I don’t know that stats are kept or shared, but I’d venture a guess that one of, if not the, most common FAFSA mistakes people make is putting the parents’ info into the student section. This then causes parental income and assets to be assessed at student rates, leading to grotesque distortions of the EFC.
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FAFSA
Q: I won’t qualify for financial aid. Do I need to fill out the FAFSA? A: Yes! Regardless of whether you think you’re eligible for aid, you should complete the FAFSA. You have to complete it if you (or your student) intends to take out federal student loans, which are available to anyone regardless of need. If you have any…
The FAFSA for the 2018-2019 school year is here. Here are some FAFSA FAQs: Q: What does FAFSA mean by “income?” Gross, taxable, AGI? Something else? A: All of it. FAFSA wants to know each parent’s gross income, including tax-deferred retirement plan contributions. The easiest way to take care of the income is to use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool…
Here is an article I wrote for another advisor’s site on college affordability.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, this is a bit of a refresher post. There are three aid formulas: Federal methodology (FM), based on the FAFSA; Institutional Methodology (IM), based on the CSS PROFILE; and Consensus Methodology (CM), which uses both aid forms. Each is a different way of calculating a family’s