The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the gateway to federal and state aid. Since full-rides are an exception and not the norm, FAFSA, which opens on October 1st, is the place to start to build a robust scholarship package.
Tips to Avoid Common FAFSA Mistakes
In financial aid, as in comedy, timing is everything. In states such as Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky, FAFSA awards are made until funds are depleted. Each state has a different application deadline. There’s no uniform college deadline, either. The deadlines are all over the place, but not being aware of deadlines is just one of the FAFSA mistakes that can cost families. Here are others:
Don’t be intimidated
The FAFSA application process can be daunting. Dan Mann, Director of Student Financial Aid at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, gets it. Beyond compiling one’s financial information, some of the definitions regarding a family’s situation can be confusing, he observes. But fear not. “Most people who go through it find that it is not as hard as the perception that it is going to be,” Mann reassures.
Don’t disqualify yourself
Michael Runiewicz, Director, Student Financial Services at Washington University in St. Louis, elaborates. “A lot of families who think they won’t qualify for aid, in reality, qualify for and oftentimes receive significant amounts of aid. In the case of expensive private schools, even if a family makes more than $300,000 a year, students might receive need-based aid if their family has more than one student in college.”
Who is you?
The word “you” trips up many parents filling out the FAFSA. “’You’ almost always refers to the student,” Runiewicz states. “Parents think it refers to them because they are the ones reading it. For example, for the question, ‘Are you married?’ a couple will answer yes. That’s a significant mistake. The same thing can happen on questions about income. If a parent puts their income in the student section of the FAFSA, that, too, is a big problem.”
Don’t self-adjust financial information
FAFSA now asks families to provide “prior prior-year” data, meaning that students entering college in the fall of 2018 will be asked to provide financial information from 2016.
This can be confusing to families because financial circumstances change over time. Runiewicz notes, “We don’t want families to self-adjust anything; we are the ones required to make those adjustments on behalf of the family.” Runiewicz urges parents to let a school’s financial aid office know if there is something impacting their family’s ability to pay for college that is not reflected on the FAFSA.
Insider tip: Do not report defined retirement plan assets on the FAFSA. This is a common reporting error, Runiewicz points out. “What a family deposits into their retirement plan is considered untaxed income and needs to be reported, but not what they have in their retirement plan. Another common error is reporting any equity in the home. Some families tend to think of their home as an asset, and so they may accidentally include that on the FAFSA.”
Don’t forget to sign
Neglecting to sign the FAFSA is an all-too-common mistake, according to Mann. “The FAFSA will not be processed until those signatures are there,” he states. Care must be taken, he adds, for signees to use the correct FAFSA-designated pin numbers when signing electronically.
Read carefully
It’s easy to get lost in the weeds while filling out the FAFSA. Take Question 28; please. This asks students if they will have their bachelor’s degree before the 2018–19 school year. “It’s a common mistake with high school students,” Mann says. “They confuse bachelor’s degree with high school diploma and answer yes.”
Confusing? Yes. Frustrating? Can be. But none of this should dissuade you from filling out the FAFSA. “Everything is correctable, but it’s really helpful to get it right the first time,” Mann states. “It makes the process go so much smoother.”
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