Using Estimated FM Values

The Financial Aid system stores the Estimated Federal Methodology (EFM) calculation using institutional application data for awarding federal funds when only institutional (Profile) data is available.

Note: For the 2023-2024 and prior Aid Years, the result of both the Federal Methodology (FM) and Institutional Methodology (IM) calculations for the amount of money that a student and his family are expected to contribute is referred to as Expected Family Contribution (EFC); FM EFC and IM EFC.

For the 2024-2025 and future Aid Years, FM calculation result is referred to as the Student Aid Index (SAI); replacing the FM EFC.

The system stores and displays the EFM calculation only when no Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) exists for the student. As soon as you load an ISIR for the student and call the Federal Methodology Need Analysis Calculator (FM NAC), the EFM calculation is replaced by the SAI/EFC from the ISIR.

Note: The system does not consider the status of the ISIR before replacing the EFM calculation it replaces the estimated values with the SAI/EFC value from the ISIR after the FM NAC is called.

When in use, the EFM calculation populates all FM SAI/EFC fields on all pages in the system. The system doesn't display any visual cue to indicate that the value is an estimate. You need to know whether a student has an ISIR loaded to determine whether the value that appears is an EFM calculation or an actual FM SAI/EFC.