Your Questions About Fafsa

Nagesh answers:

You need to complete the FAFSA with your information and your parents’ information. Each person applies for financial aid using his/her own information, not that from a sibling If you use your sibling’s information, it could delay or even halt the processing of a financial aid application you submitted to a college.

Please complete the FAFSA with your information. I had a student use his sibling information, under the same premise, and it messed up his financial aid big time.

Nagesh answers:

FAFSA. Free application for federal student aid.http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/

What is federal student aid: It includes grants, work study and loans. Filling out the FAFSA you are applying for all the federal aid listed on this page, plus others certain states and colleges have individually: http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/what010.htm

When FAFSA? Jan 1 of the year you will need it.You have the option on the FAFSA to do an estimate FAFSA using the previous years taxes and send it through. Then ASAP when you can you do the taxes for that year and go on the FAFSA home page under #3 where it says make corrections and put in the actual tax information. For example, my daughter was attending Fall 2010. On Jan 1 we did the FAFSA as an estimate using our 2008 taxes, then as soon as we got or W2s and did our taxes for 2009 we made the corrections on the FAFSA. Why file an estimate: Because colleges are all given so much grant/work study money and its given to students first come, first serve, even if you qualify if you file later, it may be gone. So file early!

How much do you get: Federal aid is offered given to students based on their financial need. Your financial need is determined based on the questions you are asked on the FAFSA which will be about income, amount in banks, property owned, stocks and the like, as well as questions about your current home situation, how many, how many in college at the same time etc. These questions will determine your financial need. They use all the info to determine your EFC, estimated family contribution which is the amount of money your family is expected to pay for your college because they can afford that based on your financial picture. This EFC amount is subtracted from the cost of the attendance (also called school budget) and the result of this is your financial need. COA/student budget is tuition, books, travel personal expenses, housing, fees. You can get an estimate here: http://www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov/F4CApp/index/index.jsf Even if you do not qualify for federal grants or work study you may qualify for federal loans which most all students have. This EFC and recap of your FAFSA will be put in a report called SAR, student aid report. You get an email this is ready in a week or two if you did it online and it can be viewed on the FAFSA home page #3.

The only way you will know what federal aid you qualify for is the colleges you listed on the FAFSA will be sent your SAR and a financial aid award created for you based on your financial need. Each college award will be different, as the cost of attendance is different, colleges have their own aid to offer, and when you apply makes a difference in what aid they have available to offer. You need to look at all the offers. If your federal aid grants, work study and federal loans do not cover your cost of attendance you will need to get a private loan to cover the rest like from a bank, so it may be smarter to pick a cheaper college where you need the least loans

How do you get your aid once you accept it: It gets deposited into your college account, usually by semester not all at once on certain disbursement dates your school has where everyone will get their money disbursed on a certain day. We applied Jan 1 2010, school started 9-1, our semester federal aid was disbursed 8-25. The colleges takes out their charges for housing, meals, tuition, and fees. We did have money left over and if you do you get a refund either a check or card system depending on the school, and we got that a week after school started by card system. Use that refund if any for books, materials etc.

Helpful sites:
All questions FAFSA, financial aid: http://www.finaid.org/
http://www.gocollege.com/financial-aid/student-loans/benefits-of-loans.html
Click BEGIN THE PRESENTATION: http://www.nextstudent.com/financial-aid-tutorial/financial-aid-tutorial.asp#
http://www.knowhow2go.org/
Does your state/program participate in out of state tuition for instate cost: http://www.sreb.org/page/1304/academic_common_market.html
http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/timeline.jsp?tab=applying
http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/student_guide/2009-2010/english/typesofFSA_grants.htm

Nagesh answers:

The fafsa is the beginning process for all federal and state grants, as well as federal student loans, parent loans and work study.

Yes, you can still fill out a fafsa. To apply, you go to http://fafsa.ed.gov and answer the questions. If Your parents live and work in another country, that is okay!!!

Your parents will have some sort of an income tax turn in THAT country as well. (No country in the world doesn’t require taxes of it’s citizens!!!). Have the folks get you their tax returns for 2009 and then you will report that income on your fafsa, it will also ask how much tax liability they had. Have them sign it and send a copy of it to you (you will likely have to turn it into your schools fin aid office).

If they can’t get a PIN number (due to not having a valid SSN) then they can physically SIGN your fafsa signature page (with a pen) and mail it into fafsa.

Nagesh answers:

FAFSA stands for “Free Application for Federal Student Aid” and is an application to see if you qualify for money to help you go to school. SOme of the money you might get is free, some of the money you get may be loans and some of the money you might get may be earned through you working.

If you had actually filled out the fafsa, you would have received an SAR in the mail letting you know if you qualified for the PELL Grant.

To check if you actually submitted your fafsa (and not just applied for a PIN number – which is what it sounds like you actually did) go to https://fafsa.ed.gov/FOTWWebApp/AppStatServlet and enter your info it. If it says “Application not found” then you just applied for a PIN and didn’t actually complete the fafsa. To complete the fafsa you would have entered your and your Mom’s income information from the previous tax year.

Your school of choice is who actually sends you your award letter (letting you know how much aid you qualify for). So yeah, you’d need to apply for admission and get accepted before you will know if it will pay for some or all of your school.

Nagesh answers:

When to file: FAFSA needs to be filed every year. It becomes available Jan 1 every year. We do ours Jan 1 every year. The earlier you do it the more you maximize your award. Colleges are given limited funding from the govt for federal aid. Some types are given first come first serve. So even if you qualify if you do qualify if you file later it may be given to students who filed early and you will not get it. Many students wait for their parents to do their taxes. You do not have to do that. On the FAFSA form there will be a question about if you filed taxes like filed, will file, will not file. You choose will file. Then you use the completed taxes from the previous year to do the FAFSA as an estimate and submit it. Then as soon as you can get the current year taxes done and then log back onto your FAFSA and it will say make corrections. You click on that and then change the tax question to filed and then put in the current tax information and resubmit. Note resubmit, not save. Save is at thebottom and that just saves your FAFSA. You can save it and then up top right it says submit. Http://bellarminearc.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/file-your-fafsa-early-this-year-and-heres-why/

You are offered financial aid based on your degree of financial need of it. This is determined by your FAFSA application. They use the answers to that in a formula and the result is your EFC, estimated family contribution. Http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/101310EFCFormulaGuide1112.pdf The lower this number the better. You file FAFSA, in 2 weeks it will be say processed which means they got it and are processing it. Then in about 2 weeks you get an email saying your SAR, student aid report is ready, this will tell you your EFC. They will send this SAR to the colleges you listed on your FAFSA. The ones to which you applied and offered you acceptance will create a financial aid budget also called cost of attendance (COA) which will be tuition, fees, books, room and board (housing and meal plan), personal expenses, travel expenses. The total of these is your COA.
COA
minus EFC
= your FINANCIAL NEED

So they will offer as much aid as you qualify for to match that FINANCIAL NEED to cover you COA. If you dont qualify for enough federal aid to cover that COA, then you would also need to bget a private loan to cover what the federal aid does not.

As an example my daughter’s EFC was 2700 something and she did qualify for grants and loans. However, when you file, what funds the college has etc. Factor into that.

So as you can see the lower the COA the less loans you will need to take out. Most all students have student loans except those with exceptional financial need based on the EFC. Also there are no loan colleges for low income students.

Http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/best-values-in-public-colleges-2011.html
http://www.finaid.org/questions/noloansforlowincome.phtml

Great financial aid site: http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/attachments/siteresources/Funding_Education_Beyond_HS_2011-12.pdf

http://www.knowhow2go.org/