<p>Since the EFC numbers shows that the pell grant is 5500 do I subtract that from the EFC to get the Parents Contribution? What about if we expect to get a work study or something, should we include what we hope our child can earn in that work study as part of his contribution to lower the parents contribution?</p>
<p>EFC is Expected Family Contribution or Parents Contribution to the student’s education</p>
<p>COA - EFC = Need</p>
<p>The Pell grant & work study apart of financial aid which will be count against the Need.</p>
<p>Be careful also about outside scholarships that your student might earn…ask the college how those are applied - most often they are applied against the need, not your EFC. That was something I did not know when my first child headed off to college. I thought his scholarship would lower what we had to pay out of pocket at his college. Work study is basically a paycheck. Your kiddo will go to the college and will find a job and be paid every couple weeks or however that college’s pay cycle is.</p>
<p>The fafsa formula calculates a student contribution based the student info you enter and a parent contribution based on the parent info you enter and then adds them together to get an expected family contribution. Since you received near a full Pell your EFC must be very low to begin with. About the only way Pell by itself would reduce expected family contribution is if the cost of attendance at the school, say a CC that the student commutes to, is low enough that the Pell covers your need as 4kidsdad showed it. If the school costs more than that, EFC is generally the minimum your family will be asked to contribute. Whatever your family is asked to contribute can be divided between parent and student however works best for the family.</p>
<p>The EFC (Expected Family Contribution) is equal to the Parent’s Expected Contribution plus the student’s Expected contribution. PELL is given for those who have an EFC of about $5K on down to zero. the $5550 PELL amount is the maximum amount anyone can get and is given to those who have a ZERO EFC. The PELL, as it is calculated out for you, plus the $5500 first year student loan (if the cost of the college warrents it) are all that are guaranteed by the Federal government. Any thing else including work study is awarded by the schools and each school has different programs and ways of offering the awards.</p>
<p>Your student is not guaranteed to get enough money so that the EFC is all the family has to pay despite what EFC stands for. That is best case scenario for schools that use FAFSA only in terms of fiancial aid. Most of the time schools will gap you and families have to come up with more than the EFC. </p>
<p>If your student is awarded Work Study, it does not go towards the EFC. It is part of the FInanciall Aid award. Work Study is therefore often a mixed blessing. When your student get work study as part of the award, he has to work to get that part of the award, and therefor he won’t have as much time to find his own job and to pay toward the EFC.</p>
<p>I was mistaken, the 5500 was for the stafford loan,not the Pell.
Our EFC is really too high to get anything, but I was wondering how to show that my son needs some sort of award. So I was wondering if we show less in PC towards the EFC if that would help get my son some money in terms of grants, scholarship, or work study.</p>
<p>It is reasonable to predict that your EFC is the least that any college will expect you to pay - and it’s quite possible that you’d be expected to pay more. Saying that you can’t afford that much, unless there are truly exceptional circumstances (catastrophic illness, for example), generally won’t make any difference.</p>
<p>If your EFC is more than you can afford, your son needs to apply to schools where he will qualify for merit aid.</p>
<p>You won’t get more grants or work study to put towards EFC. That’s the point of EFC…that’s what the family is supposed to pay (and often the family is supposed to pay more than that.)</p>
<p>Work study is a federal program and can only be used to put towards “need”…never towards EFC.</p>
<p>Since your son got a full Stafford loan to put towards “need”, then he won’t be able to borrow more to put towards your EFC.</p>
<p>Any grants or scholarships that you get will go towards your “need”.</p>
<p>It sounds like you have an unaffordable EFC. There are only a few ways to reduce the amount that you have to pay:</p>
<p>1) Attend a school that costs less than your EFC (commute to a local state school or CC and use the Stafford loan towards those costs).</p>
<p>2) Attend a school that gave you a HUGE merit scholarship. The merit award was so BIG that it covered all of your need and then reduced your EFC. Plus, at that point, then you can use a Stafford loan to further reduce your EFC</p>
<p>3) Get accepted to one of the very, very few schools that give “super aid”. Those give so much aid that the family contribution can be much smaller than EFC. These are Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and maybe 1 or 2 others. </p>
<p>4) Join the military and have them pay.</p>
<p>How much is your EFC?</p>
<p>What schools did your son apply to?</p>
<p>What state are you in? </p>
<p>Do you qualify for any state aid?</p>
<p>Palves, you don’t tell the colleges or the calculator what you can or will pay–they tell you. They give you the Parent contibuion and the Student contribution based on income and assets for the parent(s) and student. And that is just for qualifying for guaranteed federal aid at this point. When schools get that information, most of the time they do not come close to giving students enough aid so that the family only has to pay the EFC. That is the absolute best case scenario and it rarely happens. </p>
<p>Most of the time the aid package will consist of any grants the college has to give your student, if any at all, the Stafford loans, subsidized if qualifying, work study if the school offers it and the EFC supports it, and …a gap that the family has to make up IN ADDTION to the EFC. </p>
<p>So your student should be looking for some options that he knows are affordable given the situation and that will definitely take him. Those schools are the crown jewels of the college list. The rest is just a venture until actual awards come through, and they usually are not going to pay full need as defined by a family.</p>
<p>So I was wondering if we show less in PC towards the EFC if that would help get my son some money in terms of grants, scholarship, or work study.</p>
<p>PC is the same as EFC.</p>
<p>If you’ve decided that your child should put something towards EFC, then that’s your decision. Your child would have to work a summer job and put that money towards the parents’ EFC. </p>
<p>The EFC is the amount that the parents are supposed to pay (at a minimum!). If you tell most colleges that you can’t pay your EFC, they won’t do anything. They won’t give you more money, grants, work-study, etc. They will likely tell you to take out a Parent Plus loan.</p>
<p>Student Help is different. If you’re looking at NPCs for FAFSA only schools and they’re showing something like “self-help” then they are referring to loans and work study…but those don’t go towards EFC. The self-help is part of financial aid that goes towards “need”.</p>
<p>In another thread you mention that your son has applied OOS to Purdue. I don’t know the latest on Purdue’s merit, but at one poing they had reduced their merit to OOS students…don’t know if that’s still the case. At one point, university awards were for about $10k for high stats. If you were to get that amount (or some other amount) that would get put towards your “need”…not your EFC.</p>
<p>What is your EFC?</p>
<p>Did your son get a full tuition award from UPitt? If so, then you’ll have much less to pay there…just room, board and books. Your son can take out a $5500 loan to put towards those costs.</p>
<p>Thanks mom2collegekids (and everyone else). I did just see your post on the other board (I’m at work so only check sporadically). Our EFC is generally higher than the colleges cost. But like many others, that doesn’t mean we can afford that - at all. </p>
<p>My son did get the full tuition merit for Pitt (yeah), but his number 1 choice is Purdue and always has been. He also got some merit from another college or so. We are still waiting to hear what (if anything) he gets from Purdue in terms of merit. For Purdue we had to provide both an EFC and a PC number which is what got me so confused.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help.</p>