My son has applied ED to UPenn. indicating not applying for FA. Is there still a advantage in filing the FAFSA and CSS/P ? My wife quit her job, so I assume, she is not considered “dislocated”, hence special consideration will not work in reducing the COA. Can we still apply for special consideration even if on the ED app, we have indicated ‘Not Applying for FA’ ?.
What is “special consideration”? Either you apply for financial aid or you don’t. If you want to apply, call or email the U Penn admissions office and tell them you want to change the “Not applying for FA” answer.
Unless you tell us something about your family finances, we can’t possibly tell you if submitting FAFSA and Profile for a U Penn ED application is a waste of time or not. The first place for you to start is Penn’s NPC. Have you completed it? What was the result?
Edited to add: are you a parent or the student? In another thread you posted as if you were the student.
@BelknapPoint - By “special consideration”, I think the OP means that if they filled out FA paperwork with 2015 numbers their income would show much higher than it is now because his wife quit her job. If his wife had lost her job they could ask the FA office to consider that and maybe get a better package, right? Question OP is asking is whether quitting a job would be in the same category.
OP - hopefully someone with more knowledge can answer, but my guess is the same as yours - “no”. But I’m pretty sure you would have no chance at all if you don’t even apply for FA in the first place.
Gotcha, and I believe you are right on all accounts.
The COA is the COA and quiting work or having dislocated worker status doesn’t change it.
BelknapPoint - I am the parent. Had some issues with a duplicate account. Hopefully it is now resolved. The responses here pretty much are what I thought too. Thanks everyone for the feedback !
ClaremontMom, you are right on the money. We were told it would be considered, however, I have since realized there is a different between dislocated worker and someone who has left the job. I am thinking of not submitting the CSS this year as it will not affect our EFC as it will be based off of the 2015 income. Next year, we might see changes with reduced income.
Others on this board have stated in other threads that at some colleges, if you don’t request FA the first year, you can’t do it later, so make sure that isn’t the case!
Have you run the Penn NPC? Making assumptions can sometimes mean leaving money on the table, especially at a meets full need school.
Dislocated worker status will ONLY help your family if your family income is below $50,000 a year. Otherwise, it’s not a consideration in determining awarding of federally funded need based aid…or institutional aid.
@thumper1 - why not? Especially at a meet’s need school. Visiting the FA department is one of the first things I would be doing if either of us lost our jobs or had some other major financial hardship. Isn’t that the advice we give here to people who run into an issue?
I asked the same question in another thread. The conclusion was that if you expect to never receive a dime of need-based or merit aid, then don’t fill out the form.
However, life circumstances can change abruptly, Penn might not work out, merit aid might be available at schools farther down the list - so I sucked it up and filled out the forms.
The FAFSA website must have been designed by the Chinese in the 80’s. The CSS application was maddening - they wanted every significant line on the 1040, W2, etc. but in seemingly random order. But at the end you get to pay them. They do that part of the website perfectly.
@ClaremontMom there is a big difference between “dislocated worker” status, and loss of income.
Dislocated worker status is used for fafsa purposes as one of the possible determining factors for simplified needs, and auto zero EFC. These have income thresholds in addition. If the family has a higher income, the dislocated worker status won’t matter one bit when it comes to dislocated worker status.
If this family has significantly reduced income for 2016 compared to 2015, they will need to request a special circumstances consideration based on the reduced income for 2016. These are handeled on a case by case basis, and some schools don’t do them at all.
It will also be interesting to see how schools handle these requests this first year using prior prior tax year info.
Maybe I missed something, but I didn’t read that this poster was a low income family. Plus, didn’t he say that his wife quit her job? The kid applied to Penn ED and indicated NO to applying for financial aid. If the fami,y NEEDED financial aid for,the student to attend, they should,have indicated so.
Also, keep in mind that some schools will have a waiting time before they will even look at any special considerations. The expectation is that the person will look for and get a job during that time.
When my husband was laid off from his job my kid’s freshman year of college, there was a four MONTH wait before his school would even look at a re-consideration of need based aid.
@thumper1 - I think the OP used the term without any special FAFSA meaning to it. I think OP simply meant someone who isn’t working anymore. At least that is how I interpreted it when I asked you “why not”. No, OP isn’t low income (or we wouldn’t be having this discussion–he would be apply for FA for sure). He was just asking if his wife leaving a job would be the same as losing a job in terms of special consideration.
@ClaremontMom agree. But at a certain income level, it doesn’t matter if the OP’s wife quit her job…or not.
If they indicated NO aid needed on the application, then hopefully, they can afford $70,000 for their kid to attend this coming year of accepted.
If not…the kid needs to get that ticker changed on the application.
The school is need blind for admissions… it if he is accepted ED, the financial aid department would need to KNOW this kid is applying for financial aid.
When asking for special consideration because a parent is no longer employed, the schools ask for pink slips, etc. They’re not going to be very sympathetic to someone who quit their job for non-medical reasons.
@thumper1 is right. At a certain income level, the fact that the spouse quit their job is meaningless.
Frankly, what’s a school supposed to think when a spouse quits their job?? Are they going to think,“hmm, was this done to get more FA??” If that’s what a school will think, then they’re not going to be very sympathetic unless it can be shown that someone quit their job because they became too sick/disabled to work.
You haven’t mentioned the other schools your son is applying to. I assume this is because you are hoping that the ED works out, but you should be aware that some schools that give merit scholarships require students to fill out the FAFSA even if you don’t qualify for any need based aid. We had to do this last year for one school that my daughter was accepted to. It seemed like a completely silly exercise to fill out financial aid information for a merit based scholarship but that’s what they required and so we went through the exercise.
Can you share which school required the FAFSA for merit scholarships?
@hebegebe my son went to Boston University enrolled in 2003. He received a music performance merit award. Our EFC was HIGHER than the cost of attendance at the time.
He had to complete the fafsa and Profile as an incoming freshman to receive the merit award. It was based solely on the strength of his audition…not need.
He also had to complete these his sophomore year. Then they did away with the requirement for continuing students who had merit awards.