This might be old news to CC veterans who have been dealing with the financial aid process for years, but Morningstar posted an article that has some good advice for families who haven’t been through the process before:
"Mistake Number 1: Assuming you won’t qualify for grants.
According to government estimates, an estimated 2 million students who are enrolled in college and would be eligible for a Pell Grant never applied for aid…
Mistake Number 2: Ruling out federal student loans.
Although some private student loans may advertise lower rates, further investigation is warranted…"
Mistake #6: Assuming that you will get free money or more free money than awarded. Every year we see posts from shocked parents and students who received FA pkgs with little/no “free money” when they expected thousands.
So true there mom. I am not sure how the government even came up with 2 million people being eligible for pell grants. But I always felt that just because you got the letter saying you were eligible for a pell grant did not mean you got one. The reality is that college is very very expensive.
Ok. So then I guess the government is saying they just never applied or submitted a FAFSA. Hard to believe that a family with such an EFC would not have become aware of the FAFSA somewhere along the line. I guess. It just seems a bit hard to believe. Which I guess is why the government is making that point.
@MassDaD68, My son receives a Pell grant of a couple hundred dollars per semester. He’s commuting to a 4-year school so it doesn’t make a dent in the tuition, but it’s enough to buy a book or two. He’s still counted in the Pell numbers. I’m sure many, if not most, of the kids who attend their local community college are Pell grant recipients too. I don’t think 2 million is an unrealistic number.
The government loves to play with numbers to suit their own agenda. Many people don’t want to submit all of their finances for a few 100. I know many people that use all of the calculators and do quite a bit of research and decide not to apply for privacy issues with very little potential benefit.
@Center if an applicant is in the neighborhood of qualifying for a pell grant, many schools will have their own institutional grant money available for those in such a bracket.
Even in higher income brackets families are leaving a lot of money on the table. It may not be 20-30k but if you get 3k for spending 1 hr filing out 2 forms (fafsa/css) isn’t that worth a little effort?..tax free at that.
Unless you are living off the grid and have no electronic foot print the privacy argument is weak. People are either underestimating the amount funds available or just don’t want to be bothered.
We’ve seen a number of posts from kids who can’t file FAFSA because they have a parent who hasn’t filed taxes in recent years, and won’t do it because they would owe. I imagine that some citizen students who have undocumented parents don’t file because their parents fear being deported (even tho that wouldn’t happen).
I believe there are 2 million students not getting a Pell Grant the same way I believe there are millions in unclaimed outside scholarships that my left handed kids are missing out on.
Average time to fill out the FAFSA is 25 minutes? LOL There must be some awfully fast people to offset people like us. We are already well past that (having attended one session at the high school) and have a a fair amount of time to go. We have a local agency that helps, but we need to gather the documents, go to the meeting with their expert, and then take the time to make whatever changes to our financial situation he advises before completing and submitting the forms. I’m hoping it gets easier in years to come, but this first year is a bear. But we are doing it just in case.
I guess we are one of the families that offsets @NoelleCf . Download the IRS info, type in the balances from the various bank/broker websites, hit submit.
@poblob14 – That would be great. I realize our case is more complicated than most, but 25 minutes seemed overly optimistic judging by how many meetings our school and nonprofit college support agency sponsor for it and how long it seems to be taking everyone else at the meeting. Maybe the ones with simple straightforward cases don’t go to the meetings, so I’m getting a skewed perspective. I just feel fortunate that we have a local expert to help us.
@NoelleCf By the time our high school had their meeting, our FAFSA had been on file for a week. So I assume you’re right; the people with simple cases don’t go to the meetings.
It took me only about 25 minutes to manually input all. IRS tool did not work so I just input the figures.
I only have income and investments. Nothing complex. Just logon to accounts for balances and input into FAFSA. easy peasy.