<p>MommyDearest - I think you’re on the right track by digging into the details of the NPC’s. They do reveal policies that may be understated or unstated on college financial aid web sites. My sense is that your next step is to call the financial aid offices of the lottery schools your son might be interested in and see if you can get some clarification on your questions. Some colleges will provide an early estimate of your institutional EFC based on a fall PROFILE submission, but I don’t know if any of the schools you’ve mentioned do that.</p>
<p>For any schools that do include stepparent data in their formula, you might want to ask if they include both income and assets from the stepparent. Where the stepparent is included, I think the default approach is to include their income but not their assets. But you have to check because each school can adjust the formula however it wants to.</p>