Recent "single parent household" status change FA outcome?

Paying for College
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<p>Recently, my parents went through a divorce. I am not in good standing with my dad, and I'm pretty sure neither I nor he wants to support me financially. My mother recently found a job teaching at a university, thank goodness, but what she makes is nothing compares to what my father makes. The only reason we got some financial aid last time was because all my siblings were attending universities too. </p>

<p>Question: As a hopeful transfer student, and as horrible it is to sell such a topic, but how would my financial aid package be affected by this? My current college gave me a pretty decent package (around 3/5). </p>

<p>I know money is a sensitive topic, so I apologize for sounding ungrateful or spoiled in terms of my own families finances. But my mother and I wonder how schools would view me in terms of a financial aid standpoint. </p>

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<p>You don’t “sell” yourself per se to fin aid. They are the bean counters and they make allocations according to pretty set rules. You need to find out what counts to them and make sure those issues are clear.</p>

<p>First of all, it depends upon the college as to what those rules are in terms of allocating aid. Some school do not meet aid. Being a transfer is likely to put you at the bottom of the barrel for aid too, just the way colleges do this,and even schools that do guarantee to meet need do not do so with transfers and merit money for transfers is scarce. </p>

<p>The way it works for financial aid most of the time is that most all US students have to fill out FAFSA for financial aid as the first building block. For many schools, that is all you need to do. Only the custodial parent’s financial info goes on the FAFSA other than any support payments that the non custodial parent gives which is asked to be included. The parent with whom you’ve lived with the most for the 12 months before you fill out the form is defined as custodial. The EFC one gets from FAFSA is generally the LEAST required to be paid before getting any federal money including subsidized loans and work study. PELL is an exception if you qualify. EFC has to be below $5600, I believe for PELL eligibility. With more than one kid in college the parental EFC is divided by the those number of kids. So if your siblings are no longer in school, then the same financial info would result in a parental EFC three times what you got right there. But with one parent’s info, no longer in the picture, if your custodial parent’s income is low, then that would be a factor. Get the income and asset info for your custodial parent, project it to a year, and run the EFC estimator to see what you can expect in that area.</p>

<p>For those schools that also require PROFILE, both parents’ inf is needed. </p>

<p>You can run NPCs for the colleges you are considering to get some idea of what kind of aid that those colleges are likely to give entering freshman. You need to contact the school and ask about what the story is for transfers.</p>

<p>The schools that require your NCP info are not going to care if your father is going to pay or not. Happens all of the time that one parent or the other refuses to pay. Too bad. How you feel is not of an issue. In fact, some schools are not need blind for those who can’t pay and even some who are not will look at transfers that way, whether they can pay or not for acceptance. So, there is not likely to be a lot of money flowing in because you have more need. That is a common fallacy, that all need is met. Absolutely not. The vast, vast majority of need is NOT met and many students cannot go to school of choice, particularly full time because they don’t get the money. That is the way it works. </p>

<p>Do check on the policies of the schools you are considering, consider other possibilities, check out what you could get from your current school (run NPC with your new projected numbers), and also ask if your mother gets any tuition remission for you at her school. </p>