Eligibility for many federal, state, and institutional financial aid programs is determined by the expected family contribution (EFC) from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which functions as a tool to ration scarce aid dollars. The lowest possible EFC under current rules is zero, but this obscures a wider distribution of family resources that would be partially uncovered if the EFC formula were not truncated at zero and negative values were allowed. In this paper, I estimate negative EFCs using student-level data from nine colleges and universities between the 2007-08 and 2011-12 academic year. I find a large amount of dispersion in the distribution of negative EFCs for dependent students and that between 20% and 90% of students (varying by whether the student files the full FAFSA or qualifies for a Simplified FAFSA or an automatic zero EFC) would qualify for a larger Pell Grant award if negative EFCs were allowed. Additional costs of funding a negative EFC could range from $1.6 billion to $7.2 billion per year, depending on assumptions regarding generosity.