<p>OK, so my parents got divorced in 1996, and my father has had full custody of me ever since. We lived in Nevada until 2002, when we moved back to Ohio. My mother still lives in Nevada. This past year, my father was not required to fill out a tax return, and his income was $0. My mother works as a gaming dealer, and I believe she made around $50,000-60,000. She recently purchased a condominium.</p>
<p>Now from what I understand, the FAFSA only cares about the custodial parent, which should make me eligible for a Pell Grant. But I've heard that private universities require the non-custodial parent to fill out a form as well.</p>
<p>So my questions are: What will colleges say my EFC is? Will private colleges consider the non-custodial parent as if the parents were not divorced? Does the fact that my mom owns her own condominium change anything?</p>
<p>I've anybody has specific info on MIT, Princeton, or Caltech that would be very helpful.</p>
<p>If your mother, under the law, has no legal/fiscal responsibility for you then you might be OK.</p>
<p>That said, $50,000-$60,000 would not necessarily push you out of eligibility for Stafford Loans/Pell Grants nor would it preclude significant financial aid at a private institution.</p>
<p>$50,000 - $60,000 would give you an EFC high enough to preclude you from being eligible for Pell grant. However federal grants are based on FAFSA and for FAFSA you would only supply the information of your custodial parent (and spouse if there is one)..</p>
<p>For profile schools they will want the financial information of your mother and father and, if they are remarried, their spouses. FAFSA does not ask for information on the primary residence - profile does.</p>
<p>You can get a very rough idea of what your Profile EFC would be by using a financial aid calculator (like the ones at <a href="http://www.finaid.org%5B/url%5D">www.finaid.org</a>) to calculate the EFC both for your father, and then for your mother <em>as if</em> you were living with her, counting yourself as her dependent for purposes of the calculation. The <a href="http://www.finaid.org%5B/url%5D">www.finaid.org</a> calculators are good because you can get a report that breaks out "parent contribution" from "student contribution" - so what you can do is add your father's "parent contribution" (0) to your mother's "parent contribution" and then add in the "student contribution" under institutional methodology and you will get a pretty good picture of what private colleges will expect you to pay.</p>
<p>With your mom's $60K income, I'm guessing the parental contribution will be around $10K -- but do the math yourself. Since your mom only recently purchased the condominium, it is unlikely that she has a lot of equity built up -- a good thing, as she is only expected to state the difference between what the property is worth and what she owes. </p>
<p>However,
[quote]
you will STILL be eligible for a Pell grant
[/quote]
(swimcatsmom is mistaken on that point. That's because the Pell grant eligibility is figured using FAFSA only, as it is a federal program. So it is very likely that a private college will calculate your financial aid using the FAFSA to qualify for you for the maximum federal aid (Pell grant, subsidized loans, work study), and at the same time using the CSS Profile to determine the amount of a grant you will get -- so you will have a Pell grant + a gap to fill between FAFSA & Profile EFC. This is exactly what happened during my daughter's first year in college - she qualified for a Pell grant, but the required payment to the college was $10K more than the FAFSA EFC. </p>
<p>I guess the real question for you is -- what is your relationship with your mom like? Will she cooperate with filling out the financial aid forms? Will she possibly contribute toward your education even if not legally mandated to do so? </p>
<p>Even with the likely "gap" in aid, you may find you get better offers of financial aid from colleges using the CSS Profile than those using FAFSA only -- that's because most of the FAFSA only colleges do not promise to meet full need in any event. So you could easily find that you are gapped even if your mom's income is not considered. </p>
<p>My advice: strongly consider private colleges where you are likely to get merit aid in addition to needs based aid. Your moms income gives you a gap to fill at those schools, but many colleges will add their own merit awards to need-based aid to give you a favorable package -- and you don't need a huge merit award to make that happen.</p>
<p>
[quote]
$50,000 - $60,000 would give you an EFC high enough to preclude you from being eligible for Pell grant. However federal grants are based on FAFSA and for FAFSA you would only supply the information of your custodial parent (and spouse if there is one)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I said federal grants (which Pell is) are based on FAFSA which would require only the custodial parent information (the father in the OPs case making his EFC zero). Don't profile schools allow you to maximise your federal grants even if your EFC for their own institutional aid purposes is higher? Am I wrong?</p>
<p>Hmm - having reread my original post I guess the way I wrote it may have been a little confusing. I can see it was easy to misunderstand what I wrote. I will have to be careful to be a bit clearer than that.</p>
<p>I interpreted the phrase "preclude you from being eligible for a Pell grant" to be saying that the noncustodial parent's income ($60K) would make Ray ineligible. </p>
<p>Since the mom's income isn't part of the FAFSA calculation, Ray IS eligible for Pell, but as noted the colleges will do what they want in terms of allocating their own grant aid.</p>
<p>So that's great that I can get a Pell grant, which I understand is around $4,500. However, I'm curious as what that money will go towards. From what it sounds like, the Pell grant will be subtracted from the school's financial aid package, and the family will still be responsible for the calculated EFC. Is this the case? If so, that sort of sucks.</p>
<p>Financial aid is usually given on the basis of demonstrated need:</p>
<p>cost of attendance - EFC = demonstrated need.</p>
<p>The pell grant will be part of your financial aid package which depending on the school will consist of self help (work study, stafford and/or perkins loans) federal grants if eligible (pell/ seog if the school has the funds) and institutional aid which could be in the form of grants, scholarships, loans or any combination of the 3.</p>
<p>Your parents will still be responsible for paying the EFC.</p>
<p>Ray, what you say is correct, but the Pell Grant eligibility may result in a better financial aid package, depending on the school's policy, as it might reduce the amount of loans the school expects you to take as part of its financial aid package. You can then opt to take loans anyway to help meet the EFC -- so you still have debt, but overall you have less debt.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is why I suggested that you look at colleges that might also add merit based aid into the mix. Even though your mom's income does boost your EFC, I think you are in a favorable financial aid situation.</p>
<p>The alternative is to simply opt for a cheaper, public school. My son is now age 24 and financially independent, and qualifies for a Pell grant at his state university where tuition is about ~$3500 -- the Pell grant is more than that- so between the Pell grant and the subsidized loans he is eligible for, and a small scholarship he has won -- he is going to have a relatively easy time financially next year. So perhaps the best option for you would be to apply to one or two in-state publics as your "financial safety" -- and then send applications out to the private colleges you would like to attend and just see how it goes. You may be pleasantly surprised in the spring.</p>
<p>I'd add that since you live in Ohio, you may have some great in-state options -- I think OSU & Miami are great schools and worthy of serious consideration.</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess if they use the outside grants to take off the loan part of the FinAid package and I take out a loan to cover the EFC, I end up with about the same amount of loans anyway. So that doesn't suck as bad as I thought.</p>
<p>calmom: Yeah, I'm definitely going to apply to OSU as my financial safety, and I think I can also use it as my admission safety, too. But from what I've heard about Miami, I don't really think I want to go there. And you're right about applying to private colleges - I might as well do it anyway and hope to be surprised in April</p>