A few days ago
Morning Glory

Financial Aid questions?

I’m a 25-year-old white female getting ready to start back to school via an online program through my state. The problem is, the FAFSA says I’m pretty set financially. How it figured that, I’ll never know. So, I need some help.

First, I’d like to know if there is some sort of appeal process for the FAFSA. There is no way the EFC I was given is realistic. I live in the real world, with real bills and real financial responsibilities that I can’t avoid.

I don’t want a student loan; I’m already in enough debt and I’m slowly working my way out of it. I don’t need more debt to look forward to. But, I’m not eligible for grants, even though I can barely afford my bills monthly and I don’t meet the requirements for a state lottery requirements because a) I’m not a graduating senior and b) I’ve previously been enrolled in college.

I’m very frustrated by this whole thing. It’s like you can’t get help unless you’re in/graduating high school or have no income whatsoever.

Help!

Top 3 Answers
A few days ago
caba

Favorite Answer

Schools use the EFC generated from the FAFSA in conjunction with the COA to determine a student’s financial aid package. So you can’t really appeal what the FAFSA says.

You can try and appeal your EFC through your financial aid office, but a financial aid office will not consider paying real-world bills and being in debt as extenuating circumstances. If you lost your job, or a tornado hit and destroyed your dwelling, etc. – those would be extenuating circumstances. It doesnt’ hurt to try, though.

What about your employer? Does it offer any tuition reimbursement programs? You could also see about outside scholarships:

College Board Homepage

www.collegeboard.org

FastWEB

www.fastweb.com

Free Scholarship Search

www.freschinfo.com

Gates Millennium Scholars Program

www.gmsp.org

Also just ask your financial aid officer if s/he has any suggestions. Best of luck to you!

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A few days ago
Anonymous
First… The EFC number given isn’t actually the dollar amount you are going to have to fork over to the school. That amount can be discovered looking at the schools tuition and fee rates.

Second, Check your fafsa carefully for errors, if you truly are low income it could be there is an error on your ap. One girl came in my office crying because she didn’t qualify. Careful inspection of her mom’s income said she made $180,000 a year. “What does your mom do?” “She works at a fast food restaurant.” … uh hu? She had entered the cents .00 on her fafsa by accident. Remember there is no cents in financial aid.

Re: an appeal, you can always apply for fin aid next year.

Using your 07 income.

Third.. Check out other schools besides the one you are looking at. Many people never compare prices and are therefore clueless when the school hands them a $10,000 bill and tells them loans is the only way to pay for a college education. What they mean is, “Loans are the only way to pay for OUR college education”. Sometimes loans are a necessity. The interest rates are very low and you don’t have to pay them back until after you are out. I ended up borrowing a lot to get my degrees, because it was either that or not go, but I ever regretted it.

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A few days ago
costdew
if you really want to go to school, you’re going to find a way, period. Try getting scholarships at your school maybe within the department you’re in. There’s are thousands of scholarships you can find online and you have computer access so put it to good use and search.
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