<p>So I recently got accurate information about my financial situation. Even for a seemingly expensive private college I did my fasfa estimate and it says my EFC is 1,200 so does that mean I only have to pay 1,200 dollars a year to go to college?</p>
<p>I am also surprised about the seemingly counterintuitive fact that it is cheaper for me to go to a private school than a public one ( Ran estimates for both) this is really weird.
So can any of you nice people out there actually explain what this means?</p>
<p>EFC stands for Expected Family Contribution. Basically it is a number determined after filling out the FAFSA of how much aid you might receive. Let me give you an example: </p>
<p>Every school has what is called a cost of attendance. This includes tuition, room and board, travel, etc. Let’s say a school’s cost of attendance is $50,000 and your EFC is $1,200 you are left with need of $48,800. This $48,800 will be covered by loans, grants and possibly some scholarships. </p>
<p>Most schools do not meet full need. </p>
<p>Read more posts on this board and you will get more information about how the whole process works. </p>
<p>The $1200 is the MINIMUM you will have to pay. You will most likely be paying more.</p>
<p>At the top of this forum is a stickied thread entitled Financial Aid FAQs. It’s an excellent thread to start with. Then come back and ask some specific questions. There are some private schools that could cost less than an in-state public but certainly not all will and those that do are generally the hardest to be accepted at.</p>
<p>If you care to post what year in HS you are entering, your state of residence, what your GPA and SAT/ACT scores are, your intended major if you have one, people will be able to help you understand how merit aid works as well as need-based aid.</p>
<p>Maddie, in another thread, you say that you live with your dad more than you live with your mom and he makes good money.</p>
<p>In another post, you say that you live with your mom. </p>
<p>*How can I find out which schools use PROFILE? To my understanding there is a substantial gap between my mom and dads income. That kind of puts me in a hard spot because I live with my mom under her income and have been doing so for a long time.</p>
<p>If someone judged my financial situation solely biased on PROFILE they would not be getting the reality of my life and financial issues.*</p>
<p>In response to that I have a complicated situation. I had been staying with my dad for a short period of time while my mother was incarcerated. I have lived with and taken care of my mentally ill, addicted mother. My parents share custody of me equally and my mother plans on claiming me as a dependent on her taxes for senior year. My dad does have good financial standing and that is what made me worry I would not get any aid especially at PROFILE schools, which I will not be applying to.</p>
<p>Hopefully that clears up the confusion for you guys. I am not lying. I have felt it is my obligation to be the best daughter I can and try and help my mother meet her needs.</p>
<p>I used the Governments fasfa calculator. The schools that I am applying to, to my knowledge do not have calculators on their website. Thanks to everyone that posted on here. I really do appreciate all of your advice.</p>
<p>All schools are required to have a net price calculator(NPC) on their websites. You can do a search from most schools home page to find it or navigate to the finaid pages.</p>
<p>For fafsa, who you live with the most days in the year preceding filing fafsa is whose info you use. What a custody agreement says or who claims you on taxes is irrelevant. School’s that only use fafsa generally do not claim to meet full need. I’m not sure there are any that do.</p>
<p>So I did the NPC for the college I wanted to attend and it said the Net Price after other aid was 7,000. I think that might be a more accurate estimate. Thank you all.</p>
<p>Did the aid include loans? When evaluating aid, loans are obviously money you have to pay back. The loan amount needs to be added to the net price to see how much you will eventually pay. The net price calculators are only as good as the info entered into them and even then are only an estimate. If your dad is providing any financial support to your mom that has to be included in her income for fafsa.</p>
<p>Maddie, the EFC is the minimum you can pay and still get subsidized loans and some other subsidies from the government. Though the PELL grant can be an exception, most every school I know will integrate that into their packages as well, so it might as well be included with those subsidized loans in the statement I just made. </p>
<p>Because this is a MINIMUM, it means that you can end up paying a lot more than that. I don’t know a single school that will guarantee to meet need as defined by the FAFSA EFC. Most schools simply gap. THose that do guarantee to meet need, will define “need” themselves and that expected contribution usually comes out higher that the FAFSA EFC, and often a lot higher. </p>
<p>The NPCs are accurate only if a school guarantees to meet need and doesn’t have a merit money out ther, because when either/both of those situations exists, then a school could be giving any amount of money depending on things other than the financial info.</p>
<p>Your custodial parent, despite who claims you on taxes, despite any court papers is defined for financial aid as the parent with whom you lived the most. So make sure you stayed with your mom more than your dad, or he will be your custodial parent.</p>
<p>It is what a college using federal methodology will expect your family to pay.</p>
<p>However, your net price is likely to be higher because:</p>
<p>a. Colleges generally have an expected student contribution (ESC), typically about $4,000 to $10,000, from student work earnings and/or Direct/Stafford loans. (A college that “meets need” will offer a net price = EFC + ESC.)</p>
<p>b. Many colleges have their own methodology of calculating EFC, which may result in a different EFC from federal methodology.</p>
<p>c. Many colleges do not have enough money to give in financial aid, so they will leave you a net price that is higher than EFC + ESC.</p>
<p>As suggested above, run net price calculators on each college you are considering.</p>
<p>Actually, the net price calculators of schools that do not claim to meet need very plainly show how much they are likely to gap the student on financial aid.</p>