@Northeastmom posted:Right- that rule is going away. No longer will they use EFC. There is a new acronym and it does not take into account how many are in college. You can google it but the whole thing is nuts.
O.k., but I'm still thinking that individual schools are going to adjust to the new information they get from FAFSA. Many private schools also require the CSS, in addition to the FAFSA, and that also asks how many kids in college. So, even if the FAFSA tells the school that the SAI (replacement for EFC) is $XX,XXX, the school can still decide to cut it in half if there are 2 kids in college.
I had two in college for one year, and the schools assigned different EFCs to us, based on the same information. So clearly they were not using what FAFSA told them. When we asked, we were told that each school has its own proprietary formula that they use to determine aid.
FAFSA is also used for Pell Grants, and for those, number of siblings in college might not matter.