I have questions about FAFSA!

Paying for College
4

Filling out the FAFSA opens you up to four main sources of federal financial aid.

  1. Pell Grant: The maximum amount awarded is $6495 per year. Not all students who qualify for the Pell Grant will receive the full amount, some will receive as little as a couple hundred dollars or less. Students with a FAFSA EFC of $0 will receive the full amount.

  2. Direct Student Loans: These are loans guaranteed by the government. The interest rates are relatively low, compared to private student loans. You do not have to start repaying them until after you graduate or stop attending college. The maximum you can borrow using your DSLoans is $5500/yr as a freshman, up to $7500/yr as a senior. Another advantage of DSLoans (compared to private student loans) is that once you start paying it back, you can request deferments, or request income-based monthly payment amounts. You don’t usually get those benefits with private student loans.

  3. Work Study: You will be placed at the front of the line for any on-campus student jobs that qualify for this federal program. Unlike unaffiliated jobs, this program limits the number of hours students can work each week in order to make sure the student has enough time for class work. This provides a safe way for students to earn spending/living money while in college. Of the four items listed here, this is the one that usually always ends up as $ directly to the student instead of going to pay for tuition and school costs.

  4. SEOG: This is similar to the Pell Grant, except instead of being tied directly to the student these funds are distributed to the colleges, who then decide which of their Pell Grant eligible students will receive SEOG monies. This is a limited amount and you will help your chances of receiving some by applying (and being accepted) to colleges as soon as possible. Schools might award as much as a couple of thousand dollars a year to a student, or as little as zero.

There may be other FAFSA benefits for low-income students, but those are the four that came first to my mind.

PS: a 5th benefit is that many schools will not award the university’s institutional need-based FinAid without first filling out the FAFSA (and/or CSS).

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