Financial Aid
About
Once you've decided to attend college, many of you will need financial assistance. The following information will help you navigate through this process.
Apply for a FASFA ID
You and your parent must apply for an ID. An ID is your electronic signature and you and your parent both must have a separate ID. Log on HERE to apply for an ID prior to doing your FAFSA.
FAFSA
The FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Anyone applying for any type of money from the government, including grants and loans, must complete the FAFSA. Anyone who wants a loan, grant, or scholarship needs to complete the FAFSA. The FAFSA (link below) may be completed any time after October 1 of your senior year. To complete this, you will need your previous year's tax information.
IRS
When you apply online, you will be given the option to retrieve your IRS data to automatically populate the FAFSA. This option simplifies the application process, helps reduce errors, and may lower your chances of being selected to verify the information on your FAFSA. To take advantage of this feature, you'll need to complete your taxes first. It will take roughly two weeks for your taxes to be processed. After this time, you should be able to retrieve this information to automatically populate the corresponding questions on the FAFSA.
Student Aid Report
After you submit the FAFSA, you will be sent an email (if provided) with your Student Aid Report (SAR) within 3-5 days. If you did not provide an email, you will receive your SAR via mail within 7-10 days. Your Student Aid Report (SAR) summarizes the information you submitted on your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and provides you with your Expected Family Contribution (EFC).
If there are no corrections or additional information you must provide, the SAR will contain your EFC, which is the number that's used to determine your eligibility for federal student aid.
Your data will be electronically sent to the schools you listed on your FAFSA.
Included in your SAR packet, you will find an Award Letter Comparison Worksheet. This will help you compare information from the various colleges that you have applied to and help you make an informed decision on which one is right for you. If you have any questions, please refer to the FASFA website or to the specific college's financial aid department.
FAFSA4CASTER
If you would like to understand your options for paying for college prior to actually applying for money, check out the FAFSA4Caster. This website will estimate your eligibility for federal student aid.
Lendedu (link below) has created a course that contains 4 main sections with 22 short lectures and should not take any longer than about an hour and a half to complete. In addition, many of the lectures have videos embedded to help provide more information to students.
This course could be very beneficial in helping your students gain a general understanding of their different options when paying for college.
https://lendedu.com/blog/financial-aid-scholarships-student-loans-101-course/
