maverick2011 wrote:
EFC does matter. The financial aid office is going to compare your EFC to the expected cost of attending their school for 2009-2010. Let's say your EFC is $15K per year and the cost of attendance is $75K. Then the school will allow you to make up that $60K difference with scholarships, loans, and to a lesser extent, grants. The lower your EFC is, the more money you are eligible for.
That's not quite true. Regardless of what your EFC is, you can still borrow full cost of attendance (less scholarships and grants) with Stafford and GradPLUS loans. So in your example above, assuming the person got no scholarships, they could get $20.5k in Stafford loans and $54.5k in GradPLUS loans.
The EFC is used as an index so that schools can quickly assess the relative financial need of applicants for determining who qualifies for need-based aid.