What is Demonstrated Need?
Your Demonstrated Need is the amount of need-based financial aid you may be eligible for. Every college determines your Demonstrated Need, or financial aid eligibility, using this fundamental equation:
Cost of Attendance
– Student Aid Index (ability to pay determined by FAFSA or CSS Profile)
_____________________________
= Demonstrated Need or Eligibility for Need-based Aid
Colleges that only require FAFSA use the FAFSA Student Aid Index (SAI) to measure a family’s ability to pay and determine a student’s eligibility for institutional need-based aid. Colleges that require the CSS Profile calculate a custom Student Aid Index (SAI) to measure a family’s ability to pay and determine the student’s eligibility for institutional need-based aid.
How to know your Student Aid Index?
You can calculate your FAFSA Student Aid Index using the College Money Method SAI Calculator. For the CSS Profile, there is no overall Profile SAI calculator, since each college can customize the inputs and formulas. To explore CSS Profile eligibility, it’s best to use the Net Price Calculator for each CSS Profile college.
What is the Percent of Need Met?
While you may have a certain amount of Demonstrated Need at a college, this doesn’t mean that you will receive a financial aid package to equal that need. Many colleges don’t have the ability to provide a financial aid package that can meet a student’s full need (Read more here). Luckily, colleges publish data on a yearly basis on what percent of need they meet on average. Given this information, you can know ahead of time how generous a college is with their need-based financial aid offers.
Demonstrated Need
x Percent of Need Met
_____________________________
= Anticipated Financial Aid Offer
Let’s take an example. Chapman University meets 75% of demonstrated need on average. If your FAFSA SAI is equal to $22,000, given their cost of attendance of $87,730, your demonstrated need is equal to $40,700 ($87,730 – $22,000). However, because, on average, Butler offers a financial aid package that meets 70% of that need, you should expect a financial aid offer of about $28,500 (70% of $40,700). This leaves you with a gap in the financial aid offer of $12,200, which is an additional out-of-pocket cost beyond your Student Aid Index of $22,000.
The Demonstrated Need Calculator
It’s essential to understand which colleges “gap” your financial aid, and by how much, so that you can plan for these additional costs. You can use this calculator to explore FAFSA colleges’ financial aid policies and their impact on your expected ability to pay.