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College TNT
Helping students and families navigate to and through college!
College TNT
FAFSA Fundamentals: Your Brief Guide to College Financial Aid
Unlock the secrets to maximizing your college financial aid package by understanding the FAFSA process! Join me, Jen Schoen, as I guide you through the a primer on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in this episode of College TNT. We'll explore the significance of the FAFSA as a crucial financial disclosure document that paves the way for federal, institutional, and state aid. With a focus on ensuring that you and your family complete the application correctly, I'll break down the process step-by-step, from obtaining your FAFSA ID to understanding the Student Aid Index (SAI).
As we unravel the complexities of financial aid, I'll highlight how the Student Aid Index interacts with the cost of attendance to shape your aid eligibility. This episode is packed with insights and tips to empower both students and parents in their financial aid journey. With helpful resources and expert advice, you'll be well-equipped to tackle the FAFSA and secure the financial support needed for college success. Whether you're just starting your college admissions journey or guiding your child through the process, this episode is your go-to guide for financial aid mastery.
For more about me - my experience and my speaking, check out the links below.
You can reach me at jen@firstgenfm.com.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenschoen/
https://www.firstgenfm.com/speaker-high-school-educators-students-parents
Hello and welcome back, or welcome to College TNT, a podcast and YouTube video series that is designed to get you to and through college. That's what the TNT stands for. My job, as Jennifer Schoen call me Jen is to help prepare you for college, help you navigate the college admissions process and then make a smooth transition through your first year of college. So that's what I'm here to talk about today and every day. Hi and welcome to the College TNT Podcast for this week. I'm Jen, your host, and I'm going to talk today about financial aid, specifically about the FAFSA. So get ready for what I hope is some good information. I think it's definitely information you need if you want to go to college, because all financial aid pretty much starts with the FAFSA. Now, fafsa, besides being hard to say, is an acronym, and what does it stand for? It stands for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. So that's what it is, and the key word, I think, is the first word free. It is a free application If you happen to go and you're typing in the FAFSA and you're getting all ready to complete it. If you happen to go and you're typing in the FAFSA and you're getting all ready to complete it and it says like oh, pay here, you know, for help with the FAFSA, or pay here to submit your FAFSA, you are on the wrong site. So you definitely want to make sure, first of all, that you're on the right site and that it's free. So I'm here with my notes and now that we know it's free and what it stands for, we're going to talk a little bit about what it is. So the FAFSA is a financial document. It's where you are sharing information on the students' taxes obviously their income I'm looking at my notes here their assets as well as your assets as a parent, your taxes and your income. So it's something you both need to fill out.
Speaker 1:The FAFSA is a financial disclosure document that is both for you and your student, and so you both need to complete it. But it is the student's application. It is the student's FAFSA. So they recommend that is the student aid. Folks recommend that the student starts to fill it out first and then you, as a parent or guardian, come in and fill it out next. And there are some great resources that I'll share in the show notes that will give you some really good tips in addition to mine about how you can go through all those steps and complete it.
Speaker 1:So what the FAFSA does is it gives the colleges information about what I just said so that they can determine how much federal aid you get and whether or not you think you qualify for federal aid. I think if you're eligible to fill out the FAFSA, by all means fill it out, because even if you don't qualify for federal aid, a lot of institutions will use the FAFSA to help determine other aid, institutional aid. States will use it to determine state aid. So start with the FAFSA. It's the number one thing that you want to do to make sure you get your financial aid package correct. So go ahead and do that and, as you give that information in, what the colleges get and what you will see is what's called the Student Aid Index, used to be the EFC, the Expected Family Contribution, but that's not it anymore. It's the Student Aid Index, or SAI. So the SAI helps the colleges then determine how much federal aid you will get and then how much other aid you will get, and then how much other aid you'll get, depending on the cost of attendance at that institution and I'll talk about cost of attendance a little bit later because that's another kind of COA cost of attendance with the SAI, the Student Aid Index there's just all these acronyms flying around right? So the SAI helps colleges determine the amount of federal aid you get and the aid. So the SAI helps colleges determine the amount of federal aid you get and the aid depends on the SAI and cost of attendance.
Speaker 1:So how do you start all this? Where do you even start? So the first thing you want to do is be sure to get your FAFSA ID, and a student can get a FAFSA ID basically starting at age 13. Not that they need to, unless they're absolutely brilliant and going to college early, but you'll want to do that their senior year in high school. So when do you apply for the FAFSA? Well, right now, the FAFSA is open if you're a senior and you're headed to college next year for fall of 2025. So please fill that out as soon as you can.
Speaker 1:All right, a lot of colleges will have priority deadlines. It could be February 1st, it could be March 1st. Whatever it is, you want to hit that priority deadline at that college to get the FAFSA in, because what happens is you send your FAFSA in right and the college starts to create your financial aid package based on your student aid index. So they say, okay, here's the federal aid that comes in, and then here's some other grant aid that comes in, maybe from the institution in the form of scholarships, maybe from the state in form of state grants, and then maybe loans and ever what's needed to cover your full cost of attendance. The thing is that, as the financial aid office is making these packages for all the students, they're starting with those who came in first, who hit that priority deadline for that institution. So for everybody hits that February 1st priority deadline for their FAFSA, you're going to get the first dibs on the grant aid, which is the aid you want, because that's the stuff you don't have to pay back. If you get it in late, and the later you get it in, that grant aid is going to start to diminish. They're not going to have as much grant aid to give out, and so you might see less grant aid in your financial aid package. So, like I said earlier is better and hitting that priority deadline is key. So make absolutely sure that you do that.
Speaker 1:When you sit down to do this, you're gonna have to have a whole bunch of information handy. You're not your prior years taxes, but the year before that taxes. That's why they call it prior prior year. The good thing is, you already have those done, so it's not like you're waiting on anything right now, because I'm recording this in January. You're not waiting for any documents to come in so you can complete your taxes and send that in. No, you already have that done.
Speaker 1:So you want to sit down with that information, as well as your social security number or alien identification number, all those things you want to have handy, so that when you sit down you can just do it, because it's important but it's also not the most fun thing you're going to do when it comes to going to college, either as a parent of a student or guardian of a student or as a student yourself. So just be prepared for that and say to yourself I'm not looking forward to doing this, it's going to be hard, but I'm going to do it anyway. And then sit down and do it, and actually, research says that if you say that to yourself, you lower your resistance, so maybe it will make it easier for you to fill out. So you go in there, you gather the information you need, and the FAFSA folks always recommend that the students start first and put in their information. Then you can go in if you're a parent listening and add your information, and you both need your own FAFSA IDs. This is not something that you just add on to with the student. You will need your own FAFSA ID, so be sure to get yours. Be sure to have your student get theirs. As soon as you can do that hopefully like September of their senior year jump in and get the FAFSA ID number. You will need that ID and it will need to be verified. So it'll take a little bit, but you want that because that's what you sign the FAFSA with is your FAFSA ID, so that's why that's important, so go ahead and get that.
Speaker 1:What else did I want to tell you about the FAFSA? Sometimes the FAFSA is not the only document for financial information that an institution will ask for. Some, especially private colleges, will ask for something called the CSS profile. That is, through the college board the same folks who do the SAT and so that may be some more information you need to gather in order to complete your CSS profile, and that gives a little more in-depth information that the FAFSA might not cover. So you may need to get additional documents, but everything, everything starts with the fafsa. So please take a look at that and, like I said I will, I will link to some places, um, some websites that are studentaidgov. You can also type in fafsagov and it will take you to studentaidgov. That's gov, gov, to get to the financial aid site. So so if you're a senior, you can start filling out the FAFSA right now. If you're a junior, you can go ahead and get your FAFSA ID now, as can your parents, and that way you'll be ready to roll as soon as the application opens in October of your senior year, which is the plan for next year. So go ahead and look into those things, because forewarned is forearmed, and then you'll have what you need to get your FAFSA done.
Speaker 1:The other thing I want to talk about just a little bit too, is that when you complete your FAFSA, it's pretty cut and dry, right, you put the information in the FAFSA. It gives you the student aid index or your SAI, and that's a number. But sometimes things happen that are not to your benefit, for example, just the horrible fires going on in Los Angeles. Right, there are a lot of people who've lost homes, who've lost livelihoods and jobs. Their taxes from their prior prior year is not going to show that. So they're going to complete the FAFSA using that tax information and it's going to look like everything is fine. Or the folks who had the floods in the North Carolina and Asheville in the South, like they're struggling and so their prior prior year taxes are not going to reflect that. It may not be something that big in scope, but it could be something that just happened to your family a job loss that's not going to show up on that prior prior year.
Speaker 1:There is an opportunity to share that information with the institution you're applying to and have them redo the information and your financial aid information to give you a package that is based on where you are now financially. So complete the FAFSA as it asks, put in any additional information that it asks for about your current situation, but also reach out to the places where you are applying. If you're the student who's applying parents, feel free to reach out to the financial aid office and explain that, while it looks like this from the prior prior and from the FAFSA, it also is like this right now, and things have changed pretty dramatically. So please don't hesitate to reach out to the financial aid offices where your student is going or where they intend to go, and ask those questions about how you can get the right information so you can get the right financial aid package to help you, to help your student go to college, aid package to help you, to help you, to help your student go to college. Ask the questions, give, share the information, because they won't know it otherwise, because everything is going to start with the FAFSA and maybe the CSS profile which you can find on the college board site.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we know what the FAFSA stands for free application for federal student aid. We know it tells the institutions the kind of aid to give you the federal aid first, but also other institutional aid and other grants based on your student, based on your student aid index, excuse me. And then it was also based on the cost of attendance. Cost of attendance is what I'm gonna talk about in the next part, so I just want to talk about this first, but next I'm gonna talk about cost of attendance, which is the entire cost that the institutions decide that it's going to cost you to go to that institution for a year. Okay, so when you see a cost of attendance, it's based on a year and I'll give you some good places to go to find out how your financial aid and cost of attendance work together so you can get some good information on that.
Speaker 1:That's a little bit about the FAFSA. Do that Apply for scholarships, do all the things at the same time and you will get a package that is going to help you go to college. And again you're going to ask questions about your package. You're going to reach out if things are not represented well in the prior prior year taxes. You're going to reach out if things are not represented well in the prior prior year taxes that you're using to complete the FAFSA. And you're going to go and get that student, that FAFSA student ID, that FAFSA ID for your family, for your parent, your guardian, whoever is filling it out for you, and you're going to go ahead and do that and I'm going to put in the show notes some great tips for parents and families who are completing the FAFSA. That will walk you through eight steps to complete that.
Speaker 1:So that's it for this episode of College TNT. I probably talked really fast about the FAFSA and what it's for, but hopefully you can either slow me down, so I'm talking like this, or you can just listen to it once or twice to get the information you need. As always, you can find me at Jen that's J-E-N. At FirstGen that's F-I-R-S-T-G-E-N fmcom. So Jen at FirstGenFMcom, or you can find me on Facebook at College TNT, or on Instagram at college underscore TNT, and connect with me. I am happy to answer any questions that you have about this or any other episode or to hear what it is that you would like to learn more about. So thanks so much for listening, and I will be back again very soon to talk about cost of attendance and all that other good stuff. So thank you so much for joining me. I'll talk to you again soon. Bye.