Michelle 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.

Michelle 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/

Michelle answers:

FAFSA is per academic school year. So starting yesterday through….crap I can’t remember the cut off date but you can check fafsa.gov, you will be filling out the FAFSA for Fall 2012 through Spring 2013 school year. The earlier you get it down the better, and make sure when you submit the form you check off “will file” for the income tax so you can go back and make the necessary changes you need to make once you and/or your parents file their 2011 income taxes. Once you make the changes and you do not believe you need to make any changes then you change the “will file taxes” to “have filed taxes” and then make your final submission.

Good luck!

Michelle answers:

FAFSA is basically money from the government that includes grants and loans.
When you get a FAFSA report with all the money you’re getting on it, sometimes you’ll see that the school you’re going to may be also add additional money in grants or scholarships.

In order to see how much money you’ll receive the FAFSA looks at your income (if you work), your parents income and financial backgrounds. The university doesn’t get to decide how much or how little you get with from filling out the FAFSA. Schools only decide how much money in grant and scholarships they themselves will give you. However, if you fill out the FAFSA and you receive more money in loans than you actually need, you have the option of taking only what you need and returning the rest. You can give some money back, but you can’t ask for more, because the FAFSA only states the maximum you’re eligible for.

Once you’re ready to start school, the money from your FAFSA will go directly to your school, not to you. If you end up receiving more than you need and there ends up being money left over, the school will pay any outstanding bills you have and give you the check for the extra money you received. If you don’t have any excess money, you won’t get a check. I hope that makes sense. E-mail if you have any other concerns. Good luck!