<p>True Scenarios: Ours: Married, Middle Class two kids, managing to keep up with bills SOME of the time. 2 cars - 15+ years old. house worth $80,000, No investments, savings, etc. Why? No extra money. Upcoming College expenses: No help from the govenment in grants etc. We don't qualify. </p>
<p>Acquaintences who are divorced: Son lives with mom, spends time at dads who lives down the street, Mom has a job, a new car. Dad makes over $100,000+ a year, taking son to Scotland for 10 days for the British Open for a Graduation Present. Got son a 2005 Ford 250 to drive. Bought the son and himself season football tickets to the college he will be attending. Son, gets most everything he needs or wants including more money from the government in student grants then what he even needs! A free ride plus extra! Too much money from the government, imagine that! Why, because he lives with his mom. His parents are divorced. Dad's wealth doesn't count.</p>
<p>My son has a friend that went from and EFC of over $8,000 down to $0 when his parents separated. He just made changes to it and now he is getting lots of help from the government. I know it is terrible of me but I wonder if they are separated just to get help with college. My sons gc jokingly said to me that maybe H and I should get divorced. Sad huh??</p>
<p>My situation was the other way around--I lived with my mom until senior year, and then moved to my dad's. My mom had basically no income, and my dad is pretty well off. So, no aid.</p>
<p>Only at FAFSA only schools. There are plenty of schools that still expect divorced parents to both pay, regardless of custodial status. For example, Stanford, U Chicago. Many/most CSS schools do.</p>
<p>BTW, I don't know about divorce, but I know that now that I am divorced, I won't remarry as long as I have children going to or in college. That's one of those decisions that I never understand people making. Or to be more clear, I don't understand the classic CC parent who is "middle class" getting remarried. I mean, all social/moral issues aside -- I know some people don't want to live together unmarried -- it has such a detrimental effect on financial aid that unless your partner is also agreeing to pay the college tuition of your children, I can't imagine doing it.</p>
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<p>He just made changes to it and now he is getting lots of help from the government. >></p>
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<p>Even if the EFC is zero, the amount of "help from the government" won't cover the costs of an out of state public university or private school. This quote makes it sound like everyone who has an EFC of zero will be receiving tons and tons of financial aid to cover costs of college. This is simply not true...and is especially not true at private schools that do not use the Profile (which requires non-custodial parent info) but do not meet full need (which btw, is MOST of the colleges).</p>
<p>I'm gonna be honest here, I'm part of the EFC at or near zero group, and let me tell you, once you submit your CSS to schools, you get f'ed over. My dad makes a wee bit less than $32k a year, so our EFC rides near zero. I applied and got into U of Rochester, who's COA is ~$48k/year, yet despite my EFC being near zero, because of the profile, U of R expected me to cough up ~$8k/year. Granted that's not much relative to what some people are saying, that's still around a 1/4 what my dad makes a year (not to mention he has to support my twin who's going to school, and my older brother who's already in college).</p>
<p>Bottom of the line, the profile blows. I wish I had known more about financial aid before I applied, because I only applied to one FAFSA only school (IIT). IIT, fortunately, gave me a near full-ride with aid. Sadly (for my wallet), I'll be attending McGill, but that's under the quebec rate so even if I get no aid, it'll still only be marginally more expensive than Rochester (UofR = $11k/yr in loans, McGill = $13k/yr). </p>