At any rate, these issues apply to any situation where someone has kids. Food stamps are means tested. If I have just one I might not qualify. But if I have two I might. This means if I spaced my kids apart, over the course of raising them I’d get fewer benefits than if I had them closer together. This doesn’t strike me as a loophole. The fact that I have two kids makes it harder for me to feed either one individually.
Logically, it doesn’t make sense. If the SAI is meant to help colleges quantify how much I can pitch in to help a kid through college, based on my income, it seems odd to think that if I can afford X to send one kid, I could afford 8X to send octuplets.
It’s not as simple as that, of course. But that’s the gist of the argument.
Timeline for students to make FAFSA corrections now ‘first half’ of April:
The ability for students to make update and corrections to their FAFSA forms will be available in the first half of April.
I expect we will see more schools push out their enrollment deadlines. Remember, if your school hasn’t delayed their enrollment date, it’s ok to ask for an extension.
For those who may need help with FAFSA, including those who haven’t yet filed, here is a link with various helpful programs/resources by state. Many states are running free FAFSA completion workshops for example. Note you may have to navigate around the initial landing page for each state:
The FAFSA status changed to processed around 3/16 but the college portals don’t reflect receiving the FAFSA. How long should it take to show as received by the colleges?
Those sorts of considerations don’t bother me. Having a child is not like getting a manicure. Timing doesn’t always work out like a professional breeder’s schedule for people.
With that said, the political football that is retirement savings and 529 considerations makes it nearly impossible to plan for college expenses. When I first opened S24’s 529, they were not penalized nearly as heavily as they are now in FA calculations. We have lived and worked in a sector where access to traditional retirement accounts has been severely limited so we have to save outside of them to be able to retire at the traditional retirement age, and that eliminated our eligibility for federal aid. It’s a case of “choose where you live” carefully…if you can.
In case this helps anyone. My FAFSA was processed on 3/16. I was notified by a college on 3/21 they had received my info and it was correct. I received my FA package from the same college yesterday.
I’ve often wondered - does the gov’t SEND the FAFSA to the schools once it’s processed or is there a portal that the schools download processed applications when they feel appropriate? Or maybe it’s a 2 way street?
FSA sends and receives FAFSA and direct loan information through a portal called the SAIG mailbox. Schools receive notification when there is something available in the mailbox; there are message classifications, so schools know what will be in a particular message (ISIR - which is the school’s information from the FAFSA, loan record response, Pell response, general message, etc). Staff will download messages on their own schedule. For example, I worked at a large school that downloaded ISIRs twice a week. When I worked at a small school, I did it daily. It’s important to screen them as they are downloaded, so that issues can be flagged and resolved.
Xavier today said FA portals will be down over the weekend so they can update FA servers. The gist was they needed to update in order to download FAFSA submissions.
My guess is many colleges are doing the same. So, it could be that some colleges have not downloaded any FAFSA submissions yet.
It may be that they are updating computers, but many Catholic colleges are closed for Easter weekend and can’t answer any questions from noon on Thursday until Tuesday.
“Information Technologies will be upgrading the Banner Financial Aid system to the latest available release the weekend of March 30th. This upgrade contains critical updates to the Financial Aid system to allow Xavier to receive 2024-25 FAFSA information.”
Our Catholic school is closed all day Thursday through Monday.
I wonder if most CSS schools are considering multiples. While some undoubtedly are, I just wrapped my head around S24’s offer, which has our COA about 5K more than his SAI—and he has a sibling in a private college. His CSS school does not take home equity in the picture and did not ask for tax returns so who knows how that came up with their number, but a sibling does not seem to be taken into consideration.