<p>Our oldest daughter just rec'd her acceptance letter from Princeton Univ. Included in the pkg was our financial aid info. It appears the award we are sked to receive is based on the same figures we used in the summer when we completed the online aid estimator.</p>
<p>The letter said, "It is possible that your aid award will be revised based on our review of actual income figures"</p>
<p>My question is: It appears our income will actually be a few thousand less than we anticipated - (like $4,000 - we both have non fixed-salary jobs) would they then adjust our aid award so we will not owe the same amount that was based on a higher income estimate? Or - what does that sentence from their letter (above) mean exactly?</p>
<p>She's our first w/ this whole college thing...and we're just learning as we go here, so any help from those who have been here before would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>Your aid could go up if you earn $4k less than your early prediction via laste year's income. I guess it depends on how much of your income is made up by the $4k. If you earn more than $100k, I wouldn't expect $4k to make a difference. On the other hand, someone earning $30k would probbaly see some adjustment.</p>
<p>Your actual aid award will be based on your 2004 income figures. The best thing you can do is get your taxes done as early as possible, so that you can get financial aid docs PLUS current tax returns to the financial aid office in as early in the process as possible. I mean - file in early February if at all possible. You want to take advantage of your daughter's ED acceptance to get a complete packet to the financial aid department well ahead of the crush they will experience in late March, for the April 1st admittees. </p>
<p>The same rule applies in reverse: if your income were to go up, beyond your estimates, you could expect less financial aid. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that the financial aid benefit will only be a percentage of your income -- that is, it's possible that the $4000 less in income will translate to only $500-$1000 of increased aid eligibility -- the higher your base income, the less the benefit will be -- but of course every little bit helps.</p>
<p>Thank you both; your comments were very helpful. We will definitely file asap. I'm not sure how much our portion will go down w/ the lower income, but every little bit does help! We actually came pretty close in our estimate back in July - it's just so hard when it varies so much from month to month (and that airline income just keeps going down and down...). I was just a little concerned that they would use the estimated income if it wasn't too much different from actual. It sounds as if they will use the actual numbers from our return.</p>