<p>My father and I both received emails yesterday saying that the FAA (financial aid administrator) at my school had updated my FAFSA information. Sure enough, my parents' income amounts had been changed from gross income to income after all deductions. When I called the FAFSA center, they told me that one of the 6 schools on my application had called in and changed the information without ever having notified me or my parents. They couldn't tell me which of the six schools it was though, so now I need to call all of their financial aid departments.</p>
<p>So on the FAFSA, where it indicates "father's income" and "mother's income", is that referring to gross income or nontaxable income? And are colleges allowed to change information like this?</p>
<p>Haha, for a minute, I had even thought that someone had hacked into my account. At least now I know that isn't the case.</p>
<p>It is probably the reason that schools ask to verify information because schools know that even after parents making their best efforts to fill out the forms, they some times make mistakes, while most are truly unintentional.</p>
<p>I don't know if the change affected people's EFC in a positive or negative way but the schools are required to verify the informaiton (for some schools verification is in the form of verifying every single applicant, in other schools it is a random sample). I am going to throuw out thesse 2 questions for thought:</p>
<p>If the change was made and affected the EFC in your favor, would you complain? </p>
<p>If the school be decided to totally discount your financial aid info because they theough you were trying to game the system, do you think that they would be treating you unfairly?</p>
<p>The changes the school made to our FAFSA were updates. We originally submitted the FAFSA on estimated information, planning to update the FAFSA after finishing our taxes. Before we updated FAFSA, one of the schools did it based on the tax forms we gave them. The information is accurate and correct. I was only surprised they changed the FAFSA, as I thought we were the ones who were expected to do it.</p>