Misleading Financial Aid Letters

kelsmom
Thu, 11 Aug 2016 00:07:50 +0000

@romanigypsyeyes , the government has asked schools to use the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet, but it’s not mandatory. I use it, but frankly, I don’t care for it. I have an award letter that shows a student’s awards, then has a detailed description of all possible awards. I send that with the shopping sheet, which has the same info but in a sort of confusing format. The shopping sheet could be very good with a few tweaks (like, I should not have to list Pell Grants for grad students, since they will always be N/A, but I can’t alter the format!). The shopping sheet does break things into gift aid, self help and loans: https://www.ifap.ed.gov/eannouncements/attachments/ShoppingSheetTemplate20152016.pdf.

I give detailed instructions, in a format many students find very helpful. But there are always those who don’t bother to read … and those are the ones who say they didn’t know (but they SHOULD have known).