<p>Has anyone received their financial aide award letter/notification from U of A yet? When do these normally get sent out?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I followed up with my assigned counselor last week. She previously told me the awards would be communicated at the end of March. Last week she told me they have been advised to hold off until May to allocate the awards. It’s nerve-wracking, because we can’t apply for student loans until the awards are communicated. I’m getting concerned about the timing.</p>
<p>Hey all,
This has been a popular question lately, but here’s why this is happening: the new healthcare law included revisions to federally subsidized student aid (Stafford Loans, etc) that makes it a direct government lending program instead of being done through banks (like Sallie Mae) like it was in the past. Since this is effective starting in July, it’s requiring some immediate changes to how the federal aid is processed, and had slightly changed Pell grant amounts too, so colleges everywhere are going to be a bit delayed on aid letters this year. Hopefully this will be good for students in the long run, but it is causing some delays this year, and we apologize for that. We would give you the notices sooner if we could, but this year things were changed after processing had begun, so unfortunately we can’t.
-Matt</p>