If you are nearly certain you will not receive any “needs based” financial aid, is there any reason to fill out FAFSA? I am new to this part of the process. Thanks in advance.
there are sometimes jobs on campus that require you to have filled out the FAFSA; they use your work-study status as a budgeting item, even though having work study is not a requirement. S1 had a p/t job like that, otherwise we didn’t qualify for a thing but loans (which we chose to not have)
I thought you had to fill out the FAFSA no matter what? We won’t qualify for any need based anything either - but we still filled one out. Maybe we didn’t need to!
Provost. No. my child received notice of the UP award and we did not fill out FAFSA.
Provost awards are not need based. The year they debuted there wasn’t clear criteria, but generally applicants offered the award had strong admission stats or had another “hook”.
Provost awards are given to both UP and branch. I bet PSU distributes them to spread the wealth between the campuses. They were advertised in the first year as a one-time program, but I gather they are continuing the program on a smaller scale.
We did not fill out the FAFSA for S who is now a Sophomore, but I will this year. I recently learned from our Admissions Rep that scholarships can become available through your College/Major, but in some cases you need to have your FAFSA completed. Students hear about the scholarships via their PSU email account. Probably a long shot, but I plan to be prepared.
^^^^ +1
I can confirm that departments/colleges have scholarships that are reserved for students with financial need. The evaluation committees receive a list of students who have demonstrated need and qualify for the scholarship. The committee does not have access to the actual numbers or FAFSA application (this would be a violation). Need is identified based on financial information that almost certainly comes from a FAFSA filling. I have no knowledge of what the definition of need is. Once they qualify based on need, the students are then judged on the academic performance or other criteria. Furthermore, D had to fill one out before they would consider her for a study program, dumb box to check.
oh, one thing that might be worth considering. Almost everyone qualifies for a loan, we did. Even if you don’t plan to use it, it might be handy to be awarded this in the event you face an unexpected emergency that requires you to accept it to meet semester bills. It might be faster to have this option available. May be this is so rare it’s not worth filling out the forms