The Expected Family Contribution

The expected family contribution, or EFC, is the prime indicator that the Department of Education uses to measure your level of financial need.

By subtracting your EFC from your cost of attendance, your level of need is determined and utilized to evaluate your ability to qualify for certain type of federal student aid, such as the Pell Grant, and the Subsidized Stafford Loan.

EFC is the most critical metric your must pay attention to if you want to become eligible for the maximum amount of federal student aid you possibly can.

Calculating EFC

The expected family contribution is calculated with regard to the information you provided during the completion of your FAFSA.

Knowing your dependency status is of prime importance, as this will determine what financial information will be used in the formula that will produce the final EFC product.

Dependent Students

If you are still considered to be a dependent student then the following information will be used to calculate your EFC:

• Your income
• Parents’ income and assets
• Household size (parents’ household)
• Number of family members attending college
• Parents’ age
• Parents’ employment status

All of this information will be collected during the submission of your FAFSA and inserted into certain predefined formulas to produce your final EFC number.

Independent Students

The following information will be used to calculate your EFC when you are an independent student:

• Your income and assets
• Spouse’s income and assets
• Household size (yourself and spouse)
• Number of family members attending college

The main difference is that your parents’ financial information, their household size, and other related factors will not be used in favor of your own household, which should include your spouse, and any dependents.

This information will be inserted into various predefined formulas that will be a bit different than the ones used for dependent students. Regardless, the end result will be the production of a singular EFC value that will ultimately indicate your level of financial need.

Using the EFC

You won’t technically know your EFC until you fully complete the FAFSA. It should be explicitly revealed in your Student Aid Report (SAR), and upon learning what it is, you should have a solid idea of whether or not you are going to be able to qualify for certain types of federal aid.

For example, the Pell Grant eligibility cutoff threshold is set at 5,273, and students with lower EFC values than this figure should be able qualify for at least some Pell Grant aid for that particular school year.

Lower EFC values typically result in higher amounts of federal student aid, with EFC values of zero almost always resulting in the largest amounts of aid.

You won’t know for sure how much federal student aid you may have qualified for until you receive your official financial aid award letter from your school at some point before the Fall semester.

Common Student Question: Does my EFC affect my ability to get a private student loan?

No, the expected family contribution is only pertinent to federal student aid, and in no way affects your ability to get a private student loan.

Remember that private student loans are based on credit, and not financial need, and therefore do not take into consideration your EFC, which is only relevant when used to measure financial need.