<p>My understanding is if you have 2 or 3 siblings your EFC still stays the same. Let's say your EFC is $9K and you have 3 siblings, that means for each of the siblings the EFC will be $3K. What I'm not sure whether they have to be enrolled in college or not?</p>
<p>In other words, if all the siblings are not going to college, your EFC might be equal to as if you had no siblings. Is this correct? How does this work?</p>
<p>The EFC is simply a number your family can supposedly contribute to education based on income and assets. This is why it is different every year, because those things change. If a family has more than one student enrolled in college the number will decrease, you are correct. However, each student does their own FAFSA and the other piece of the equation is the student’s assets. So, when my second child entered college, our EFC essentially halved, however, my S’s EFC was less than my D’s, because she had $5K more in assets than him! Darn those savings bonds!!! Hope that clears it up.</p>
<p>According to my understanding of FAFSA, the number of dependents your parents have and the age of the oldest parent makes a difference in how much their asset exclusion allowance is. Parents have an asset exclusion allowance so that they are not assessed anything on the first $X of their assets, and that amount is variable. Different factors affect it. Any amount over the asset exclusion amount is assessed at 5.6% towards the EFC for parents. Students have no such allowance and every dollar is hit 20% directly towards EFC.</p>
<p>If you have siblings going to college the same time as you are, the FAFSA will split the parental EFC by the number of kids in college. An EFC of $9K, yes, will be $3K plus each student’s EFC. Each student can have a different EFC as 20% of each kid’s own assets go into that figure as well as 50% of income over $6K. </p>
<p>So, number of dependents does not affect the EFC that much, since the formula is heavily income driven and it does not affect what it does to the income, just the assets.</p>
<p>You can get the EFC calculator and play around with it. That way you can see how it varies with different factors in there.</p>
<p>Yes the siblings need to be concurrently enrolled in college for the EFC to be affected for each sibling. And they have to be attending at least 12 credits a semester. And they need to be enrolled in a college degree granting program. If you have a high school sibling taking college courses, this would not count. If you have a sibling taking one or two courses, this would not count.</p>
<p>The asset allowance is strictly by the number of parents and the age of the oldest parent. Table A3 in the link below shows that there is a $4k to $5k income allowance for additional household members not in college. Household members in college subtracts about $3k from the income allowance:</p>
<p><a href=“http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/091312EFCFormulaGuide1314.pdf[/url]”>http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/091312EFCFormulaGuide1314.pdf</a></p>
<p>The parent contribution to EFC will be divided by the number in college but somewhat offset by a smaller income allowance for number in household. The student contribution to EFC is individual based on each student’s income and assets.</p>