Transcript Financial Aid 101 Webinar, November 19, 2013

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Moderator: Christal Simms
11-19-13/4:30 pm CT
Confirmation # 7769537
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4:30 pm CT

Coordinator:

Welcome and thank you for standing by. All participants will be on a listenonly mode for the duration of today’s conference.
This conference is being recorded. If you have any objections you may
disconnect at this time.
And I will now turn the conference over to Kevin Roberts. You may begin.

Kevin Roberts:

Thank you operator. Hello and welcome to the US Department of Education
Office of Federal Student Aid presents Financial Aid 101 live from the
nation’s capital Washington DC.
I’m Kevin Roberts your co-host for today’s event. And sitting next to me is
my colleague and co-host Ms. Amber Johnson.
We are both awareness and outreach specialists for the Office of Federal
Student Aid. And we are thrilled to have you join us today.

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At this time I would like to turn over the presentation to my colleague Ms.
Amber Johnson who will begin discussing today’s topics.
Amber Johnson: Thank you Kevin and hello and welcome everyone to the Financial Aid 101
Webinar. Today we’re going to be covering a variety of topics addressing
federal financial aid and a process to acquire financial aid in general.
Today’s topics will cover things such as when should you be considering
college, financial aid myths that you may hear, the various financial aid
programs, the FAFSA when and how to apply, what you should expect after
submitting your FAFSA, (unintelligible) scholarships state aid and
institutional aid searches as well as an opportunity for questions at the end so
let’s get started.
So ask yourself this question when should you consider college? Is the answer
now, today, this minute or all of the above?
This was kind of a trick question but the answer is all of the above it’s never
too early to begin thinking about college and also how you’re going to finance
your college degree.
College can bring a lot about a lot of different unique opportunities for you
and a lot of financial freedoms such things such as more money, and
employment, more job opportunities, financial freedom.
Across the board it’s a fact that if you graduate from college you stand to earn
$1 million more than the High School graduate which is a lot more money.
On average the person who doesn’t graduate from college is earning
significantly less. So give yourself the best advantage and go to college.

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We all know it costs money to go to college though and this is where the
barrier can sometimes come in. We like to call this the cost of attendance.
And cost of attendance includes all the unique financial situations that you
have to take into consideration when committing to go to college.
When people think about cost of attendance immediately they think of the
tuition and fees which is the first and primary main source that you will have
to cover but there are other things that come into play such as room and board,
books and supplies, equipment, and transportation, miscellaneous personal
expenses and even childcare.
So we are here to talk to you today about the federal sources of aid that can
help you bridge the gap and cover these costs.
Kevin Roberts:

Office of Federal Student Aid uses a lot of acronyms. And the most common
acronym is FAFSA so what does it stand for?
Well it stands for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. And this is
your first form that you will fill out to your entrance into the world of federal
financial aid.
Next let’s start debunking some myths about federal financial aid. There’s a
lot of myths out there. The first one that we hear a lot about is that it costs
money to apply for Federal Student Aid.
The reality is applying is absolutely free. It costs nothing to apply for Federal
Student Aid and you should avoid companies charging a fee.

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That’s why we encourage you to visit our Web site the official FAFSA Web
site @fafsa.gov that’s F-A-F-S-A.G-O-V. It’s absolutely free. You should
never ever have a company you should never ever have to pay a company to
fill out the FAFSA for you when you can do it absolutely free.
The second myth the form is too hard to fill out. Well that’s not true anymore.
If you fill out the FAFSA online it is so much easier and much more efficient.
The online application has built in skip logic.
So when you answer a question within a section it will either tell you to move
on to the next question within that section or it will allow you to move on to
the next section of the FAFSA which is a great tool.
And it also will streamline the entire process for you. We have some facts that
we like to provide for you.
Did you know that it only took 21 minutes for a dependent student -- and
we’ll get to know the difference between dependent and independent later on
in this presentation -- to complete their FAFSA online. So it only took 21
minutes for a dependent student.
For an independent student it’s only 14 minutes. And this is completing the
FAFSA completely online. So we highly encourage you to visit our Web site
at fafsa.gov.
Next this is a myth that we hear all the time. My parents make too much
money so I won’t qualify for aid.

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There is absolutely no cutoff limit to receive federal financial aid. We
encourage everyone to fill out the FAFSA. It doesn’t matter what your income
is.
You may not qualify for grants that’s okay. You can still qualify for other
federal financial aid programs including state aid and even institutional based
aid.
So you always want to fill out the FAFSA regardless of your income because
there is always some type of source of aid available for you.
Amber Johnson: So when you submit your FAFSA application you will automatically be
considered for various federal financial aid programs.
The Office of Federal Student Aid offers three primary sources of federal
financial aid funds. First one is grants which is free money which everybody
likes. Free money you don’t have to repay whatsoever.
The second source of funding is going to come through Federal Work Study
which as the name implies means that you are earning money that can be
applied towards your college expenses.
And finally federal student loans, loans are money that must be repaid. It’s not
so scary. And we’ll talk about different ways to give you tips and tricks to
make borrowing manageable for you.
When you total all these programs up we award over $150 billion annually to
help students pay for college.

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It’s important to know though that as you’re looking at different schools and
programs be mindful that every school on your list may not offer all of the
free programs.
So it’s important that you do a little bit of research and look at each school’s
financial aid Web site to see what programs they participate in.
Also some of these programs are going to be determined by need in terms of
you being able to receive them.
When you do your FAFSA application you’re going to be given an in depth
number which we call of the Estimated Family Contribution this number helps
us to gauge when processing your application what level of need and how
much income your household can contribute to your individual college
expenses.
So let’s get started looking at the grants. Federal student aid offers four grant
programs. And again grants are money that do not have to be repaid.
Starting at the first one which is the Federal Pell Grant Program this is our
staple program and has been around for a very long time.
The amounts vary but for this award year the maximum amount is $5645. This
amount will be adjusted if you’re attending school full time or part time.
This grant in particular is need based. So again that estimated Family
Contribution Number that you receive after doing your FAFSA will determine
if you’re eligible to receive this type of grant.

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The next grant is also need based. And it is our Federal Supplemental
Educational Opportunity Grant FSEOG for short.
This amount also varies starting as low as $100 up to $4000 a year. What’s
unique about this grant is that you have to be Pell Grant eligible in order to
even be considered to receive this grant.
And also this is one of those ones that may not be available at every school.
So you want to check to see if your school even participates in this program.
The next grant is the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher
Education which is the TEACH Grant for short.
This grant is very unique in the sense that you need to know pretty early that
you want to commit yourself to the teaching profession.
If you do you can receive a grant up to $4000. And this is eligible for you in
the undergraduate as well as the graduate level.
In order to receive this grant though you have to sign a commitment to serve
which means that you need to commit yourself to teach in a high needs area
which can be in a very rural location for at least a minimum of four years if
you do not meet this teaching obligation that grant which was once free
money will be converted into a loan that you have to repay with interest.
And the final grant is the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant. This grant is for
students whose parent or guardian unfortunately died after serving in Iraq or
Afghanistan after the tragic events of 911. The maximum of this grant for this
award year is $5080.50.

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The next Federal Student Aid program is the Federal Work Study Program.
As the name implies you are going to be working and earning money that you
can then use towards your graduate and undergraduate college related
expenses.
These employment opportunities are arranged by the school and they can be
both on and off campus. You’re going to be paid at least minimum wage and
some schools may even pay a little bit more.
Again this is a program that may not be eligible and available at every single
type of institution on your list. So make sure you do a little bit of research.
And lastly federal student loans I know loans sometimes get a pretty bad rap
but they are a legitimate source of Federal Student Aid.
They can be good things if you manage them appropriately so we have four
different loan programs the Federal Perkins Loan, subsidized direct loans,
unsubsidized direct loans and the plus direct loans.
We’ll get into detail about these a little bit more but what is key to remember
here is that you need to be prepared to borrow responsibly and only borrow
which you need and not in excess.
So two of the loans that we offer have very unique terms to them and I want to
make sure that you understand the differences between the two.
So for our Stafford Direct Loans they are offered in subsidized and
unsubsidized categories. For subsidized loans the big thing to remember is
that we at the government are paying the interest that accrues on that loan.

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This type of loan is going to be based on your financial need. And it’s
available to undergraduate students only.
The amount that you’re eligible to receive from this subsidized category is
going to vary depending on the year that you are in school. It starts off as low
as $3500 and can go up to $8000.
On the other side you have the unsubsidized loan. And the big thing here is
that you the borrower will be responsible for all of the interest that accrues on
the loan from the first day that is dispersed to you.
This loan is not based on financial need so the terms and the amount that you
can borrow are a little bit higher.
This one is eligible to both undergraduate and graduate students. And it starts
off with $5500 up to $20,500 which is a lot of money and you can get into
trouble if you are not being prepared and borrowing responsibly.
Here is the table that provides a breakdown of the different loans that we just
discussed. I will mention that the Federal Perkins Loan Program is different
from the other loans and that the school itself will manage this loan so again
one of those ones that may not be available everywhere.
With the Perkins Loan when you go into repayment nine months after you
graduate you’re going to be repaying back to school.
For the other three loans you will be paying back the servicer who will be
identified once you get into the repayment category.

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Be sure to notice that the interest rates right now for the current award year
which for us began on July 1 and will end on June 30, 2014 are all fixed rates.
But these things are subject to change. So make sure you keep in touch with
us and through our various resources that we’ll talk about a little bit later to
get all the latest information.
Kevin Roberts:

So let’s talk about the FAFSA when and how to apply. So the first step in
applying to receive federal financial aid is of course to fill out the free
application for Federal student aid.
When you enter into the FAFSA Web site you’re going to enter in your most
basic demographic information.
If you’re a dependent you’ll enter in your parent’s information if you’re an
independent you’ll enter in your own information along with the household
income.
Therefore you need to note that your eligibility is determined by the
information you provide on the FAFSA.
For our seniors that are on the phone call with us today please remember that
you can file your FAFSA as soon as January 1 of this year for the 2014 and
2015 award year which will begin on July 1 of 2014. So you want to file as
soon as possible so this January.
This is our main Web site is called fafsa.gov. This is our Web site. Where
you’ll begin to start a new FAFSA or if you are a continuing student you will
enter this Web site to renew your FAFSA.

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It’s pretty detailed. Once you get on the inside it will give you step by step on
how to complete it. And it will also give you tips and helpful hints as well.
So if you have any issues you can always call us and we will provide you our
direct telephone number later on in this presentation if you have any questions
filling out the FAFSA online.
What do you need to know? If you are going to college you must file your
FAFSA every year. So every year you want to receive federal financial aid
you must renew your FAFSA with us.
In addition you can file as early as January 1 as we stated in the previous
slide. For our dependent students and independent students you also need to
remember that you need to apply for a PIN.
A PIN is a Personal Identification Number. This PIN will allow you to sign
your FAFSA electronically.
But of course you always have the option to print out the signature page and
mail in your original signature.
In addition the PIN will allow you to electronically sign your master
promissory note. And that’s your master promissory note if you decide to take
out any federal student loan to help offset the cost of your education. And then
you always want to file the earlier the better.
Moving on basic eligibility requirements this is quite simple and
straightforward. You need to - you must have a high school diploma or a
General Education Development certificate or what we know as a GED or
have completed homeschooling.

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In addition you must have a Social Security Number however there are limited
exceptions with those students from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the
Federated States of Micronesia or the Republic of Palau.
You also must be a US citizen or an eligible noncitizen and registered with
selected services. So for us males we need to be sure to register between the
ages of 18 and 25.
The students also need to enrolled or accepted for enrollment in an eligible
program, be pursuing a degree certificate or a credential program and maintain
satisfactory academic progress.
And what satisfactory academic progress is basically a - an institutional
standards for meeting SAP towards a degree or certificate offered by that
institution. Every school has a SAP policy and they’re usually available on
their Web site.
Items to keep handy these are items that the financial aid office may request
from time to time but you want to make sure that you always have them handy
in case they do.
You want to make sure you have your Social Security Number, Driver’s
License although not mandatory, your Alien Registration Number and Federal
tax information.
Now what’s great above filling out the FAFSA online is we have this great
tool called the IRS Data Retrieval Tool. And it will allow you to link your tax
information from the IRS to the FAFSA.

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So once you confirm your identity and information it will automatically
download your IRS tax return into the FAFSA for you.
And this could be done for yourself and your parents which is a great tool and
a timesaver so you don’t have to manually enter in all that tax information line
by line into the FAFSA. So I highly encourage everyone to use the IRS Data
Retrieval Tool.
And for our veterans you need to make sure you have a copy of your DD-214.
And then again you want to make sure you have all the information on your
savings, investment, and business and (unintelligible) assets for yourself and
your parents if you are providing your parents information.
Dependency status we get a lot of great questions about dependency status.
And so we’re going to differentiate between the two.
You are dependent if you’re under the age of 24, you are not married, and you
have no kids. So I’ll run that through one more time. You are dependent for
federal financial aid purposes if you’re under the age of 24, not married, and
you have no kids.
If you are an independent if you meet one of the listed criteria shown here on
this slide. And that’s different or dependency status.
Now the IRS tax rules are completely different from federal financial aid. So
you do want to be aware this is strictly for financial federal aid purposes and
not for tax purposes.

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We do have special circumstances for students. We understand that not
everyone can be considered a dependent or independent. There are special
circumstances that we are fully aware of.
And so some of the special circumstances for a dependent student to be
considered an independent student are listed here on this slide such as parents
are incarcerated, left home due to abusive family environment, unsure of
parents whereabouts, and of course we want to make sure if you are going to
be converted from a dependent student to an independent student that all of
this information is well documented.
And what we mean by that is that it’s substantiated backed up by a teacher, a
mentor, whether it’s a court or a councilor et cetera that they that they can
verify your history to convert you from a dependent student to an independent
student.
We also want to warn you that the financial aid director has financials stay. So
it is up to a financial aid director at every institution to make a determination
as to whether or not they will convert you from a dependent into an
independent based upon the special circumstances that we outlined here today.
If you have any questions I recommend that you contact the institutions
financial aid office for further guidance.
Amber Johnson: So you’ve submitted your FAFSA or your renewal application or your
original application for the first time and you’re wondering now what?
So we’re going to give you a high level overview of what you can expect after
you have submitted the button and you submitted your FAFSA to us here at
Federal Student Aid so a high level overview so you and your parent or

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guardian will have already requested a PIN and signed your FAFSA
application with the PIN number.
As my colleague has just mentioned for dependency that means that you are
going to be providing information of your parents on your FAFSA
application. And if that’s the case they need to request a PIN number as well.
The next step after you have submitted your FAFSA is that it’s going to be
processed here by us at Federal Student Aid.
On your end you’re going to receive what is known as a Student Aid Report
commonly known as the SAR.
The SAR is going to summarize basically all the information that you have
previously submitted on your FAFSA.
The copy of report is also going to be sent to all of the schools that you have
indicated on your FAFSA application. You can indicate up to ten schools so
those that you list will receive a summary of your information.
The college is then going to begin to review your information to see what type
of programs and packages you may be eligible for.
They will begin to assemble an award package for you which is simply them
assembling all the various forms of federal financial aid and other funding
such as scholarships that you may have received to cover your individual cost
of attendance.
What happens then is that the student will then receive your award letter. Back
in the day this used to come to you in the mail but commonly now a lot of

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schools are going to give you access to some online system to review your
award letter online.
However it comes to you it should cover basic information that should be
consistent across all award letters. It should clearly identify what types of
money you are receiving whether it’s a grant, a loan, work study or a
scholarship.
This is what you and your parents should use to identify and do apples to
apples comparisons across the schools that you may be interested in.
Maybe your number one choice is giving you more loans than grants so this
may become a determining factor in deciding where you’re going to go to
pursue your education.
One helpful hint that I want to make you aware of even though this does not
happen for everyone is a process known as verification.
Verification occurs when the school simply wants to make sure that all the
information you have submitted on the FAFSA is correct.
It’s an easy process to get through so don’t get worried about it if you are
selected. And what normally is required is some type of IRS tax information
that verifies the income records that you previously reported.
Once you’ve submitted all this documentation to your school they will clear
you through the verification process.

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It is important to remember that if you are selected for verification your award
package is completely estimated until all of your information has been
verified by the financial aid office at that school.
So let’s take a look at a sample award letter. This is a person who is attending
a school where they need $13,000 to cover their financial costs.
This is an overview of kind of the headings that you should be looking for
when evaluating your individual award letter.
So this person received scholarships’ which is great, $2000. They also
received an institutional grant which is money that came directly from the
school.
They also did their FAFSA and received some federal grants and some state
grants. So when all that was added unfortunately it didn’t totally cover the
$13,000 that was listed.
So they decided that they needed to take out a small loan. So this total
package equals $13,000. And the total financial need for this student has been
met.
This is going to be critical when evaluating award letters at different schools.
Some schools may give you a larger loan package than others. And so you
want to make sure you are making an informed decision before committing to
an institution.
Kevin Roberts:

FSA resources we have a lot of resources available to the public. And so I’d
like to cover some of those free resources to you today.

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First off we like to welcome you to our student aid.gov homepage. This is
your primary source for learning everything there is to know of about federal
financial aid.
We love this Web site because it’s the lifecycle of a student loan. Starting
from the left with the gentleman in the green box it says how do I prepare for
college? That’s for us who are just starting out to know what should I do to
get ready for college.
To the next one what type of aid can I get? That’s what Amber just covered.
We have three types of awards from federal student loans, to federal work
studies and federal grants.
Next do I qualify for aid? Do you meet the most basic eligibility criteria that I
covered earlier in this presentation? How do I apply for aid visiting
FAFSA.gov?
And then lastly how do I manage my loans after I’ve graduated from college?
This has a lot of great information. And this is the complete lifecycle of the
student loan borrower history. So please feel free to visit student aid.gov to
learn more a lot of great information out here for you.
Next we want to connect with you and you should connect with us so please
feel free to join us or like us on our Facebook page, like us on Twitter we are
at ask FAFSA.
And also we are on YouTube. We have a lot of great videos out there
available for to you for viewing. So please join us and visit Facebook, Twitter,
or our YouTube pages.

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Next I told you earlier that you can always call us. We are available to you.
We have a Federal Student Aid Information contact Center which is
commonly known as FSAIC. They are available to you in both English as well
as in Spanish.
They can answer the most general information about Federal Student Aid, the
FAFSA application, and you can even request to receive a paper application if
you want to and they’ll be happy to mail that out. And they’ll also be happy to
help you through the online process as well.
In addition they can help you with FAFSA corrections. Let’s say you made a
mistake and you need to go in there and change it. They will be happy to
assist you over the telephone.
And lastly if you are a prior student loan borrower they’ll be happy to go over
any prior student loan history.
The most important number you want to remember is 1-800 the number four
Fed aid. Again that is our toll free number is 1-800 the number four Fed aid or
1-800-433-3243.
And our hours of operations are Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to
10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. So you have a lot of great ways to reach out
to us.
Next I’d like to introduce to you our College Scorecard. All of these next few
slides can be found at collegecost.ed.gov. So the Web link for the information
I’m going over for the next few slides are all located at collegecost.ed.gov.

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College Scorecard is an online tool that will make it easier for students and
families to compare colleges by comparing information such as net price,
graduation rates, default rates, student loan debt, and earning potentials.
Like Amber said earlier you want to shop around and compare which college
will offer you the best financial aid packages available.
And so this is what you’re doing here. You are comparing the college’s
information. So you want to make an informed decision.
This next slide is called our College Navigator. College Navigator provides a
direct link to nearly 7000 colleges and career schools.
This site contains searchable data to assist students and their parents in the
school selection process. The Web site will allow you to search for schools by
location, degree type and length, cost, program study, entrance requirements,
and you can even do it customizable so please check out this great Web site
College Navigator.
The web link is at the bottom of the presentation or you can get to it through
collegecost.ed.gov. And you just click on College Navigator.
Our next Web site is called Financial Aid Shopping Sheet. It is a standard
award letter that help students better understand the amount and types of
financial aid they qualify to receive at each school.
It lays out the total cost of attendance including tuition, fees and other
expenses. So this is a good great sheet for you to check out. Again this is
available at collegecost.ed.gov.

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And lastly we have another great Web site which I would love to share with
you and this is our Net Price Calculator.
The Net Price Calculators are available on every school’s Web site. This
online tool is intended to provide estimated net price information for current
and prospective students and their families.
This Net Price Calculator allows you to enter in basic information about your
household size and income. Then it generates an estimate what it will cost to
attend that institution after taking into account estimated grants and
scholarship aid.
So we have three great resources that you should check out for comparison
shopping to make sure that you make an informed decision and you also
choose an award package that is most favorable for you and your family. So
please visit collegecost.ed.gov.
The next tool which is available studentaid.gov is called the Fact Tool. It is
important to understand the total cost of the attendance and how to budget
your resources in order to avoid financial difficulties which Amber mentioned
earlier you want to borrow responsibly.
And so this fact provides helpful financial information to help students
understand good money management and loan repayment obligations.
You can actually access this Web site with or without your student login
information and play around with this tool to get a general idea of what your
obligations your financial obligations will be upon graduation.

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So we have several great tools for you. So please check them out and utilize
them. And make informed choices about the institution you want to attend and
be a very responsible borrower.
Amber Johnson: So we’ve just covered the various federal financial aid programs available to
you. But we are aware that there are times where filing the FAFSA being
awarded federal funds don’t cover everything and we strongly encourage that
you start to look for other sources of federal financial aid and other nonfederal sources to help cover your total cost of education. So in this section
we’re going to cover scholarships, state aid and institutional aid.
So when you’re thinking about how am I going to pay for college think of
these different sources where money can come from?
Of course there is us at the federal government and you can access that
through the FAFSA as we just described.
State government is another big one. States are giving out a lot of free money
for simply being a resident and attending a school that’s located in that state.
Of course amounts will vary from state to state but what’s pretty common is
that a lot of states use our fast perform as the basic criteria to begin assessing
your eligibility for their grant program.
So not only are you killing a couple of birds with one stone with the FAFSA
but you can also access more grant money which again as we discussed is
free.

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Colleges and universities while us here at Federal Student Aid don’t offer
scholarships this is where a lot of money can come from specifically from
colleges and universities.
Maybe you have really good GPA and you’re able to access various merit
based aid from the various colleges and universities that you are interested in
attending.
Lastly are some common nontraditional sources that you want to think about
as well, private foundations employers and private companies, and
professional and service organizations.
Maybe your church, or your parent’s job, or even large companies that you
probably buy items from all the time have some type of educational
component. All it takes is a little bit of research and maybe writing a couple of
essays to access all of this money.
So scholarships where should you start? Your best friend is going to be
Google. It’s completely going to help you to get organized and to kind of just
stay abreast of all the different searches that come up every day different
keywords out there that you can begin to Google. It’s an easy step just to
become aware of the different opportunities that may be coming across.
Corporations as I mentioned previously companies like Target, or Coca-Cola,
items you consume on a general basis have an education department.
Do a simple search. Go to their Web site. See what essay requirements they
have. And it may be more easy than you think.

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Page 24

Also the US Department of Education also has a search engine. So as the
second to Google definitely go to us as well.
This one may also pinpoint specifically different keywords that pop up at
different institutions. And we have a lot of information there based upon the
schools who are working in our program.
The big thing never pay for scholarships just like you should never pay for
anyone to do the FAFSA form for you scholarship searches should be
completely free.
All you need to do is do a little grunt work in Google and you can find a lot of
opportunities without having to pay anyone to do them for you.
State and institutional aid as I mentioned before grants and merit aid may be
based simply by being a resident of the state and attending a school in a
certain state. So do a little bit of research.
Be aware of varying deadlines. While we at the school I’m sorry at the school
they’re going to have admissions deadlines, financial aid FAFSA deadlines.
So you want to be aware of all those different things and that your organizing
everything appropriately so that you simply don’t miss out on money because
you just didn’t - weren’t aware of the due dates.
So we’re nearing the end of our presentation. And before we get to the Q&A
section where you can access whatever you want we want you guys to help us
to improve our services.

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This is the first in a series of Webinars that we will be delivering to our direct
customers. And we want to get some feedback from you guys on how it was
on your end.
In the next couple of days you can expect a survey to be sent to you. And we
are asking that you take this short survey and give us a honest feedback on
how this Webinar went. So again keep an eye out for that in the next coming
days.
So we’ve reached the portion of this presentation where we are going to
answer some questions that we have been receiving.
I know we covered a lot of information and a lot of different details about the
various programs. So studentaid.gov I will say will be a reference point for a
lot of this information after we are done.
You can also download a handout of this presentation so you don’t have to
remember everything that we just covered but we do want to get to some of
the questions that we have.
Kevin Roberts:

All right Amber we have a lot of great questions coming in. So I’m going to
start us off with the first question for today.
And that is what do I do if my parents haven’t filed their tax returns at the
time I’m ready to do my FAFSA? That’s a great question.

Amber Johnson: That is a really good question Kevin especially because I’m sure a lot of you
whether you are a student or a parent have heard that due to the federal
government shutdown the IRS is going to have a delay on the processing of
federal tax returns.

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This could mean that your parents or yourself may not receive your W-2
information right away or be able to get your tax return submitted.
So what we do is that we strongly encourage you to still submit your FAFSA
application. And there is a way for you to do this without having your actual
current tax year information.
When you do the FAFSA on the Web there is an option for you to complete
your FAFSA with estimated tax information.
So your parents can simply reference their prior year tax return and fill in the
information based upon that.
This way you can hit Submit on your FAFSA. It gets you in the queue. The
information goes to the school. And they can see that you have a flag that says
estimated taxes have been entered.
Once your parents have actually completed their taxes you need to go in and
do a correction and update that information.
So don’t get too attached to any award letter that you receive in the interim
period between updating your actual tax information because just as you
entered estimated information your award letter is completely estimated until
everything has been confirmed. So don’t wait.
So we have another question. Kevin this person is wondering they live on
their own, they pay their own bills, and even their own car payment.

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They are 20 years old. And they are wondering if they can be an independent
student. Is this something that they can be considered for?
Kevin Roberts:

That is a great question and I commend the person for being so independent
and being on their own without support from their parents.
However for federal financial aid purposes if you’re under the age of 24 and
you’re not married and you have no kids you’re going to have to be
considered a dependent to receive federal financial aid unless you meet one of
those criteria that I outlined earlier today or if you meet one of those special
circumstances where the financial aid director will need to be involved.
So Amber that is a great question. But for this borrower it looks like he’s
going to be dependent based upon this quick question that he sent in to us.

Amber Johnson: Good. And dependency being a dependent student isn’t a bad thing. I know it
can seem like a little bit of a hassle to get your parents information but with
our IRS Data Retrieval Tool and other tips and tricks that we shared with you
in this presentation it simply can be just as quick and easily as doing it
yourself. So don’t worry about it.
Kevin Roberts:

All right Amber. It looks like we have another great question coming in. My
parents are recently divorced which parent’s information should I put on the
FAFSA? That’s a great question. We get that quite often here.

Amber Johnson: Yes. And it’s a pretty straightforward answer. So it was kind of kind of
described earlier. Our dependency rules are a little bit different from what the
IRS uses in terms of determining dependency for the purposes of federal tax
returns.

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So for us for Federal Student Aid purposes the parent who is providing more
than 50% of the support for you in the last 12 months is a parent whose
information should be included on the FAFSA form.
We know this could be a little bit different then who is claiming you on your
federal or your parents or your federal tax return.
But again the individual providing more than 50% of the support is the person
who would need to provide their financial information. And if you go to your
parents they will have a good indication of who that individual should be.
Okay Kevin I’m going to try to get to a really good one. Let’s see so this
person is married. And their husband and they don’t believe that they’re going
to be eligible for financial aid for federal grants at least. So they’re wondering
is it even necessary to fill out the FAFSA?
Kevin Roberts:

Yes. The question is you should always fill out the FAFSA. If you still do not
believe that you qualify for grants you could be eligible for other types of aid
including the student loans which will help cover the cost of your education.
Like Amber alluded to earlier today most state aid programs rely on the
information that you provide on the FAFSA.
So it always is important to fill out the FAFSA regardless if you know you
might not qualify for the grant. You could still be eligible for other aid, state
aid, institutional aid and so forth. So I will always encourage you to fill out
the FAFSA.

Amber Johnson: Thanks Kevin any other questions before we wrap up?

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Kevin Roberts:

It looks like we have a last great question coming in. And so let me take a
look at this real quick. All right let’s go ahead.
My husband is returning from the war -- first off thank you for his service
that’s a thank you very much for his service -- and is planning to enroll in
school. Will he be eligible for financial aid in addition to his G.I. Bill? That’s
an awesome question.

Amber Johnson: Yes. And this one is good news. Definitely that individual who is -- thanking
first thanking you for serving in our military and protecting our country -- but
that individual definitely would be able and potentially eligible for federal
financial aid.
The only way to determine that for sure is going to be filing and submitting
the FAFSA form.
When it comes to the G.I. Bill that is specifically managed by the Department
of Veterans Affairs. When it comes to federal student aid it’s managed by us
here at Federal Student Aid. So the school is going to get pots of money from
two different categories.
For us the individual can be awarded up to that cost of attendance. So if there
is a gap there that the G.I. Bill can cover they surely could be awarded both
and we would encourage all active the veteran military personnel to submit
that FAFSA application to determine eligibility.
Kevin Roberts:

Great. Thank you so much Amber for the great response. And again thank you
for your military service to us to this great country.

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So we are now wrapping up for our Q&A session. So we want to remind you
that we will be sending out a short survey by email within the next few days.
So we would love to hear from you and your feedback.
It will be emailed from SurveyMonkey. So please look out for that. And
please respond back to us. And again please visit us at studentaid.gov where
you’ll get all this great information.
And don’t forget our official Web site is fafsa.gov. Do not go to any other
Web site except for fafsa.gov to fill out your application which is completely
free.
So we would like to thank you all for joining us. We are here live in
Washington DC. So I thank you very much for our first Financial Aid 101
Webinar. And look forward to more Webinars from us.
Amber Johnson: Have a great evening and afternoon everyone.
Kevin Roberts:

Yes.

Coordinator:

And with that we will conclude today’s conference. Thank you for your
participation. You may disconnect at this time.

END

Transcript Financial Aid 101 Webinar, November 19, 2013

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Transcript Financial Aid 101 Webinar, November 19, 2013