For parents of rising seniors, the financial aid process can be a daunting prospect. If you have older children and have gone through the process before, you may feel like you have a pretty good handle on it. BUT….the department of education has made some changes to how FAFSA is used to calculate a student’s “needs” and many of those changes may end of hurting the student’s chances at receiving need-based financial aid. Among the most relevant changes are:
“Expected Family Contribution” (EFC) will now be referred to as “Student Aid Index” to more accurately reflect a student’s need. Many families saw the Expected Family Contribution number and assumed that’s all they would be expected to pay and, in many cases, soon found out that was not necessarily the case.
Who completes the FAFSA? In divorced or separated scenarios, the parent with whom the child resided for the majority of the year (and their spouse if remarried) would answer the questions regarding “parent”. This will now change to the parents who provided the majority of the student’s financial support (and their spouse if remarried).
Multiple children in college discount is gone. Previously, a student’s “EFC” would be divided by the number of children enrolled in college at the same time. The discount is now gone. For example: If you have twins and your family EFC is 40,000, that number would be equally divided (assuming assets and income are the same for both children) among the two children. Without that discount, the EFC would be 40,000 for both children.
For more information regarding these and other FAFSA changes, visit https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/credit-debt/loans/student-loans/602186/fafsa-application-changes-are-coming