Nope, no financial aid award, no work study job.
Simply filling out a FAFSA does not qualify one for work study, or subsidized loans, or any other need-based federal aid. The FAFSA has to indicate financial need, in accordance with federal guidelines.
I’m sure that is true in a strict sense, in terms of the funding. However, programs and departments have the ability to switch funding sources should it become necessary.
Actually JustOneDad…no they can’t. Federally funded Work Study dollars cannot be paid to students who do NOT receive federal work study in their financial aid packages.
The colleges can’t just decide to pay a non-work study student with federal WS funds.
Now…the college can decide to use THEIR funds to pay for a job. And actually some jobs are dual funded…WS OR college funding. But the vast majority are one…or the other.
Did you read my post about my son? The boss of the job actually contacted the financial aid department to see if there was ANY way my son could be awarded WS. Um…no. Our EFC exceeded the COA. End of discussion. The job went unfilled all year. No work study students applied for it. And the only money they had to fund the job was WS money.
Work study funds are only matching funds. They constitute one half of the money paid for the job. If a department or program decides that a particular job is only going to be funded one way and only to a “needy” student, that’s up to them, but the reality is that we haven’t run into a situation yet in which an adjustment can’t be made.
It usually is 75% work study funds and about 25% department funds going towards a WS students paycheck.
While the HS will not see your actual FAFSA, they will know if you have filed one as the information is being fed back to the schools to ensure that students have access to college and financial aid.
At the NYC DOE where college readiness is part of your report card, and in NYS, where you need to file the FAFSA in order to get NYS aid, the schools in NYC and NYS do get a report stating what percentage of their students filed a FAFSA. I don’t think they get the actual names just the number of students in the cohort and the number of students who filed-. You will then have to back the numbers out (subtracting out students who are ineligible to file).
I suspect it can vary by program and institution.
JustOneDad…some colleges have institutional work study funds. These are different funds than federal work study.
Since these are institutional funds, they have different use criteria than federal work study. Maybe that is what you know of.