I am a single mom and supported my daughter through her undergraduate years as a dependent (tuition, room and board, food, transportation, insurance, etc). She is applying to graduate school and I have been told that she should apply for FAFSA without reporting parent financial information. How should she respond to question 45J if parent information is not reported on the FAFSA? Most questions/answers talk about non-custodial parent, but could you address the single parent aspect.
If your daughter is applying to graduate school, she doesn’t include ANY parent income or assets on the FAFSA.
45J asks what was paid by parent(s) in 2017. So you would put whatever amount was paid by both parents…or anyone else for that matter.
But as I wrote to another poster…
I’m not sure it matters.
Really…graduate school financial aid is not like undergraduate financial aid. It is largely merit aid based on the strength of the student application and the school’s desire to have the student as a member of the cohort. Aid is comprised of grants, assistantships, fellowships, scholarships, sometimes work study…and loans.
There is really precious little need based aid for grad school some schools do give small need based grants. But not all do. There aren’t any subsidized federally funded loans for grad school either.
What are you hoping your grad school student will get for need based financial aid? Really…there isn’t a lot of that.
Maybe the responses on that thread will help you too.
I think that question relates to bills in the independent student’s name that the parent whose financial information isn’t on the FAFSA has paid in 2017.
But I seem to remember that @kelsmom explained before that if the student was still a dependent student for that year, then the parent support doesn’t have to be listed there.
My understanding is that if a student was considered dependent for aid purposes for the year in question, the expectation was that parents were to provide support in that year. Because of that, my interpretation is that the support would be treated in the same way it was during the time the student was reporting as a dependent student … the support would not be reported. In the future, any support provided while the student was considered independent for aid would be reported.
My dd is in grad school and she fills out the application so that she can access low interest loans. At her school, everyone qualifies for merit. No one gets actual, decent monies, grants.
Hello, I am starting law school in the fall. My FAFSA application q. 45j asks about 2017. I was not a student that year and I was independent. Does 45j apply to me?