Parent Series- Exploring the FAFSA

Good evening and welcome to this evening's presentation. Just so you know, we're going to give folks a few minutes to filter in, so we'll get started in just a couple of minutes.

What we're going to go ahead and get started? Thank you again for coming out this evening. Logging in for our presentation regarding exploring the FAFSA. My name is Hilary Lynn Brandan. I'm the Associate Director in our student Financial Services office at UV. Just a couple of quick notes before we get started, I've been notified that this presentation works best when used in Google Chrome. So if you have any technical difficulties, please know you can just exit.

Re enter under Chrome server and you should be good to go for that. Also in order to see the screen to its fullest capacity there is also the full screen option up at the top right hand side of your screen and also you should have a chat function on the left hand side. We do have a few admission counselors available this evening. Should you have questions that you'd like to put into the chat we can go ahead and feel those there, but hopefully your questions get resolved as we go through this presentation so.

As I said before, we are looking at exploring the FAFSA. So this evening we are going to be reviewing what the facet is, how it's used exactly, and also of course, most importantly, how do you actually file it? So we'll go ahead and get started.

So first of all, what is the FAFSA? Well, the FAFSA stands for free application for federal student aid and it is a collection of demographic, an income information for the student applicant for that academic year. Even though it stands for federal student aid, though it is also the only way to apply not only for federal aid, but State of Indiana financial aid as well as most institutions use it for their need based financial aid as well.

So the FAFSA is very important and we do encourage all students to file this form at least in year one.

So why is it important to file the FAFSA? Well, in addition to federal grant eligibility or state grant eligibility, students who intend to use any lending through the federal government to help with costs for education are required to file a FAFSA. It's not too painful and will get through this evening. So you've got some tips and tricks on how to get that completed. But it is important to go ahead and file that a lot of times we have families who, maybe they've had students in school before and.

They have not been eligible for any grants or things of that nature, but if you have more than one child in college at a time, that information that is collected on the FAFSA is then distributed between multiple students in school and so your family may have eligibility to qualify for additional aid that wasn't there before.

Again, the faster collection of data is asking for a lot of information. It's not just about your income, it's also looking at household size and a lot of different components to that, so it's dangerous to assume that you won't have eligibility for anything by filing the FAFSA. As in addition to just the federal aid as we mentioned earlier, institutional and state grant eligibility can also be yielded from filing this form.

We do understand too, that the FAFSA is looking kind of a snapshot in time for you, and so if there are changes to family circumstances throughout the academic year, having a FAFSA on file allows financial aid offices to more quickly respond to your family specific situation so that we can help in that situation to see if there's any additional aid that might be yielded from it.

Now we do know that the fast it can be a little daunting at times, so we really encourage you to get organized before you start making a faster folder, whether it's in paper form or in electronic version is very, very important. This form is an annual form, so you will get to file it more than just one year, so it's very important to keep track of a lot of information that you'll be needing when you actually go into complete this form. We encourage you to have the Social Security numbers for the student.

Applicant as well as parent information as that will be asked for on the FAFSA Ann. It is also important to note that the FAFSA uses this Social Security number and most schools will use the Social Security number as well to link that information up to the admission record for your student. So if you haven't already done so, you'll want to ensure that the admission office has your students all security number on file as that's the method we use to link those components up.

We're going to be talking about the 2122 FAFSA this evening, and so that's for students who are high school seniors right now and it is going to be using the 2019 tax return, so you'll want to have your federal tax return for 2019 to use on this upcoming form. Any record of your W twos bank statements, other untaxed income, those types of things just keep that in mind that you'll want to have an idea.

On quick access to that, as you're completing this as well, and while we talk a lot about tax information, we're going to step by step. Go through how to link your tax data into the FAFSA is called the IRS data retrieval tool, and it's a really quick way to help get a lot of that information over without you having to worry about manually typing information in. So there are two forms by which you can submit the original FAFSA. The first is of the student aid mobile.

App this is Wichita method. You can have your students complete the FAFSA electronically through the student aid mobile app. What we will make a couple of notes though to this is that the initial submission of the facet can be completed this way and in future years a renewal FAFSA can also be completed this way. But if there's an error on your FAFSA which it will happen and that's OK, you can't actually make corrections to the FAFSA on the app. You will still have to go to the web based version.

So just keep that in mind, but you can certainly complete the original FAFSA on the my student aid app.

We're going to talk a little bit here very shortly about FSA ID's. Those are your federal student aid ID's and that's an electronic signature that would also still be required even if it's completed on the mobile app as well.

If however, you go to thefaster.gov, which is where we encourage families to really start this, gather around with your students. We want this to be a family fun project, but it's important to have your student there with you as well. When you're completing this form, as it does, ask about parent and student information, not just parents.

So for incoming students, you're going to be selecting the new to the FAFSA process. Start here and when you do that, it's going to prompt you to log in. If you are the student, you'll use your student login as the parent. You're still going to need the student information, so if they're sitting there with you, you will both be able to create an FSA user ID.

This is the electronic signature that you as a parent and your student will use for filing the FAFSA each year. It will stay the same and it's also used as the signatures for all sorts of other Department of Education websites. So if your student decides that at some point they're going to use federal student lending, they will also need to have that FSA ID.

In our side, we really encourage you to start here at fsaid.ed.gov and go ahead and create those before you get started on the fast so that we've got that all sorted out when creating these. If you are doing this together with you and your student, make sure very clearly that the email addresses are different for student and parent FSA ID's as that can become one of those little hiccups in the road in this process. But these will be fully functional. They will have to be fully functional to sign.

And actually submit the FAFSA at the end.

So we're going to talk about going out to faster.ed.gov, and that's where we really want you to be, not on the app, preferably but right now available. That just came out on October 1st is the 2122 facets, so you're not behind by any means. You've got plenty of time to complete it, but there are actually two faxes out there. If you've poked around on that website yet, so there's one for the current students who are currently enrolled in college for 2021, but that's not the one you want. You want to make sure you select that.

2122 five sub. Very very important. I will say that our office will do outreach directly to students if we know that they've applied for the upcoming year and they've submitted the wrong form, there will be outrage to make sure that you guys get back out there and update that for the current for the correct academic year.

Now the fact that while this is fun as can be, you really don't want to have to submit it multiple times, so the facet does allow if your student is applying to multiple schools to list up to 10 colleges at a time on the faxes so that all schools can receive that information. An as we mentioned before, 2019 tax information is used on this form. If you speak with friends and family who maybe have filed the fact that you years past and they talk about having to go back in an update to your current.

Tax return, ignore them, ignore them, ignore them. The FAFSA for the last several years has used older tax data so that you no longer have to go in and update them so the faster will prompt you for all 2019 tax information when completing this form.

OK.

So here's a little sneak peek of what you're going to be getting into when you actually log into the FAFSA, and once you've gotten through that login section so a couple of things I want to point out to you, right on every single question federal student aid wants you to have as much information as possible when you're submitting this so they have a little question mark next to each individual question, even your first name, so that if you click into that question, it will give you a little help and hints. Pot will pop up for you.

This gives you every bit of detail that you could ever need about what they're really trying to get to for your question, but if you've got additional questions beyond what they've provided there, of course, feel free to reach out to our office and we're always happy to help the next arrow at the bottom of the screen is pretty much your saved bar as you go through it, as long as you successfully complete each page, it will give you a little next option and it'll save whatever data you've done up until that .1. Other thing. I don't have a screenshot of it, but the FAFSA will give you an.

Error flag if it thinks something that you've submitted might not be correct that it will have you go back and double check it. So again it really is trying to make sure that your filing the form properly and that everything is entered correctly for you.

The information flag up at the top of the screen in this screenshot it shows student information. This is very, very important as the FAFSA will switch back and forth between asking about student information and parent information, and hands down every year. We have several families who accidentally put parent info into the student info section, so just keep an eye on that. And again, if you have your student sitting there with you, more eyes are better.

Then fewer as you're looking at this information to make sure that the correct information is being put in on each page, whether it's for the student or for the parent.

And then the last little note here you have little section tabs up along the top, so it will go through the demographic information and income information and then signatures submit. So you'll see about how far along you are in the process as you go.

The dependency status is determined on the fast as well an what the dependency status questions are looking at is whether or not parent information is required on the FAFSA form or not. In 99% of cases for entering high school students who are entering their first year, college parent information is required. an A student is considered dependent for the purposes of filing The FAFSA. We've seen many, many times where students will say, Oh, I should be independent because.

My parents maybe aren't planning to pay for college, or they don't claim me on their tax return. I'm not there dependent, so therefore I should be independent for the facet, but that's not how it works for federal student aid, so there will be a series of questions there related to whether or not the student may have children that they are actually supporting. If they are a veteran for military service. If there are 24 or older, so there are certain things that will be prompted, and if the student cannot answer yes to any of those questions.

Then the parent information will be listed on the FAFSA.

Now as we talk about parents for the FAFSA, who is considered a parent for financial aid purposes? While the parent for FAFSA purposes refers to a biological or adoptive parent, if the student happens to be living with foster parents or guardians, legal Guardians, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, whatever the case may be, those are not considered the parent for the FAFSA unless that person legally adopted the student. So just keep in mind we're looking at.

That student and then their biological parents. Now if their biological parents are divorced or separated, then the fact that you're looking at to say who should be on the Fasa? Which biological parents should be on there? An in the case, for every time a FAFSA is submitted, the federal student aid wants the family to look back the prior 12 months before filing the FAFSA and see who did the student live with most? Which parent did the student live with? Most generally, you can pretty well get.

A gauge on that, and that is the FAFSA parent for that academic year when continuing on in the facet, will ask for who all is in the household, and so if that parent that the student has lived with most, if they have remarried, then it's going to be including the parent and stepparent who live in that household and are receiving support through that house.

The fast it also breaks out. It wants to know who all is in the household. So parents of course are in the household and it will break out questions to ask if there are other siblings in the house that parents are providing support for. And then there are also cases where maybe another family member has moved into the household and you as the parent or actually providing more than half of the support for them. Well, as this demographic collection of data is being collected through the FAFSA, it's trying to determine where those resources.

Of the household are going, so if there's ever a question whether or not a situation should actually be including a particular member that's living in the household, feel free. Reach out, contact our office. We're happy to kind of walk you through with that situation is and see if they should or shouldn't be included. But again, that helping hints will walk you right through it, giving you far more detail than what we've got in this presentation. But it will be very helpful there.

As a reminder as well the for tax purposes we're looking back, but for this question of household size, we're looking into the future, so we're looking to see who in the academic year that the student is entering into College. So 2122, who is living in the household in that year. So take your time and think about that as you're going through that process.

Tax data. OK, so the facet is looking at quite a bit of information in tax data is certainly part of that. As I mentioned earlier, the IRS data retrieval tool is a tool that's been used for several years. the IRS and federal student aid teamed up to say we've got your data and we can securely get it into the FAFSA without having families be required to manually look at their tax return and find out what their adjusted gross income is and what their taxes paid and.

What line item from schedule three has to be put in so the IRS data retrieval tool is a legitimate way to pull your tax data into your facet? There's no separate login that you have to do. You're going to be using your FSA ID and password, which will show that next. But as long as you have already completed your 2019 tax return and you select that as an option on this page were showing that parent information is being asked for, and so we're saying yes, the parent.

Has already completed their 2019 return and they filed a 1040. It will then prompt to say you can go ahead and link to IRS so you'll select that option and then as you do that it will ask you which parent are you on the bathtub because it needs your FSA ID and password so it all goes back to that ID and password on the parent demographic page before it will ask for each parent to put their information in that component. So just make sure you're selecting.

Which parent you are? If your parent one or parent two and then list your FSA ID and password and select next so you do not want to skip data retrieval if at all possible, you definitely want to use that tool.

In order to find the tax return information, federal student aid and the IRS are teaming up to say we want them to verify exactly what their address information is that they put on their tax return. So as we mentioned earlier, having your tax return available is still important, even though you won't need most of it if the data retrieval tool is able to work for you.

So if you when you get to this section you'll complete your address information and here's a little catch to the IRS data retrieval tool. It is very, very picky when it comes to addresses. So look on your actual return to see how your address was listed on your tax return. If you abbreviated, for instance, drive on your address, you'll want to abbreviate it when you're trying to find your tax data. So it's very picky if for some reason it doesn't find it.

Try the opposite way. Double check that return and click submit.

Once you click submit, it's going to go out and look for that tax data.

And as long as it finds your information, it will populate this page that shows zero data, but it shows all the line items that is actually found, so it will be showing you what tax year it'll show. That is going to pull it's matched up your Social Security number with your filing your income tax paid, adjusted gross income, all of that information. But for again your security of your data. It will not show it to you in case somebody has been able to.

Obtain your information so they're very, very strict on that. That being said, once it pops this page up, you'll want to check this little box here next to transfer now and then. Once that box is checked, it will give you the option to click transfer. Now this will automatically kick you right back into the Fasa, so when you are using the data retrieval tool, please do note there are two little warning buttons that will pop up and I say little, but they're actually a little bit larger than little.

But they'll let you know you're going to the IRS site, and then it'll kick you right back so you never have to leave the FAFSA itself throughout this process, it's going to keep you right there.

Once all that information is pulled back into the FAFSA, there are some additional questions that federal student aid asks some applicants an it doesn't ask others. Depending on other questions that have been answered.

Relating to assets and investments, those types of things. If you're required to report on assets, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but just a couple of things to keep in mind. There are very good help and hints for you as you're completing that form, so it will give you details of exactly what it wants and does not want you to include there. But keep in mind these couple things we know for sure not included, so your home is not included when it's asking for asset Information, Your.

Cars life insurance retirement plans. Those are excluded from reporting in assets. Also, family owned businesses with fewer than 100 employees or if you live and work on a family farm that you operate that is also excluded. But again, as I said that help enhance will have all that information detailed out for you.

So you're very, very close to the end here. The sign in submit page. Once you've gotten through all of the demographic, the income information for both student and parent that will be asked for the signature pages will be required, so as long as you have that FSA ID already prepared, you should be good to go here, and you've already used it for your data retrieval tool.

Two things to note. As we said, student and parent are required and the agreement of terms is required for both student and parent as well. This is some fun evening reading if you ever just want to go to sleep, but read through those terms of agreement for each the student and parent and it will automatically be selected to disagree. So you as a student in parent will have to manually change that to agree before the FAFSA will let you go on.

So make sure you take your time. Read through that.

The other component of this is that you will receive a confirmation number once you've known for sure that you've signed in, submitted the FAFSA form. A confirmation number will be displayed and it will also send that to you via email to the student information listed there. But of course you can screenshot that just to confirm that you've got that and it will list just a small amount of information at the very end of the fast sub.

Now you might think at the very end you you're all set. Now, how much aid do I receive from that form? Well, the financial aid offers for students actually come directly from the school. They do not come from federal student aid. It will provide just a couple of pieces of information, but not the full picture for a student. So it does take about a week or so for schools to pull that information in after the fact that has actually been submitted. An schools generally will only pull those actually in for students once they are admitted, so it might take just a little bit longer if your student is still.

In the application process for admission, the other thing at the end of the FAFSA that it will provide is whether or not the fact that itself has been selected for verification.

The verification process is about 1/4 of. All faxes are selected for verification and it doesn't mean that anything has been done wrong. It's simply that federal student aid wants schools directly to confirm with families that they understood what was going on. The faster form, and that the information was accurately put in there. One of the biggest, easiest ways to get verification completed. If you're fast, it does get selected for verification is to have the data retrieval tool used 'cause we know.

If it pulls that data in from the IRS that that is correct information, there weren't any typos in that data as it pulled in, so that's why one of the reasons why we encourage all students to go ahead and use that data retrieval tool to just ease up on that verification requirement for you. The other components just to give you a heads up if the fastest selected for verification. Aside from using the data retrieval tool most of the time verification is only asking for you to confirm who was in the household.

And just how many students were going to College in the upcoming academic year? So, easy peasy and just follow directions that we provide to you directly. If you're fast to get selected for verification, any financial aid that is offered based on the FAFSA if it's selected for verification, is pending or is estimated until that process is complete and we can confirm that that form was completed properly.

At the end of the faster, the other component, aside from fun verification that the faster will provide for you is the EFC is just a little number that spits out at the very end of the form. EFC stands for expected family contribution, and while that's what the name of it is, it's really not that at all. It's really an index.

Amber that is used by federal, state and institutions of colleges around to be able to calculate financial aid eligibility and so. Please know when you get that EFC pop out at the end. That is not a dollar amount that you owe. It is also not the amount of money that the government thinks is sitting in your wallet ready to pay for school so just know it is simply an index used to calculate and ration need based financial aid.

In the financial aid area when we talk about need, the FC is part of that calculation, so I'll show you a little chart next as well, but the cost of attendance at a school minus the student FC is what is the need calculation for eight eligibility for that student for the academic year and so, in a chart form, this tennis shows you how a student can have different financial need at different institutions based on that.

Institutions cost of attendance. So this student FC is in dark blue in this example, and so you can see it. College D. The student demonstrates no financial need because the cost of attendance is very low. But as the cost of attendance increases, the students financial need also increases, which allows institutions to offer need based grants in addition to merit scholarships for students. So it's very important. As I said, never have.

Why is an assumption about the faster that you wouldn't be yielded anything from it simply because again that need calculation varies from school to school.

Now, we also certainly understand that the faxes, since it is a snapshot in time in a lot of these situations, there are no ways to have the family on the FAFSA form explain random circumstances or changes that should really be reflected on the faster. The faster requires families to answer the questions exactly as they are asked, but it does allow schools individually. The authority to receive documentation from families.

In the case of something changing dramatically in your household, so some examples might be if we had if there was a job loss in the family or just even simply a reduction in income, but maybe not a job loss if there was a death of a parent separation of parents, things that we can't list actually on the form. So if your family is facing something like this at any point, please contact our office directly, because we'll talk through this with you to see if that situation would impact.

The students calculation on the fashion which may or may not end up yielding additional financial aid, so again, it's always best to ask the question if there is something that we can do and will review that on a case by case basis with you. But again, please please please contact us if something of this nature is going on.

So finalization here is. Once you've submitted that facet. If there are changes that you'd like us to review, you've submitted special circumstance information to us, and we're able to provide you with a financial aid offer. Now, the financial aid offer is directed to the student's, that is, their financial aid, award information. An even though you, as the parents, have your information on the FAFSA, everything is going to be routed to the student, so keep that in mind.

As long as things have been admitted and we have a FAFSA on file for them by early December our office will begin sending out financial aid offers to students so that financial aid offer is that comprehensive package of not only the merit scholarships that the office of admission has already notified or is in process of notifying students of, but any federal, state, or institutional grant funding that is that there may be eligibility for as well will be listed on that financial aid.

Offer federal student loans will be listed there as well and if the student is able to have a student employment on campus through federal work study, that would be included too.

This year, for the first time in many many years, we also are awarding a FAFSA Filing Award. So far, incoming class of 2122. If we have a FAFSA on file for you at when we're completing your financial aid offer, you will be receiving an additional $1000 in the FAFSA Filing Award, so always worth it to have that fastest submitted. I know we threw quite a bit of information at you right away here tonight, but if you have questions along the way, your admission counselors are student financial services counselors are here to help.

And we can certainly understand as you get into it later on. It's well, it just opened up in October 1st. You certainly aren't necessarily going to do it this evening, so if anything needs a refresher when you get out there to complete your FAFSA, please feel free to email us or call us and we're happy to help.

I will go ahead and finish up if we have any questions please feel free to go ahead and put those in. The chat will keep this open for a little bit and but if there aren't questions but you would like to have this presentation email to you. You can also email our office at studentfinancialservices@evansville.edu and will send this along T as well so you have that on hand.

Well, I don't see any questions coming into the chat box yet, so I'll leave this open just a couple more minutes. But thank you all so much for making time this evening for this. And again, we're here to help if you have any questions along the way. Thank you so much.

I see that there has been a question regarding a student who just recently applied to the University but hasn't heard anything back yet.

What I would suggest is contacting the admission office directly. You can contact our office as well, but will will get you over to the office of admission to see if there is any outstanding information that's needed in order to process that application. But if your student has their admission counselors contact available. That's what I would. That would be. My first point of contact for you to get that taken care of.

In another question regarding whether or not the fast information will be held if it comes to you first before admissions, yes, absolutely. So it's it's kind of out in Limbo until the admission information is finalized and at the time of admission is when we link that information up directly. So absolutely, you can get that FAFSA filed right away, and that way it'll be ready for us as soon as that admission information is finalized.

Well, once again thank you all and have a great evening.