Daniel Barkowitz | October 30, 2005
"Singing (again) in four part harmony."
In the interest of providing you some important information, I am going to start reposting some old blog entries on how we determine your family contribution. In this first post, I explain what components make up the family contribution. I have made some (small) edits to update some information, but it is mostly a repeat from last year since not much has changed:
I love to sing.
It helps that I sing fairly well (or at least I like to think I do), but I do love to sing.
As for what I sing, it varies from Broadway show-tunes to Abba to Air to Eminem (I have a pretty eclectic taste in music).
And I am directing a group of high school students in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Now, my group isn't an MIT thing (although there are MANY MANY MIT choirs -- from the Logs to Techiya to the Muses and everything in between). My group practices every other Tuesday night.
As I prepared for this Tuesday's rehearsal, I was thinking about what to put on this blog as we were working on harmonies for one particularly difficult song, and it hit me! The perfect image! Singing in 4 part harmony.
So why is it the perfect metaphor? Well, just like in music you need 4 parts to make up the whole (S, A, T, B), in financial aid, you need four parts to make up the whole as well (PC-I, PC-A, SC-I, SC-A).
So, enough with the metaphor (I feel like I have beat it to death) and on to what I mean.
The Expected Family Contribution is made up of four components:
- Parent Contribution from Income
- Parent Contribution from Assets
- Student Contribution from Income
- Student Contribution from Assets
(Do note that if you are from a divorced or separated family, there may also be a Non-custodial contribution from income and assets -- see here for more information on who is considered to be your parent).
What I thought I would do in the coming days is spend a little bit of time on each of these 4 components and answer some questions about each one, providing some information that will help you understand how we conduct our business.
But for today, I need to tackle one issue before we can even get started, and that is the question of who is considered to be an independent student, therefore not requiring a parental contribution of any variety.
Remember that before, I explained how there were really two different formulas, one used by the Federal Government at all schools to determine Federal aid, and one used by a number of colleges (including MIT) to determine how to award their own aid. Also, remember that I said that while the Federal rules were pretty standard across the board, there were many variations in the Institutional formula.
So, let me tackle the Federal rules first. If you meet any of the following 7 criteria, then you are considered to be an independent student (for Federal purposes only) and do not need to fill out parental information on the FAFSA (although some colleges may ask you to):
- You will be 24 by January 1, 2007.
- You are an orphan or a ward of the court.
- You are married.
- You are a graduate student.
- You are a veteran of the United States armed forces.
- You have a legal dependent of your own (other than a spouse) who lives with you.
- You have a legal dependent of your own who doesn't live with you, but for whom you provide more than 1/2 of their support.
If any of these are true, then you are an Independent student for Federal aid purposes.
For institutional aid, the rules may be different. At MIT, we only consider as independent undergraduate students, those students whose parents are deceased. We believe that a parent's obligation to assist with a student's undergraduate college cost doesn't end just because the student turns 24 or gets married. For our funding in these cases, we require parental information. (If you are curious about how other colleges might handle this, you should contact their financial aid office).
Also, it is important to remember that our process measures a family's ability to pay, not willingness to pay, so whether a parent is or is not willing to make a contribution has no bearing to either the Federal or the institutional formulas.
That is not to say that there are never situations where we would waive parental contributions (how is that for a double negative?), but they are extremely rare and handled on a case-by-case basis. The issues would need to be egregious for us to consider them. You should talk to your financial aid counselor if you feel your situation might qualify to be considered this way.
Look next for a beginning breakdown of the parental contribution from income.
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The author has filed this entry in the "Financial Aid" section; check it out for further reading on this topic. |
Responses To This Entry:
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Respected Sir,
How do you see the income of parents in the case of international students i.e. in dollars or in local currency? And about exchange rates; how they're going to effect.
Thanks
Regards,
Mridul
Posted by: Mridul on November 8, 2005 01:21 PM
Dear Mr. Barkowtiz,
I know this may have been mentioned elsewhere. But since we estimate the CSS/Profile forms and FAFSA forms, do we have to resubmit them come time when we do receive the 2005 income tax returns? Or do we just send the income tax return copies directly. Both the CSS/Profile, and the FAFSA?
Thank you.
Posted by: Laura Yue Bai on November 9, 2005 04:03 PM
Howdy Daniel,
I doubt you actually remember me but I am one of the kids who applied the previous year (the same time Meder(aka Ximik), Saad and others did). [A little hint: I am an intl student, speaking more precisely a Russian; I asked you a couple of questions about financial stuff (mom's income and our flat) via e-mail and you kindly answered all of them, you even offered to tell me if I got in or not in case I wouldn't have gotten the thin envelope in time).] Anyways, the last time I posted here I said I'll come back some time later and tell you how everything's going for me. So now I'm fulfilling my promise. :-)
I am currently a first-year student at Ufa State Aviational Technical University (USATU) learning to be a financial analyst (the major is called 'The Analysis of Operations on Financial Market'). I absolutely love my classmates and I haven't had any trouble with any of them. The classes I am taking are a lot of fun, mostly because of the professors that conduct the lectures and seminars (our professor of History doesn't pronounce some consonants so we just can't help giggling at some of his phrases :).
Altough studying for classes consumes much of my time I still master my knowledge of English by means of reading good English literature (my most recent reads are 'The Bells' and 'The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe and some stories from Doyle's 'A Study In Scarlet') and by learning new words on daily basis (A Word A Day and Merriam-Webster's daily mailing lists were of particular help to me).
I haven't given up my singing either and still love to sing some Russian (and American :-)) songs a capella (although the latest experiments prooved my choice of songs to be unpleasant to some individuals I doubt I'll quit singing:)).
Anyways, I hope everything's going alright for you and your colleagues at Fin Aid and Admissions Offices!
May God bless you.
Sincerely yours,
Eujin Dzinter
PS Hope that you weren't yawning by the end of this post ;)
Posted by: Eujin D on November 11, 2005 02:21 PM
Hi Daniel. As the parent of a current MIT freshman, I'm learning some things about financial management at MIT that I didn't know before! One thing I don't recall reading about in your info for parents last year (although maybe it was there and I missed it?). Apparently every month or so, the MIT billing system "zeros out" any credit balance your student's account is carrying. He'd brought in a scholarship check to deposit, and 3 weeks later they apparently sent him back a check for the entire amount, rather than carrying it over for second semester as we'd intended! (He never received the check, by the way, we're researching that now.) Is there some way for students to deposit scholarship checks, etc. into their student account before they're needed? Isn't there some tax implication to being given the scholarship money *back* to put into his own personal savings account to leave until next semester? (That's why they make out the check to the school and him both, so he won't just keep the money, right?) We want to do this right, but are confused about what he's supposed to do with checks made out to MIT and him both, if not deposit them for payment of future charges (if we do not have a current balance to pay down).
I hope that wasn't totally confusing! Thanks for any clarification.
Posted by: leftcoast mom on November 14, 2005 11:32 AM
Hello
I applied to MIT EA.
Next year (school year) I am going to be an exchange student. I plan on deferring admission to college (whether it be MIT or any other)
So then....Do I still do the financial aid stuff this year? Or next?
Posted by: Karen F on November 14, 2005 10:48 PM
moneyman,the application booklet mentions something to do in november for international student . I dont have the booklet handy with me right now since i am in a cyber cafe and i did not come with that specific question in my mind though i wished to ask
, i will clearly mention that in my next post but for the time being if you get my point could you please clarify do i have to fill out some kind of form in the month of november. if yes which one? and if not i hope you please elaborate the process for internationals
Posted by: vivek on November 19, 2005 03:24 AM
Sir, this is absurd. You have not updated in over a month. Even the obscenely-busy admissions officers have managed to beat that. Please write more, so when my parents nag me about paying for college, I can tell them something constructive?
Posted by: Rhiannon Carr on December 3, 2005 07:16 PM
I agree with the previous comment; I've been waiting for the "breakdown of the parental contribution from income" for weeks now. Please update.
Posted by: Hamster on December 4, 2005 02:07 PM
