I like how Purdue does things: merit scholarships exist, but every kid largely pays the same tuition no matter how rich or poor their parents just so happen to be. Every kid should have some skin in the game.

Anonymous wrote:Ours was laughably high, as in over half of our after-tax income.

I assume it was a combination of the fact that they are counting 529s for our younger children and emergency savings not in retirement accounts.

They do count all the 529s for all your kids as your assets. That is a net good thing because, if they counted them towards each kid, the sibs' wouldn't count, but the amount in the account for the kid applying would count like 4x as much. (Assets/income for student count way more than those for oarents). Important to note, any joint accounts get split between you and kid. So, that would halve assets of kid applying if their account(s) is/are joint with you. It would also mean you have to declare half of sibs' joint accounts as yours. But these are all separate from 529s. 529s are your account with whatever kid as beneficiary, not joint.

My kid applied last year. Our stats were
AGI:$208k
Assets: $500k-ish
EFC: $83k/year

We didn't submit the FAFSA, but we completed the CSS for a few schools. Kid had a great GPA and got merit aid offers from Northeastern, U Delaware, SCripps College, U Oregon, CU Boulder (ranging from $10k-$15k year).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here:

AGI from 1040: $217,019
Assets: $1,275,000
EFC: 139894

It is the asset, for us

AGI from 1040: $300,000
Assets: $2,000,000
EFC: $233,000

I feel it is not fair to older parents close to retirement with limited future income.

They don’t count dedicated retirement savings against you.

That sounds wrong because no college could cost that much ;per year). But maybe they think your assets are luxuries you could liquidate? Do you only have 1 child? No mortgage or debt?

Why doesn’t the other spouse double check all if the entries and see if you made a mistake?

But then again, that is your adjusted income. The EFC still sounds high, I agree.

The EFC is useless for middle class and above. Any income qualifies for unsubsidized loans up to $27k total (not per year) without the student needing a co-signer.

Anonymous wrote:OP, that seems high to me. Our EFC I think was around 110K and we have adjusted income of around 500K and assets in the 3-4M range.

The EFC seems low
Does 3-4 million include retirement and primary home
I am the PP with EFC 233k for lower income and asset (300k and 2 million)

our HHI was around 200K and our EFC was about 50K. no can do.

Anonymous wrote:OP, that seems high to me. Our EFC I think was around 110K and we have adjusted income of around 500K and assets in the 3-4M range.

Are you saying you got financial aid with that income/assets???

Anonymous wrote:OP here:

AGI from 1040: $217,019
Assets: $1,275,000
EFC: 139894

Assuming your assets doesn't include your primary house, that doesn't seem unreasonable.

Anonymous wrote:OP here:

AGI from 1040: $217,019
Assets: $1,275,000
EFC: 139894

It’s the assets.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous[b wrote:]If your gross income is $450,000, is it even worth completing the FAFSA?

Only if the college requires it for e.g. merit aid. Before anyone jumps at me for not knowing the difference between merit and need based, some colleges want to make sure that any aid that can be classified as need based is reported as such, so they want you to fill out FAFSA just in case.

[/b]


You fill it out because most colleges (my kids' did) require it to be filled out before financial aid will even talk to you. It's required also as a prereqisite for some merit scholarships. Also, once you fill it out, no matter what your EFC, your children then get access to the unsubsidized federal loans, which both of my kids took out, which amounts to about $26,000 over the four years.

Is it really true you need to fill it out for merit? We are not getting any aid, AGI probably 250 but more assets than OP, I’d rather not bother but we wouldn’t turn out Nose up at merit aid..

No very few schools require it.

yup---check to see if any your kid is applying to requires it for merit. Otherwise just skip it. Both my kids applied to 10+ schools, got merit at 8/10 and none of them required FAFSA for the merit award.

Only potential reason to fill out fafsa is if there is some slight chance your financial situation could change, but given those assets even being unemployed/severely medically injured wouldn't change your contributions

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous[b wrote:]If your gross income is $450,000, is it even worth completing the FAFSA?

Only if the college requires it for e.g. merit aid. Before anyone jumps at me for not knowing the difference between merit and need based, some colleges want to make sure that any aid that can be classified as need based is reported as such, so they want you to fill out FAFSA just in case.

[/b]


You fill it out because most colleges (my kids' did) require it to be filled out before financial aid will even talk to you. It's required also as a prereqisite for some merit scholarships. Also, once you fill it out, no matter what your EFC, your children then get access to the unsubsidized federal loans, which both of my kids took out, which amounts to about $26,000 over the four years.

Is it really true you need to fill it out for merit? We are not getting any aid, AGI probably 250 but more assets than OP, I’d rather not bother but we wouldn’t turn out Nose up at merit aid..

No very few schools require it.

OP, that seems high to me. Our EFC I think was around 110K and we have adjusted income of around 500K and assets in the 3-4M range.

Anonymous wrote:OP here:

AGI from 1040: $217,019
Assets: $1,275,000
EFC: 139894

It is the asset, for us

AGI from 1040: $300,000
Assets: $2,000,000
EFC: $233,000

I feel it is not fair to older parents close to retirement with limited future income.