<p>My daughter is a junior in high school and is considering doing city year when she graduates. She is going to apply for early admission in September and will find out by October of her senior year if she was accepted. They give a biweekly stipend of about $550.00 for living expenses. The city that she will applying with is close enough to where we live that she will live at home for the year. Besides money for gas she won't have any other living expenses so that will leave her with quite a bit of money that she will be able to save. Will this stipend affect any financial aid that she might normally receive? </p>
<p>No, it isn’t enough income (I think over 6k is) to affect income. Any money in her bank saving, not yours, would be assessed at 20 to 25 percent, though.</p>
<p>It would be over 6K, the stipend is 12,000 for the year. She was planning on saving the rest of the money but I don’t want it to affect any aid that she may receive. </p>
<p>Oh, I see. So 12k for a calendar year or only a school year? Why don’t you plug the numbers into one the the Net Price Calculators on one or two of the colleges she is interested to see. </p>
<p>If she wants to save money toward college, I think if she puts it into a 529 account, it counts as a parent asset even if she owns it herself (double check this though). Alternately, she could pay you for room and board during the gap year, and you could save the money to help her with college expenses. Money in a parent’s account is only assessed at 5.6% (versus 20-25% for the child’s asset). She will probably be expected to contribute from the $12K income in any case.</p>
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<p>This is correct for FAFSA purposes, but schools that use CSS/Profile or other institutional specific forms may look at student-owned 529 accounts differently for distributing institutional dollars.</p>
<p>If she makes 12k the FAFSA EFC is probably going to go up ~3k. 12k -6k =6K income that will be assessed at 50%</p>
<p>I think that would affect the financial aid for the next year.</p>
<p>It is unlikely the student would earn the entire 12,000 in 2015. If she works 6 months, she’ll have earned about $6000. If she saves that, yes, it will count against the EFC.</p>
<p>But it may not matter that much. Unless the EFC is really low to begin with (to qualify for the Pell) then going up a little may not matter. If she goes to a ‘meets full need’ school, they expect her to contribute anyway.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there is no direct answer to this question. Like other posters shared it depends on the school your daughter will be attending. Most private colleges and some public now use the CSS profile which would require that she reports this, and that may or may not be use to determine the amount she is awarded by the institution.
So this would be a good time to do some institutional research, and add some backup schools that your daughter is interested in that do not use CSS profile for financial aid award and at the end compare the award letters and see which would benefit your household the most.</p>