Okay… How does this work? Our first kids in college, and they’re receiving financial packages that don’t seem to take into account that we have two applying for Fall 2017 entry.
My daughter called the first school’s financial aid office, and they were very casual. “We don’t have the info on your other kid yet, send it along explaining when it comes in.”
Excuse me while I quietly vomit with panic in this corner–at these levels, we’d be sending 1 and 1/4 kids to college…
Did you fill out a FAFSA for each child? Did you answer that there would be two in college? The EFC generated for EACH CHILD is about half what it would be for having one child in school. The actual EFCs may differ because of amount in savings, work earnings for each child (but mine are very close).
I filled out the FAFSA for my siblings individually, despite the option to transfer the information between the accounts. (We are triplets, not twins) So for both myself, my sister, and my brother; I manually re-entered the information each time and we didn’t have any problems. Perhaps, that why it didn’t go through?
Most FAFSA only schools do not meet 100% demonstrated need. If your EFC is an amount where you will not be eligible for Pell (over $5k) or a state grant from your home state and your kids are not eligible for merit money, your financial aid package could be correct and they may not receive any aid other than loans.
Yeah… We think we filled out the FAFSA correctly, but, obviously, we don’t have any kids enrolled at college right now and when we talked to the first financial aid they said words to the effect of, “when the other one gets in, let us know.”
I think they misunderstood you. My EFC for one would have been about $40k, but was $19k for each.
Now if one of your kids decides not to go to college, then you do have to let the schools know and they will adjust your FAFSA to the EFC for one. As sybbie said, once you are out of Pell grant range, there isn’t much aid coming from some schools.
Uh… the packages so far are majority straight merit aid with a parental contribution that is more than double the expected FAFSA. So… we have options if no more aid is forthcoming–I assume my daughters will be able to take out loans to spread out this burden.
Some schools issue the merit aid first, and then the FA by the first of April so there is still hope. However, it really depends on what the EFC was whether you’ll get anything. Yes, your kids can each take the $5500 stafford loan.
Thanks, that’s helpful and definitely gives me some context for that conversation my daughter had with that financial aid officer this afternoon.
I think they’re misunderstanding you.
Please open your FAFSA’s online and see if you indicated that there would be two in college on BOTH FAFSAs.
Are these CSS Profile schools? If so, make sure they understand that these are twins. They will want some assurance that the other one will be in college in the fall.
Yes. They are CSS schools and they definitely know they are twins. But, yes, coming from a not particularly strong public school system, colleges may well want assurances that both will be entering.
The schools may require proof of enrollment from the other twin’s college before factoring in that kid for financial aid – this would happen if you indicated that you will have 2 in college but were unable to tell the college which college the kid will be attending. That is what happened to me when my daughter was starting as a freshman during the same year that my son was resuming his education and applying as a transfer. Daughter’s college met full need, but they needed a form filled out by the financial aid department at son’s college reflecting his COA before recalculating daughter’s aid package. They financial aid director was able to explain the process to me – basically once my son’s paperwork was submitted, we got an increase in daughter’s grant aid. But that couldn’t happen until after he arrived on his campus in September.
Or rather–we have done everything to try to make sure that schools do have this information. Now I guess we’re having to confirm it…
Do these colleges guarantee to meet full need? If not, your FAFSA EFC really is the minimum you would need to be paying anyway.
It sounds like you have received merit aid awards…maybe the need based ones haven’t been sent yet.
Regardless…what Is each twin’s FAFSA EFC?
And does EACH FAFSA indicate two in college?
Yes. Though I am beginning to doubt my sanity as I type that.
Ok…so how much is each twin’s EFC?
And, BTW…CSS schools don’t do a 50/50 split…they do a 60/60 split.
Yeah, we were expecting it not to be 50/50. But this is more like 85/90.
Thanks, Calmom. I believe our situation has elements similar to what you describe. Here’s hoping it gets resolved before September!
My girls are very different and only applied to two schools in common. The one (common) school that has got back to us, they are both in and received identical packages.