I am considered an independent student. The only income I had in 2020 was from a co-op program. However, when I filled out my FAFSA it gave me an EFC of 5800 roughly, am I missing something or have rules changed? I thought co-op earnings were not supposed to be included in calculating your EFC…
I think it depends on how your co-op earnings are reported. Some are reported as actual income.
@BelknapPoint @kelsmom am I wrong about this?
What do you mean? My earnings were paid directly to me but it was still apart of a co-op program.
Co-op earnings are reported as income, but they are supposed to be removed from consideration when you enter the amount earned from co-op for question 43f. Did you enter the amount on 43f?
@Elizabeth_Doby @kelsmom gave you the answer.
Beyond reporting the co-op income (hopefully on line 43f), did you report any assets like savings or investments?
Yes, I reported all of my income as money earned from a co-op other than 52 dollars. This is why I am so confused. I used the IRS retrieval tool, could there be an issue with it?
No, I didn’t have to fill out that section, so I skipped it, should I have filled it out? Did it use a previous years?
The IRS retrieval brings all of your reported income into the FAFSA, which is required. When you report the portion of your income that is from co-op on 43f, the system is supposed to remove the co-op earnings from the formula. If you did enter the amount correctly on 43f, I would contact your school’s financial aid office. Two people on CC said that the scholarship income reported in section 43 was not removed. It’s possible that the system is ignoring this section. Please follow up with your school. Sometimes glitches happen, and aid administrators need to follow up in these issues. Let us know what happens.
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Will do, I hate to admit but I am freaking out. I have one semester left and am paying for it by myself so seeing this EFC has given me extreme anxiety. Thank you for helping me confirm the co-op stuff should not be included.
Be sure you confirm by looking at your FAFSA that you correctly reported co-op earnings for 43f. Make sure you didn’t miss a digit. If you made a mistake, fix it and be sure to submit the correction. If you see the correct amount on your Student Aid Report, contact your school. Talk to your financial aid advisor. They should be able to help you. If they do not, contact the assistant director. Don’t take no for an answer unless they give you a reason why your co-op income should not count. As I mentioned, I think that there may be an issue at the processor level. I wish I still worked in financial aid so that I could investigate!
I think my daughter had to report co-op and internship $ but not work-study money. But I could be wrong. I’d ask the financial aid office, they can usually explain or help you solve it.
Regulations are that all income is reported, even if it was low enough that the student wasn’t required to file a federal return. In section 43, there are questions about income that is excluded from the EFC formula (including work study & co-op earnings). Until a couple years ago, I was a financial aid director.
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My FAFSA processed and I looked over the information. I couldn’t find any errors. I filled out 43f with the correct amount of co-op earnings. There was a note on my FAFSA saying that it had made assumptions on lines 43a-43f. I don’t exactly know what this means. Does it mean they simply ignored my input? I also can not see what was directly processed from the IRS. Will my financial aid office be able to see this? I’m wondering if it transferred wrong from them, but I don’t see how since when I log on to my IRS account I can see my tax transcript from 2020 and what my gross income was…
It sounds like you did everything right. I honestly believe that there is an issue on the FAFSA processor end. I think that the system is ignoring the information in section 43. I say this because several people on CC have reported that their income from that section was not removed from the formula. If I was still working in financial aid, I would be on the phone with someone from Federal Student Aid, alerting them of this issue and asking about a fix. I encourage you to find someone in your aid office who will look into this for you. A financial aid officer should be able to look at your situation and realize that there is an issue. I say that only if you don’t have significant assets or untaxed income that you haven’t posted about having. If you just have the co-op income & little in the way of assets, I suspect a processing issue. It sometimes happens, and pointing it out is the path to a fix. If your aid office says it’s something else, come back here to let us know, please.
No, it allowed me to skip the section about assets and even if I had filled it out I don’t have anything significant. And I didn’t have any other untaxed income for 2020. My financial aid officer said he would look directly into this upcoming Friday so I will let you know the outcome. Thank you for the reassurance!
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