After the Student Financial Aid Application it will be necessary to evaluate your Student Aid Report.

Three to five days after you submit a FAFSA on the Web application for college financial aid you will receive a Student Aid Report in an email sent to the email address you listed on the FAFSA. If you did not list an email address, a paper Student Aid Report, or SAR, will be mailed to you. Check your email junk mail inbox to be sure the email from FederalStudentAidFAFSA@cpsemail.ed.gov is not filtered out. You can add this email address to your address book to prevent this from happening.

Your SAR is a summary of the information you entered on the FAFSA. It also contains your EFC, or expected family contribution. If no EFC is visible on the upper right corner of your SAR, there may be problems with your application. In either case, whether your EFC is calculated or not, you should read through the SAR carefully and fully to look for errors and omissions. If you find errors and need to make corrections, it is wise to contact your school to ask who should make the change, you or the school. A FAA, financial aid administrator, at your school can access to your FAFSA and make changes as necessary. If you were sent a paper SAR, you can make changes on the SAR itself and mail the changes to FAFSA. You can also log into FAFSA and make changes any time to your application.

It is advisable to limit the amount of changes you make to your SAR, or FAFSA. Each change you make is sent to your institutions. They are required to look at all changes that are made. If you make a substantial change that affects your aid eligibility, you may be asked to provide proof of the change you made. Some applicants believe they can manipulate the application by making changes that will affect their EFC. FAA’s are skilled at distinguishing which changes appear authentic and which is an attempt to manipulate the numbers. Remember that an FAA has the authority, actually they have an obligation to the federal government, to clear up any information that appears to conflict with previously entered data or that appears fraudulent. Of course, the vast majority of applicants are honest users of the FAFSA. A request for information from your institution should not be viewed as a suspicion that you’ve been dishonest. The bulk of an FAA’s workload is processing documents that come into the office after the FAFSA application.

Schools are required to collect verification documents on a portion of their government student loan and financial aid applicants. Verification documents typically consist of tax returns and W2s. A complex file may require asset statements, statements of marital status, letters from the Veteran’s Administration, and verification of childcare costs for instance. In short, your financial aid office can request any document they deem as reasonable to confirm the data you entered on the FAFSA.
 

Tags: AFSA, student financial aid, financial aid, expected family contribution, student aid report, college loan, college loans, scandals, education, financial aid, money for college, sallie ma | AFSA, student financial aid, financial aid, expected family contribution, student aid report, college loan, college loans, scandals, education, financial aid, money for college, sallie ma

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