Find Student Loan Consolidation

1. Felix 57 Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

   have them claim themselves as an independent so they get financial aid

2. dinochirus Says:
   September 11th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

   Never get college loans. Seriously, they’ll decimate your finances. Always do only grants.
   And the best way to qualify is to maintain excellent grades, and to search around like it ain’t nobody’s business (But yours)

3. milliken51 Says:
   September 14th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

   Do not listen to felix, I declared independence from parents to get in state tuition at a school. However tehy still go off parents income for fed loans untill student is 25 unless child can priove history of abuse.

4. dollhousegirl Says:
   September 15th, 2008 at 12:43 am

   i agree claiming themselves would work, but once you do that, they can’t go back, lol ffsa also. check into grants, go to the libary there are small college scholarships for almost anything these days, being female from the midwest. or being a young male from a certain reglion going into x field. It takes some digging.

5. Mary Lou Says:
   September 16th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

   The best way is to have them live on their own. Living with you counts as their income. Hurts in the long run.

6. FinAidGrrl Says:
   September 17th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

   First, know that your childen will be eligible for Stafford Loans regardless of whether they show need or not — this is why the Unsubsidized Stafford loan was created. Loan limits for this type of fund are increasing, too, beginning with the 07-08 award year.

   Beyond that, if *you* are applying for loans for your children, you wouldn’t want to reduce your income at all! PLUS loans, and most private loans are credit-based; your lender will be looking for halfway decent debt-to-income ratio. In this sense, hiding your income/assets to make your children federally eligible could hurt you when it comes time to borrow privately.

   What are colleges looking for? The same thing that the feds are when you file the FAFSA: income (taxable and untaxed) and assets from both student and parent; in-kind support that the student has received; how many other children are in your household and, of those, how many are currently college undergrads, etc…

   When it comes to additional information, we’re looking for anything *else*. If a parent appeals on the grounds that their income is X and their assets are Y — and this is the same information that they provided on the FAFSA — there isn’t much new information there.

   Things I will consider as “special circumstances”:

   * “I lost my job midway through last tax year and my ‘05 income isn’t indicative of what my 06-07 income will be.”
   * “I recently got divorced.”
   * “During the last tax year, I had a lot of medical bills that weren’t covered by my medical insurance.”

   Things I *won’t* consider in an appeal:

   * “My other daughter just got married and I had to pay for a costly wedding for her”
   * “I live in X state where the cost of living is much higher than in Y state where your college is”
   * “I have a lot of debt” (yes, debt is certainly grounds for financial hardship, but if we consider your debt, we’d have to consider everyone else’s; when the feds are ready, they’ll ask the debt question on the FAFSA — until then, I can’t include it)
   * “I [the parent] am in school myself” (So, you used your kids’ college savings for yourself?)

   As for tricks…

   ::sigh:: No Financial Aid administrator likes to hear that people are seeking out “tricks of the trade” or trying to hide income/assets, so any expert who’s willing to give them to you isn’t very reputable to begin with.

   That said, if you’re curious to see where you might be hardest hit, the first thing you should do is perform your own EFC calculation to see where the contribution comes from. A good website for this is Calculator page, here: This page is slightly simplified; if you want to perform the actual calculation by hand, you can go here:

   Once you do this, look at WHERE your EFC comes from. Is it assets or income? Is any of it from the *student*? Some people don’t realize that student income/assets are converted (i.e. held against them/you) at a much higher rate than parent assets/income. I’ve had parents ask why their EFC is so high and it turns out that their son had $10,000 in savings bonds, 35% of which was counted towards a single year’s EFC. The most well-known “trick,” then, is to transfer any student assets into the parents name. Were these assets in the parents name, only 12% (at most) would be counted towards the EFC.

   Most people who fall into the middle class category get burned not by their assets but by their income, because assets are protected (to a point) whereas available income is “counted against you” more more heavily. There’s very little way to hide income, because your school can, at any time, request copies of any information that they see fit to resolve any discrepancies that arise while they are giving you financial aid. Your FAFSA can also be randomly selected for Verification at any time. Many Financial Aid admins have also become well acquainted with a variety of “creative” tax strategies, so even if the IRS doesn’t catch you, we can still deny you aid if something looks fishy and you can’t back it up.

   A word about independent status: A lot of posters on Yahoo! Answers throw this phrase around as if a dependency override is simple to obtain. It is not. In order for a dependent student to be claimed as independent, s/he may be asked to prove (among other things)

   (a) that the student’s parents don’t claim him/her on their tax return (documentation: copies of parent 1040)
   (b) that s/he has paid for all living expenses by him/herself (documentation: credit card receipts, insurance policies, rental agreements, cancelled checks — the works).
   (c) that s/he has been abused (documentation: letter from clergy or social worker)

   Those are just a few examples. Plenty of schools will require much more.

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