EFC simplified

[8filltheheart]

I'm giving a talk on homeschool to college in q couple of weeks and I have been working on my notes. I found this simplified info that makes it easier to discuss:

 

Understand how your Expected Family Contribution is determined.

 

At this point, you are probably wondering how in the heck the government uses a snapshot of your family's finances to determine how much you can spend on college. Like everything from taxes to Social Security benefits, the government uses a formula to calculate your Expected Family Contribution. Here is the general formula, (which can change from year to year), that is used for computing your EFC:

 

Parents' adjusted income x (up to 47 percent) +

Parents' assets x (up to 5.65 percent) +

Student's income x (up to 50 percent) +

Student's assets x (20 percent) = Expected Family Contribution

 

There are some factors that add a modicum of flexibility to the calculations, including family size and the number of children in college. These indicators are used to adjust the exact percentage assessed against your income and assets. Also, there are income and asset protection figures that prevent the government from tapping everything that you have.

 

If you want a really detailed calculation to forecast your Expected Family Contribution, then we recommend using an online EFC calculator. One good calculator can be found at this URL address: http://www.collegeanswer.com/paying/est_efc/efc_index.jsp. You can play with it and try different numbers to simulate various changes in your finances. If you want to do the calculations yourself on paper, you can download an EFC worksheet at http://www.ifap.ed.gov/IFAPWebApp/. Look under the heading "Worksheet, Schedules and Tables."

http://www.supercollege.com/guide/guide.cfm?t_id=3&g_id=38&step=1

[JanetC]

For EFC calculators, I'm partial to the FAFSA4caster at studentaid.ed.gov because it's the most likely to be updated when the government changes their formula each year. (There was a significant change to the asset protection allowances this year, for example.)

 

The other one that's worth doing is the one at collegeboard.org, which calculates the PROFILE EFC as well as estimating the FAFSA amount. They used to publish the PROFILE formulas, but now it's completely proprietary, so now only the College Board is qualified to estimate it.

 

The college board one is hidden really well, I tell people to just google "site:collegeboard.org EFC calculator"

[MerryAtHope]

I'm giving a talk on homeschool to college in q couple of weeks and I have been working on my notes. I found this simplified info that makes it easier to discuss:

 

 

http://www.supercollege.com/guide/guide.cfm?t_id=3&g_id=38&step=1

 

I've often wished something listed the income levels at which percentages change. It's probably not that simple of an algorithm though!

[DebbS]

You can find the calculation tables in the pdf that will download on this link:

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwi_yd_6xJ7MAhWGGD4KHTjnCRUQFggkMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstudentaid.ed.gov%2Fsa%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F2016-17-efc-formula.pdf&usg=AFQjCNG09qQNOHxPsssimUxj0MZZxIDb7A&cad=rja

 

 

Edited April 21, 2016 by DebbS