the U.S. Department of Education the Student Aid Report (SAR), you'll know what the federal government's formula computes your family can contribute for one year to send a student to college. That dollar amount is called your Expected Family Contribution (EFC). We've already discussed where to find your EFC on the SAR; if you forget, you can access the previous paragraphs on the SAR. In a nutshell, however, the EFC on an online SAR will be on the screen headed "STUDENT ACCESS on the Web SAR Transactions," which you can access via http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/. On the printed copy of the SAR, which you received after filing the FAFSA online, your EFC will be printed on the front side about 4 inches to the right of where the student's name is printed. On the back side, it will be on the bottom 1/3, under Procesing Results, at the top of the middle column. As I've indicated, the EFC is used to determine the financial need and eligibility of a student for financial aid. Here is an explanation of the EFC, according to the U.S. Department of Education's pamphlet, The Student Guide: Financial Aid: "The formula used to calculate your EFC is established by law and is used to measure your family's financial strength on the basis of your family's income and assets." Know that it has nothing to do with what you think your family can afford per year--only what the "federal methodology," as it's called, calculates your ability to pay. As the federal government's pamphlet also states, "If your EFC is below a certain amount, you'll be eligible for a Federal Pell Grant . . . ." Furthermore, as the pamphlet explains, ". . . Your EFC is used in the following equation to determine your financial need: Cost of Attendance - Expected Family Contribution (EFC) = Financial Need." Put most succinctly, the pamphlet summarizes: "Your financial aid administrator calculates your cost of attendance and subtracts the EFC. If there's anything left over, you're considered to have financial need." Thus, the EFC is probably the single most important number colleges use to determine your financial need and whether you'll qualify for financial aid. Your EFC will be used by a college to come up with your student's Financial-Aid Package, which we'll discuss next. http://mvcap.blogspot.com/2009/11/5-efc.html
This is what you've been waiting for. The financial-aid package is what the college offers to help a student finance his or her college expenses. As we've said before, the Expected Family Contribution (EFC), listed on the U.S. Department of Education Student Aid Report (SAR) you receive after filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), goes a long way toward determining how large your "package" is and what it will contain. At the very 203