FAFSA Changes

    Whether it’s a senior who has been dealing with the struggles of getting your financial aid straightened out for years, or a freshman who is just beginning to realize that struggle, one thing everyone can agree on is this: the entire process is difficult and tedious not just for students, but for the currently understaffed financial aid office at Concord University.

    “What we’ve historically done at the top of the year is have everyone file their FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) in January, February, March using last year’s tax data…they are taking all that we give them and they put into their formula what they think you should be able to pay for your education,” Greg King, Vice President of Admissions, explains, “They take your data and send it to the schools that you tell them, so as long as our FAFSA code is on there, we will receive a heads up on how your aid should be sent out.” Basically, FAFSA operates under the information given by students and their parents about what kinds of income and taxes they had paid for the year prior to the filing of the application. Once the FAFSA has been completed, they will generate how much a student is eligible for in federal aid such as subsidized and unsubsidized loans, grants, any scholarships awarded, etc. And of the students at Concord, a majority 95% of students filed their FAFSA’s with almost 6000 applications from new students being processed along with all returning students. “Concord processed more FAFSA’s this year than we have ever processed,” states King.

    In addition to FAFSA applications being at record highs, the financial aid office has been working diligently while understaffed in order to meet the demands of the incoming applications and demands of students who still need to sort their aid out. Currently, they are filling one position and have many promising applicants, which should help with the workload the office is currently facing.

    However, there is one radical change being made to the way students will now be filing their FAFSA: they will now be filing using the same tax information from this year’s FAFSA in October rather than by the first of March. “Historically, everyone has scrambled at the top of the year to get all their tax stuff together and file their FAFSA as soon as possible. It’s a crazy amount of work in a really tight frame…so the federal government is letting us, starting this October, file the FAFSA not with the prior year’s data, but the prior year’s data,” King excitedly explains. Basically, that means the same numbers filed on the previous FAFSA application for students this year can be used on the FAFSA to be filed in a couple of months. 

    This is wonderful news for students and staff alike. Now, thanks to this new system, students will no longer need to scramble to get their financial aid worked out only months, weeks, or even days prior to school starting, and be scrambling to file promissory notes and online applications to get the aid they need for the upcoming year. “We’re gonna be able to get all the need...packaged in a more timely manner so that you know way ahead of time that ‘this is my balance if I want to go to Concord’ instead of finding out in June” King states. Although this first year will introduce work to the financial aid staff in October that they are not used to, this gives the office a larger time frame in order to get all the FAFSA’s processed in time for the next year and be able to work with students in a timely manner rather than hoping to catch them with a phone call in the middle of June. 

    There is one inherent problem with this system shift that is easily fixed: tax data from a year prior to this filing of FAFSA may be inconsistent with reality. Supposedly, there could be major shifts in the income of either the student or the family which would affect the aid received by the student. King states that students need not worry if they have changes to their information that would affect their aid. By going to the financial aid office and explaining the situation, they help the student go through a professional judgment process to figure out exactly what kind of aid is required for the student. 

    The take away from this is that students will now be able to know what kind of aid they’ll be receiving in a timelier manner, which is a big positive upturn with how the system has operated in the past. As parting words, King states, “File your FAFSA…in October!”