<p>So, I'll be attending UCD next Fall, and I'm completing all my paperwork. They say that my application was selected for federal verification, which asks me to list all my assets. However, I qualified for the Simplified Needs Test, so I didn't list my assets on the FAFSA.</p>
<p>I have some savings that I was hoping to live off of for the coming year, since my wife has to quit her job to move to Davis with me and take care of our child, and we might be income-less. Davis says my expected "Basic Living" for me and my family is $9,500 for the year! I'm not sure how a family of 3 could live on that!</p>
<p>All of the aid I was awarded was federal (I just found out CalGrants are for age 28 and below?) so why do I have to do something that wasn't required on the FAFSA? If I declare my assets, I am afraid they will take away my aid. I have read that there is some levels of asset protection, but I don't want to be obvious and ask the UCD financial department how much of my assets they will ignore. </p>
<p>Listing your assets should not affect your EFC as long as you still qualify for simplified needs to keep it from being factored into the EFC. Some states don’t allow skip logic like California does and are required to list their assets despite qualifying for simplified needs. Provide the asset information or UCD will not process your financial aid.</p>
<p>And yes, Cal Grant is for those who are under the age of 28 (it also requires one to have graduated from a California high school during the 2000-2001 academic year or later; people who qualified have only recently begun aging out). However, as long as your income is less than $80k and you filed both FAFSA and the GPA verification required for Cal Grant, you should qualify for Blue&Gold. This would guarantee your systemwide fees would be covered through a combination of grants and/or scholarships. There is no guarantee for grant aid after the systemwide fees are covered, though.</p>
<p>Sprout, I am a continuing student at UCD and I qualify for simplified needs. The school’s FA office has also asked me to verify my assets. I posted a thread about it earlier, see if it helps. My family barely has any assets though, so its not a big deal for me to report them. </p>
<p>Thanks, I’ll probably just go ahead and report our savings if it won’t affect my aid. I’ve just been so worried, why ask for something that isn’t required, if they aren’t going to use it to change something? And if they wanted to verify that we qualify for Simplified Needs, they should ask for income proof like W2’s, not basic savings assets which aren’t factored into the calculation.</p>
<p>Because they’re using a standard form for everyone? Seems logical to me. What if they had several different types of verification forms and someone who originally showed they qualified for simplified needs didn’t after verification? The FA Office would now have to request that withheld information to properly adjust the FAFSA EFC. Not only could this waste time and resources, but it could delay your aid package.</p>
<p>In my opinion, it’s much more efficient to just ask for everything even if skip logic was applied ;)</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I don’t know if this is actually the reason, but it is what seems the most logical to me.</p>
<p>I figure that the people who don’t qualify for simplified needs, and thus would report their assets on the FAFSA, would not be verified. Verification, at least at UCD, seems to be aimed at students who are receiving a large sum of financial aid; it doesn’t seem to be random at all.</p>
<p>Verification is supposed to be random. 4 kids in college and filing FAFSA for 11 consecutive years - sometimes I was verified and sometimes not.
It seems that each year we qualified for a Pell grant we were verified.<br>
This year I qualified for simplified needs - the FAFSA was verified but they did not ask for assets. </p>
<p>I think it’s worth a phone call to clarify. If you qualify for simplified needs and the FA office would not ordinarliy ask for assets then they should not asking now.</p>
<p>The school has a right to ask for asset information, and you will need to comply if you want aid. There are several reasons the school might request the information. The bottom line is, if you want aid, you need to comply.</p>
<p>kelsmom - is the only reason they would ask is to determine how much need based aid to disseminate?
I don’t think they can go in and change the FAFSA with this information can they?</p>
<p>FWIW - my daughter gets a Pell grant and a merit scholarship and need based aid. No asset information was asked for. It’s kind of a moot point with her since there isn’t enough to matter!</p>
<p>My son didn’t get a NICKEL of need based aid in four years of undergrad school. His FAFSA was selected for verification ALL FOUR YEARS. It’s random…we just sent the school what they wanted and that was that. All he got as a result of filing the FAFSA was an unsubsidized Stafford loan.</p>
<p>If the school asks for something…provide it and do so ASAP. Your financial aid will not be awarded until you complete the verification process if selected.</p>
<p>The FAFSA can certainly be updated with the information. If the student falls into a formula that ignores assets, it won’t make any difference. If the reason the asset info is being requested is because the student doesn’t actually meet the criteria for simplified needs (such as parents not really being able to file the 1040A/EZ, no matter how much they insist they can … ), then the info will come into play.</p>
<p>The asset info may be necessary to keep the computer system from calculating an estimated EFC. The asset info may be necessary for the school to award its own aid. The asset info may be necessary because the school’s policy is to verify assets for ALL students. The asset info may be necessary for a state grant.</p>
<p>The point is, it’s been requested. The FAFSA will be updated accordingly. It will be used for whatever it can be used for … which means that if the EFC formula is the simplified needs formula, it won’t be used in the federal aid calculation. But it is necessary to submit it.</p>
<p>I am going to make a statement that may/may not apply to the OP. It’s a point that he should indeed ask about…and is my OWN personal opinion…
Assuming that the information is NOT required for the FAFSA - and one legitimately meets the Simplified Needs Test - I think it is disingenuous (and shady) for a college financial aid office to ask for MORE Information from some people than other people.
In other words - if they never ask anyone else for additional information and they ask for this and USE it to the detriment of awarding aid - that is shady.
Might be legal and all of that — but it’s another question to ask about.</p>
<p>Bottom line - I don’t think a college can require more from one class of student than another arbitrarily. If the college asks for asset information from EVERY student including those who meet the Simplified Needs test and use that information in awarding need based aid - I’m okay with that. But to ask if from a few and then use it is wrong.</p>
<p>In reading some posts - I am getting the feeling that colleges can mess with the Federal Forumla and adjust Federal EFC’s. I do not like this. If a student is Pell eligible at one college he/she should be Pell eligible at all colleges. Numbers are numbers - they don’t lie. If they are entered correctly then the college should not be making changes.
If this is legit then students who have Pell eligible EFC’s should ask about this prior to commiting to a school.</p>
<p>I doubt very much that anything shady is going on. Schools have very strict guidelines for awarding federal aid, and they are subject to both internal audits and federal program audits. The vast majority of schools would not jeopardize their ability to award federal aid nor would they risk huge fines by doing something illegal.</p>
<p>As I have stated, there are various reasons why the asset info may have been requested. For my school, the skip logic presented a problem for our computer software. Prior to the fix, we had to request asset info from anyone who had skipped it even if they could legitimately not provide it … but if they didn’t, our internal system would not recognize any EFC recalculations as official & aid could back off in the future even if it were able to be paid at that particular point in time.</p>
<p>There is more to financial aid than most people understand, and things are requested for a reason.</p>