The Financial Aid Eligibility Formula™The Financial Aid Eligibility Formula™
The formula counts four factors — Income, Assets, Household, and Timing — and income is only one of them. Fill in your Profile, then jump to Scenario to see which factor is pushing your number up and where you still have room.
Household
Who's in your family, and where you file.
This drives the Timing factor — which income years are still adjustable.
Income
The single heaviest factor in the formula.
Assets
Whose name the money sits in matters more than most families expect.
Taxable investment accounts in a parent's name. Assessed at about 5.65% per year, and only above your asset protection allowance.
Checking, savings, money market, and CDs held by a parent. Counted the same way — about 5.65% per year.
Parent-owned 529s count as a parent asset — about 5.65% per year — no matter which child is the beneficiary.
Checking, savings, brokerage, UTMA/UGMA accounts in the student's name — not retirement. Assessed at 20–30% per year depending on the school's methodology, with no protection allowance — a much harsher hit than the same dollar held by a parent.
Always excluded from both the FAFSA and CSS Profile — shown here for your own picture, not used in the math.
Ignored entirely by the FAFSA. Only counted if you're applying to CSS Profile schools.
$10,000 in a parent account adds roughly $565 to your number. The same $10,000 in the student's name adds $2,000–$3,000. Ownership is one of the few things families can still change.
Assets breakdown
Enter your asset amounts above to see what's counted and what's protected.
Timing
Which decisions are still open, and which are already behind you.
The FAFSA and CSS Profile don't count the income you earn during college — they count a fixed base year, roughly 18 months before each enrollment year. Income decisions for a given aid year are effectively locked in well before you file.
Assets are different. They're counted as of the day you file, so repositioning assets stays open right up until the application goes in.
Your student is in 11th grade — the income counted for freshman-year aid is already locked in. Assets can still be repositioned any time before you file.