOE figured that most people with incomes under $30K don’t have enough assets for it to be worth asking about --so they streamlined the FAFSA with the specific goal of making it easier for the lowest income students to apply for aid. BUT they also specifically EMPOWERED college to ASK about assets and income not disclosed or clearly accounted for in the FAFSA, in order to enable the colleges to use PJ to make adjustments for circumstances that deviate from the norm.</p>
<p>
The cutoff for automatic zero EFC is $31,000. $43K is more than $31K – see <a href=“http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/101310EFCFormulaGuide1112.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/101310EFCFormulaGuide1112.pdf</a></p>
<p>I ran the calculation for EFC using federal methodology assuming these facts: divorced parent, 1 child in college, NY State Resident, $43K AGI. The result was an EFC of $5674. (I used the federal methodology calculator here - [EFC</a> Calculator: How Much Money for College Will You Be Expected to Contribute?](<a href=“http://apps.collegeboard.com/fincalc/efc_formula.jsp]EFC”>http://apps.collegeboard.com/fincalc/efc_formula.jsp)</p>
<p>$5674 is more than 0.</p>
<p>I think you probably have the concept of automatic 0 EFC confused with simplified needs analysis, which has a higher cutoff and create a mechanism to exclude assets from consideration, but would not necessarily result in a 0 EFC or even partial Pell grant eligibility.</p>
<p>
The ED agreement specifies that you will make that determination based on the preliminary award given with acceptance – not that you will wait until April to see if things get better. NYU has given you their position. If you don’t like it, the terms of the agreement were that you would turn down the spot so that they could offer it to someone else during the RD round.</p>
<p>
I’m a lawyer. They CAN require an answer based on the representation they gave you in the preliminary financial aid award. NYU has made your son an offer – they have said, “we are delighted to offer you a spot in our 2011 class, but we have determined that you are not eligible for any financial aid. However, we will be happy to give your father a PLUS loan up to the full cost of attendance. This offer is open until January __, 2011. Please send us your deposit by that date if you want to hold your spot.” If your son sent a deposit, then that was saying, legally, “Yes, that is ok with me, I will come even without any financial aid, and I will immediately withdraw any application I have outstanding with other colleges.” That’s how ED works. </p>
<p>If your son sent in a deposit to NYU in response to the ED offer and has not withdrawn any other outstanding college applications, then he is acting unethically. The deposit acts as an acceptance of NYU’s offer. </p>
<p>If your son did not send in a deposit and NYU did not extend the time to do so, then he’s lost his NYU spot. </p>
<p>I didn’t say that the contract was legally enforceable on NYU’s end. No ED contracts are legally enforceable for other reasons - NYU can’t make someone physically attend college if they don’t want to, and they can’t make a person pay for services that aren’t rendered because the student doesn’t show up. All the school could do is seek monetary damages for breach of contract, and if there is a student on their wait list who can fill the spot, then they would not have any proveable damages. </p>
<p>But the fact that a contract is ultimately unenforceable doesn’t mean that it becomes ethical for one party to lie to another, knowing that they can get away with it. I have no doubt that NYU will release your son in the spring. In fact, I think the staff at the financial aid office will probably open a bottle of champagne and celebrate to see him go. They probably are all feeling very sorry that they admitted him, given the difficulties they have had dealing with you. </p>
<p>
NO. They are not REQUIRED to give you any financial aid at all. They are a private college. The ED contract only requires them to give you THEIR estimate of what THEY think they will provide based on THEIR analysis of the information you provided them. The law will give them absolute and final authority to change entries on the FAFSA, as they see fit, based on adequate documentation and special circumstances. You are free to turn them down, but there definitely is NOT anything more that they have to do.</p>
<p>Your vague comment that you are familiar with them does not count for much. Your claim to be a lawyer does not jibe with your previous comment that worked as a small freelancer in some artistic field (forgot what that was). The fafsa4caster is very inaccurate. You need to fill out a complete fafsa for and test it with 43k - turns up a 0 efc. NYU said they have not given a financial aid package based upon my data, and that it will change if I file that way. They have not provided the new package. The have been given all assets and all income and will make their determination. As for how the fafsa formulas were written, you did not write them and you don’t understand the math. If you check the financial planning criteria they represent, you will find there is consistency in how assets and income are balanced to protect people whose income is derived from assets. If you are in fact a lawyer, you are probably not very good in math. I would suggest you seek the advice of a financial professional with experience programming retirement analysis and asset/liability management programs. I have done this myself and your understanding of fafsa’s intent is not robust. Your information on how they are regulated is spotty at best and wrong at worst. I have direct knowledge that you do not possess. As for the ethics, their ed agreement outlines certain steps. They have not completed the step yet that requires my son terminate other applications. They also offered to allow him out of the ed if he finds later he cannot afford it. My acceptance of the ed was based upon their commitment. As for them uncorking a bottle if my son does not attend, I spoke with the fa office 3-4 times, with the last one being about a month ago. With 40,000 students, they probably don’t remember me. You need to work on your facts.</p>