<p>I have received the SAR Acknowledgment letter and I had a couple questions on it. First off, the letter states that "your FAFSA has been selected for verification. Verification is a process where your school confirms the data you reported on your FAFSA. Your school has the authority to contact you for documentation that supports income and other information that you reported on your FAFSA." Does this mean that individual schools can request for documentation? Would all the schools I apply to be asking for this or will it depend on the college (ie. will each individual UC decide if they want my documents or will all the UCs ask for it)? Lastly, have I been placed under this category because my FAFSA is "suspicious" or incorrect, or is it simply a random drawing to see whose FAFSAs require verification? </p>
<p>I have another question on the verification portion of the SAR letter. This question pertains to my friend but I thought I would ask on behalf of my friend. When my friend filled out his FAFSA, he filled out his taxes under the "will file" option. Now that schools are asking for verification, how should he send his documents when he doesn't have them yet?</p>
<p>Verification: A random selection of approximately 33% of submitted applications. Being selected does not mean they suspect incorrect data has been furnished.</p>
<p>It does mean that the individual schools can request additional documentation from you…but not every school may. Schools have to request documents from 33% of those selected for verification. Some schools keep close track of who they have received verification documents from and stop making the request once they have hit the quota. Other schools require verification documents from anyone who was randomly selected, no matter what the %age is. Still other schools have chosen to verify 100% of its applicants (this means that everyone has to submit verification documents, regardless of whether they were randomly selected). I am not sure if the UC’s will each ask for documentation or if they have a blanket method of obtaining the forms.</p>
<p>With your friend, if the school has a deadline for verification submission, and he won’t have his taxes filed by that deadline, he will need to contact the FA Office(s) and let them know. If they don’t have a set deadline, he may still want to contact the FA Office(s) and let them know that he hasn’t filed yet and provide an estimated date of when he should have a completed tax return ready to provide them. This way, he can ensure that he will not lose potential aid if he postpones filing his taxes until closer to the IRS deadline of April 15th…or even later.</p>