My son checked his financial aid package this week and saw he was awarded a $6400 Pell grant. We have never qualified for need based aid with this son or our older two.
Over the last few years our EFC has ranged from 22,500 to 36,000. This year our SAI was 960. It seems like our 1040 information might not have imported. There was not a big change in our income or life circumstances that would cause such a drastic change.
I can’t figure out how to check on the FAFSA to see what income they have for us. I can see our answers to questions about other income/assets, but don’t see the AGI they are using to calculate the SAI. My son is trying to contact his financial aid office, but the call queue is hundreds long. We don’t want to accept aid we don’t actually qualify for. It could be viewed as fraudulent and it certainly doesn’t feel right. Any suggestions how to addres this issue?
I found an SAI calculator in another thread on this forum. I plugged in our information and the estimated SAI was 1729, much lower than our previous EFC, but not as low as the SAI on my son’s actual FAFSA. Is the SAI calculated that much differently than the EFC?
The formula to determine SAI may match what some had for EFC, but there are several changes that can make the SAI higher or lower than the EFC was, depending on the financial circumstances.
First of all, you can accept the aid offered with a clear conscience. As long as you provided correct information, you did your part. If you indicated that you would allow your tax information to be imported from the IRS, that was done automatically without any additional input from you. I will caution you, though, that there were more than a few issues with the FAFSA process this year, and things may have been messed up on the processor’s part. Schools are still trying to deal with the fallout from that. What this means is that it’s possible that your aid might change if a review by the aid staff was needed & has not yet been completed.
Has your S been told that his aid package is complete, or does it say estimated?
Also … do you have foreign income? How about untaxed income and/or untaxed payments to retirement accounts? Does the ex in your username refer to expat?
My son has sent an email to his financial aid office asking if it seems right that he would get this grant based on past ineligibility.
Tuition is due next Thursday. There is no way to reject grant and scholarship aid in his school’s online system, so the grant funds will be applied to what he owes unless something happens between now and then. We will be prepared to pay it back, if needed.
I know you said you never qualified for need based aid before…but if you actually DO, you want to know what happens if the Pell is actually something you are not entitled to.
Some colleges use the Pell to help fulfill their need based awards. If that is taken away, what will they do instead?
My son heard back from Financial Aid. They reviewed his FAFSA and said everything looks correct. They explained that the SAI and EFC aren’t comparable calculations.