Once you have completed your FAFSA the government will use a formula to calculate what they call your EFC or “Expected Financial Commitment”. This is an amount that the government tells schools that the student and parents should be able to afford to spend on a yearly basis towards the student’s college expenses. We previously talked about the COA or “Cost of Attendance” for a college, once you know the COA of the school you want to attend, you can then subtract your EFC from that total and the amount you get is what you can expect to receive in Financial Aid from that college, typically this will be in the form of grants and scholarships and possibly some work study.

One of the big myths we talked about in earlier articles is was that many people feel they cannot afford to go to college. Let me give you an example of attending 3 different schools with much different COA’s and how it will cost you basically the same to attend any of these schools.

For example; after having filled out the FAFSA you find out that your EFC is $18,000. This is what a parent and student can be expected to pay yearly for college. School # 1 has a COA of $18,000. School #2 has a COA of $24,000 to attend and school #3 is a private school with a COA of $42,000 a year. Typically people will look at these 3 schools and say that School #1 is the most affordable. However once you are accepted at these schools they will put together a financial aid package that will cover your COA up to the $18,000. In this scenario, School #1 would not give you any Financial Aid, because their COA is the same as your EFC. However, school #2 would set up a financial aid package of $6,000 that would still leave you with you EFC amount of $18,000 to pay. School #3 would create a financial aid package of $24,000 that would still make your EFC amount of $18,000.

As you can see the net cost to you will still be the same to attend any of these colleges. So do not narrow your selections to schools that on the surface you think are the only ones you can afford, once you get a Financial aid package back from a school, you may find out that there is no difference in actual cost you between a $42,000 a year school and an $18,000 a year College.