I'm still confused, mine is 4233.?

Question

What does that mean. Is that what I should expect aid to give me, or what I pay to for school?

Answer 1

An EFC is the figure that the US Department of Education and your college's financial aid office will use to determine your eligibility for financial assistance.  It is NOT what you will have to contribute out of pocket for your educational expenses.  Your EFC directly correspondes to how much, if any, Pell Grant you are eligible to receive.  At the school, the aid office will take your Cost of Attendance (as determined by the school) and subtract your EFC to determine your financial need.  The aid office will then try to meet your financial need with financial aid based on federal and institutional policies.

Answer 2

Man, this stuff gets confused by everybody, doesn't it?

First of all, let's get one thing cleared up.

The fact that you live alone

The fact that you earn your own income

The fact that you file your own taxes

The fact that your parents don't give you money

The fact that you don't speak to your parents

The fact that your parents told you to drop dead when you asked for money for college

The fact that your parents moved to Timbuktu and changed their names so that you couldn't call and ask them for money..

NONE OF THOSE THINGS matter when it comes to determining your dependency status for federal financial aid.

You are ONLY an independent student if you can answer "yes" to one or more of the following questions:

Were you born before January 1, 1985?

Are you married right now?

Do you provide more than 50% of the financial support for a child (or children) of your own?

Do you provide more than 50% of the financial support for a non-child dependent who lives in your home?

Are you an orphan, or were you declared a ward of the court prior to your 18th birthday?

Are you an active duty member of the US military?

Are you a retired member of the US military?

That's it. Nothing else matters. The rules that determine your dependency status are established by federal law. You can not get an override, except for extremely unusual circumstances, like, for example, if your parents moved out in the middle of the night and abandoned you in an empty apartment when you were 5 years old.

If you did not submit your parents' financial information on the FAFSA form, you will almost certainly be selected for verification. Because the Department of Education randomly selects 30% of all FAFSA forms for verification each year, most students have a pretty good chance of being selected at least once, just at random, in their 4 years or more of college. If it is determined that your claimed dependency status is incorrect, your school will be required to recalculate your aid eligibility, and you will be asked to refund any overpayments that you have already received.

If that's out of the way - your EFC is a code derived by the Department of Education from the financial information that you provided on the FAFSA form. There is a mathematical formula that takes into account your income, your savings, your other assets, and the income, savings and assets of your parents.

Allowances are made for money you had to pay for taxes, you receive an income allowance of a little more than $3000 that is not counted towards the analysis of your "available income" and allowances are made if your household has one or more additional students in college. The end result of all of this calculating is a number called the EFC, which stands for Expected Family Contribution.

Contrary to what some people will tell you on here, the EFC is not a dollar figure, and it doesn't represent how many dollars you are expected to contribute to your college expenses.

HOWEVER, the EFC is used by your college's financial aid office in order to determine what financial aid programs you are eligible for.

An EFC of 4233 is above the maximum EFC that would qualify you to receive a Pell grant from the federal government. You would also not be eligible for work-study, or for the other major grant program, the FSEOG. What you will be eligible for is the government's Stafford loan program. Stafford loans are considerably better educational loans that any student loan you will find anywhere else. Most importantly, you do not need to pass a credit check to receive one.

All of this information is contained in the booklet that I've attached below. It will answer your questions about EFC and your misconceptions about your dependent status. I hope this information helps. Good luck!

Answer 3

it means your parents have to pay at least $ 4233 out of pocket before you are eligible to get any aid.

Answer 4

I just ran through this problem at my school.  The EFC (expected family contribution) is what is paid either by your family or what you pay out of your pocket.  After filing all of your tuition assistance paperwork, they go through it and based on what you and/or your family put on your taxes as income the year prior, the expect you to pay for that part of your school.  They also take into account how much tuition assistance you recieved the year before and kind of expect you to same some of it for the next year.  I didn't make over $13,000 last year and didn't file any of my parents tax info for my school and my EFC is like $2,300.  Yeah, I don't have that...

Answer 5

i feel it means tht the mooney tht ur family would hve to contribute by paying is 4233...