College bill ..but no Fed Loans Why?

<p>Just got the college bill for my S. Last year he had a couple of Stafford loans, one unsubsidized and one not. In this bill no Federal loans of any kind are listed. We filled out the FAFSA and our EFC indicated he qualified for those loans. What would cause the school not to include the loans this year? I'm lost .. he needs those loans to afford college.</p>

<p>It depends on the school. One of my children, the college lists them and says accept/decline, another had to apply for them yearly on an online site, it wasn’t listed on the bill. I would call the FA office if you can’t find the answer on their site.</p>

<p>My d had to do online loan counseling paperwork for her loans. Did your son have to do that last year and has he done it this year? Are the loans listed on the formal financial aid award letter, if not that is something to ask the school why not if he qualifies for them. Call the billing office on Monday and ask them why they aren’t listed and what your s needs to do to get them listed.</p>

<p>It might be as simple as the money has not been sent to the school yet, a lot of times the school may not get that money until the end of August or early Septmeber.</p>

<p>At my school we have to explicitly accept the loans listed in our financial aid offer. No response defaults to declining them.</p>

<p>There was no mention of the Fed loans on the bill. My D gets them automatically every year. I mean you filled out the FAFSA …isn’t it logical you need the loans. This is S’s second year … we did not do anything differently than the first. Is it too late to get these Fed loans?</p>

<p>Did you receive a financial aid letter for the upcoming year? Most colleges these days have the kids go on-line and accept the package and some might still do it the old fashioned way by having the letter signed and a copy returned. Call the college but also look for the letter or look on line and see if a step was missed. </p>

<p>Also for S2’s college the Staffords don’t appear on the on-line account statement until they are disbursed so the bill that comes in summer doesn’t reflect the Staffords…I back them out and pay the bill leaving the balance that gets covered by his Staffords.</p>

<p>Nightingale,</p>

<p>Just because you qualify for the loans through the FAFSA doesn’t mean you want to accept the loans. We turned down some (not all) loans this year for my d so that her debt load wouldn’t be as big. We were able to tap into some grandparent money to pay for what we turned down in loans.</p>

<p>The school doesn’t know if you want all the loans or not unless you tell them.</p>

<p>bajamm, I assume you know that you’re supposed to report those grandparent funds on the next year’s FAFSA.</p>

<p>OP, in my experience, things move slowly on college billing statements. It’s still early July, so it’s probable that the loans just haven’t been processed into the student accounts yet. A call to the Financial Aid Office on Monday should set your mind at ease.</p>

<p>Yes, they will be on next year’s fafsa. I thought we were talking about loans coming from this years fafsa? And the grandparents money wasn’t on that.</p>

<p>I think the OP means loans appearing on this year’s tuition bills, which would be based on FAFSA filed on 2010 information.</p>

<p>I just wanted to make sure you knew about “the grandparent question” on FAFSA. It’s near the end, and asks for “Money paid or received on the student’s behalf.”</p>

<p>Thanks, LasMa, yes money received this year from grandparents would go on the Fafsa we fill out early next year. It would not affect the loans amount coming out of the Fafsa filled out earlier this year as there was no grandparent money received last year.</p>

<p>And, my point remains that most times (if not always?) loans, as well as other pieces of the financial aid package, do need to be accepted or not accepted by the student. If the loans were not specifically accepted it may have defaulted to not accepted. OP’s issue could also be that the school has not listed the loan money on the bill yet for a variety of reasons, often times that money is not listed on the bill until later in August and only the billing office would be able to tell this family what their issue is.</p>