Estimate your Student Aid Index for FAFSA. Approximation, use studentaid.gov estimator for the actual filing.
Estimated SAI (approx)
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Need-based aid eligibility
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Pell Grant likely?
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Your breakdown
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EFC is gone, meet the SAI
If you researched college aid more than a few years ago, you learned the term Expected Family Contribution. It no longer exists. The FAFSA Simplification Act retired the EFC and replaced it with the Student Aid Index, or SAI, beginning with the 2024 to 2025 award year. The name change is more than cosmetic. The old EFC could never drop below zero, while the SAI can go as low as negative $1,500, a deliberate signal that a family has essentially no capacity to pay and should be prioritized for aid. This tool estimates that index from four inputs: parent income, parent assets, student income, and student assets.
One thing to be clear about up front. This is run by the U.S. Department of Education through Federal Student Aid, not the IRS. When you need an authoritative figure, the right source is the Federal Student Aid Estimator at studentaid.gov, not any tax publication. This calculator is a fast approximation built to give you a ballpark before you sit down with the real application.
Running a $120,000 family through the formula
Take a household with $120,000 of parent adjusted gross income, $100,000 in investable assets outside the home and retirement accounts, a student who earned $5,000 from a summer job, and no student assets. The simplified formula assesses parent income above a $35,000 allowance at 22%, parent assets at about 5.64%, student income above a $9,500 protection at 50%, and student assets at 20%. Here is how the pieces add up.
Against an annual college cost of $35,000, that SAI of $24,340 leaves a demonstrated need of $10,660, the figure a school may try to meet with grants, work study, or subsidized loans. Notice how little the student's summer earnings mattered. The $9,500 income protection allowance wiped them out entirely, which is exactly why a part time job rarely hurts a teenager's aid.
Why assets move the needle less than you fear
Parents often panic about savings, but income is the dominant driver. In this example, $120,000 of income generated $18,700 of expected contribution while a full $100,000 of assets added only $5,640. The chart makes the imbalance visible.
The Pell question is answered on its own track
Under the new rules, eligibility for the Pell Grant, the largest federal grant for undergraduates, is no longer tied directly to your SAI for many families. Instead it keys off family size and adjusted gross income measured against the federal poverty guidelines. This tool flags Pell as likely only when parent income falls under $60,000, a rough proxy. A family at $120,000, like the one above, almost certainly will not see a Pell Grant, but could still qualify for institutional aid and subsidized loans depending on the school's cost and its own formula.
Who this helps and the corners it cuts
This is for parents and students sketching out affordability a year or two before applications, or anyone who wants to understand why their aid offer looks the way it does. It is an estimate, full stop. The official SAI calculation pulls in more than 50 data points, including the number of children in college, business and farm value adjustments, untaxed income, and a graduated assessment of parent income rather than the flat 22% used here. A few real cautions. The new formula removed the old break for having multiple children in college at once, which surprised many families. Retirement accounts and the equity in your primary home are excluded from assets, so do not include them. And the SAI is a measure of capacity to pay, not a bill. No school sends you an invoice for your SAI. Run the studentaid.gov estimator and each target school's net price calculator before you make any decision.
Can my Student Aid Index really be negative?
Yes. The SAI floor is negative $1,500. A negative index means the formula judges your family to have no ability to contribute and signals to schools that you should receive maximum need based aid. This is one of the most meaningful improvements over the old EFC, which stopped at zero and could not distinguish between a family that could pay nothing and one that could pay just a little.
Whose income goes on the FAFSA after a divorce?
Under the simplified rules, the parent who provided the greater share of financial support during the prior 12 months is the one who reports income, which is a change from the old test based on whom the student lived with most. If that parent has remarried, the stepparent's income must be included as well.
Does a 529 plan hurt our aid?
Only modestly. A 529 owned by a parent is reported as a parent asset and assessed at the same roughly 5.64% rate, so $50,000 in a 529 adds under $3,000 to your SAI. Given the tax advantages, that small assessment is almost always worth it, and distributions from a parent owned 529 no longer count as student income on the FAFSA.