Calculate your EFC

Caculate your EFC

"Just apply to some carefully chosen colleges, complete the FAFSA, and wait to hear what type of financial aid you'll be offered." No matter how many times people hear this advice, they don't like it. With college prices as high as they are, is that any surprise?

So, to make the financial aid process a bit more transparent, here are links to help you calculate your EFC. With prospective colleges offering you the Cost of Attendance (COA), and an estimate of your EFC, you'll have two key parts of the aid process readily available to you.

Of course, you'll still have to wait for each college to tell you how much aid they'll offer, and what forms the aid will take, but at least the EFC number will give you one more piece to the puzzle.

Calculate your EFC with these tools:

Princeton Review EFC Calculator

College Board EFC Calculator

FinAid EFC Calculator

Those who have a thing for pencils and paper (or who worry a lot about privacy online) can find forms to calculate EFC manually at:

EFC forms in pdf format

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