Okay, I live in NJ. I previously attending a college in NY right after high school, but it turns out I wasn’t quite ready to jump into a four-year school straight out of high school and didn’t do so well over there and ended up dropped out after 2 years.
I ended up coming back to NJ to attend a community college. Over the last year, I packed a bunch of courses in, including a bunch of summer courses, and graduated with my associates this past May. I was accepted as a transfer student to William Paterson University, and I’m going to be attending there this fall.
I’ve been lucky to have supportive parents this entire time, so I’ve been living with them while I attended the community college. I previously had a seasonal part time job to pay my own tuition for the community college, but I really wanted to graduate from there quicker. I piled on a bunch of classes over the past year and even took 4 courses over the summer. I was using up money from my savings to pay for this. Because of this, I’ve been unemployed for all of 2014 and I have very little income besides some interest from banking accounts.
I didn’t apply for financial aid while I was at the community college, but now that I’m transferring to a four-year school, I filled out the FAFSA and also answered some basic questions for the NJ TAG. The thing is, I just turned 24 over the summer and it seems I’ve now considered an independent student.
A couple days ago the NJ HESAA sent me a letter saying I was “chosen for verification” and that I need to file an “Independent Student Monthly Expense and Resource Statement”. Because I’m legally an independent student now, I’m guessing HESAA obviously sees it suspicious that I have effectively no income reported. While I’m legally independent, I’m still “literally” depending on my parents for a lot at the moment.
There’s a section on the form for listing expenses and listing who pays for it. I am listing my parents as paying for these expenses.
There’s also a section where I need to attach documentation confirming this. It shows examples such as W-2 for wages, 1099-G for unemployment, Social Security, etc., but I have none of these because I didn’t file for unemployment and don’t currently get any SS benefits. What do I attach? I’m not sure if attaching my parents’ forms will cover this section as I’m now an independent but unemployed student with no documentation to attach… It even says in highlighted bold text: “If you enter ‘zero’ in all fields or provide incomplete responses, the form will NOT be processed.”
I’m planning to call up my uni’s financial aid office on Monday, but maybe somebody else can help explain what needs to be done since this form is due in less than a week.