<p>^ oh I think a few posters on here (not regulars) would disagree ;)</p>
<p>
So not true.
And even some of the regulars ;)</p>
<p>^ Fair enough :p</p>
<p>It’s not that complicated, really . . . a good EFC is one that your family can afford!</p>
<p>Since the EFC goes up or down according to income, it should not be an easily affordable number for any family. Sending a kid to college typically requires a combination of current income, savings, and future income (loans). </p>
<p>I would agree that and EFC of 80-99,999K means that you can afford any college if the family decides that is a priority. Certainly it would be easier for that wealthy family to pay for college than try living on less than 30K (ETA that I have no idea of the income to meet 0 EFC).</p>
<p>If you have $80K EFC and 3-4 kids in college, you could get gapped just as badly as anyone at schools not meeting full need.</p>
<p>A “good EFC” is one that your parents and you can afford to pay. Actually…it is the minimum of what your family will be asked to pay. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that you need the amount YOUR FAMILY can contribute annually for college costs. That is a very important nber!</p>
<p>True.</p>
<p>EFC is rather irrelevant when most kids are attending schools that don’t meet need.</p>
<p>A family can have an affordable EFC of $15k. But the school costs $35k, doesn’t meet need, and the gap is $25k.</p>
<p>A family can have an affordable (total) EFC of $30k, but if they have 2+ in college and one or more of the schools don’t meet need, then they can have a gap that is much larger than their EFC. </p>
<p>Families with more than one child in college at the same time can really have it rough. Even if one child’s school meets need, if the other one doesn’t, the family can find itself in an unaffordable situation.</p>
<p>
Realistically, deciding that it’s a “priority” may be a very bad financial move for the family, as it may mean significantly raiding retirement and/or emergency savings, or taking a lot of loans. Many CC posters regularly reiterate that such moves are inadvisable, while others (or the same ones??) stand around and say “well you could do it if you really wanted to”</p>
<p>sylvan, if a family has an EFC of 80,000 or more, it means either an income in the range of $250,000 or significant net worth. Yes, if that net worth is tied up in a large family business or farm, it could be difficult to come up with money for college, as it would if the family has a significant amount of debt to be paid off. But in most cases, such a family is not likely to need to raid retirement savings. They may face cutting back on frills, as would any family sending kids to college. But they also have the luxury of weighing the cost of each school against the perceived value of the education (and ancillary benefits such as networking) at those schools.</p>
<p>To answer to original question of what a “good” EFC is, it will depend on your financial situation. And EFC is great in that it maximizes your potential aid, and minimizes your COA, but it comes at a cost. And EFC of $20,000 puts you in the upper middle class, and may be good if you can afford the $20,000 a year, or again may be terrible if you’re already paying off a mortgage, 2 cars, and years of credit card debt, and it will result in $20,000 of additional debt. </p>
<p>A good EFC is one that matches your ability to pay, allowing for limited loans - and unfortunately, that is not very common.</p>
<p>^Case in point.</p>
<p>Being in a position where you can say “well, I could make this choice, but it would be a bad one” makes you considerably better off than the low income people you say have equally large gaps. You don’t want to raid your retirement savings and your emergency funds, recognizing that doing so would be a short-sighted decision; the people with EFCs of 0-5k don’t have retirement savings and emergency funds in the first place. If you took the standard of living that they’re forced into, you could afford the EFC no problem.</p>
<p>Not that I think you should do that. But if you’re gapped the same dollar amount as a poor person, except you also have retirement savings and an emergency fund and such, it’s not fair to say that you’re in the same position.</p>
<p>
I didn’t say we were “in the same position” although that is de facto the case in terms of “being able to easily afford any college”, since as you pointed out:
Which is not what the poster(s) above have indicated:
ETA: And you’re addressing two posters at once, as I didn’t mention gaps in any of my previous posts on this thread.</p>
<p>Just having a low, medium or high EFC is only one part of the Financial Aid equation - even if your EFC is zero - it generally does not mean that is what you will be paying. Most of us don’t have stats that will give us free rides to MIT/Harvard, etc. Even with good stats, you have to hope that the school you want to go to has the kind of money to make attendance within range.</p>
<p>My DH’s cousin has a very low family EFC. Not only that, he is so strapped that he can’t meet his monthly needs, falling further and further behind. It’s been a terribly tough go for him. SOme of it his fault, some of it bad luck and an economy that just doesn’t have a lot of opportunities. With two kids out of high school, they can’t find much to do with no car, as they don’t live near any public transportation and they are in no position to get another car. He went to jail for not having car insurance already, so he is on thin ice just with his junker. College? Any community college is a distance away, and even with a bit of PELL money and Stafford loans, just not doable due to the lack of transportation. One just got a spot in some job corp program which has gotten him out of the area. What the other one will do, who knows? They are not interested in going to college anyways, If they were, even with somewhat higher test scores and grades, they would likely be getting enough money for their options to be any better. We have other family members who went this route, and need is not the only thing that makes college affordable to anyone. Need does not necessarily translate into enough money to go college, sometimes.</p>
is a 011303 EFC good?
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