What is Expected Family Contribution?

If you’ve been looking into financial aid for college, one ominous sounding acronym almost certainly popped up:  EFC.  EFC stands for expected family contribution, and plays an important role in determining how much financial aid you are likely to get.

Right off the bat, students often assume that the EFC is either how much money you’ll get from the government, or how much you’re going to have to pay for college.  These are both wrong.  The Expected Family Contribution represents the amount that your family is expected to contribute to your education.  It is by no means a guarantee, but rather a very rough estimate used to help the Government assess how much aid you are in need of.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Before you apply, Federal Student Loans, Understanding Your Loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “What is Expected Family Contribution?”

  1. Student Loan Debt Help » How much will it cost my parents to send me to College? Says:
    November 1st, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    [...] I talked a bit about EFC - expected family contribution .  While this is most relevant to finding out how much support you’ll receive from the [...]

  2. Student Loan Debt Help » How do I apply for aid with the FAFSA? Says:
    November 3rd, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    [...] Expected Family Contribution should be printed at the top right of the page. (What is EFC?) Your school will use this number to [...]

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