Hello Everyone,
I go to LIU Brooklyn and I just received my bill for the Fall 2016 semester and I saw that my FAFSA nor any of the scholarships that I got were included in my bill. I applied for FAFSA on time back in January and received a package that is on my LIU account. I also received a email that summarizes all the aid that I was offered and I accepted them online on time.I do not owe anything as well. I was wondering if anyone else experienced this before.
Institutional awards are usually not credited/disbursed till late July.
Federal aid (pell Grant & direct loans) as well as some state aid cannot be credited until 10 days before classes start, by federal law.
Thank you for your reply. Most of the people at school already got a bill with an estimated amount that they have to pay with a breakdown of what their FAFSA/scholarships covered. On my bill, it only showed that I was awarded TAP. I was thinking that even though it is not disbursed until late July, they should still show up on bill so I get an estimated amount that I have to pay since my bill is due on August 1st.
They should show up in a few days.
If the amount is shown on your aid package, you just need to subtract it from the bill to see what you’ll have left.
You should call the school to make sure it will be disbursed on time.
Thank you. I can do that, however, if I want to pay my bill now, it will make me pay the amount that does not include the aid and the scholarships. This only happened to me while others already have the correct amount that they have to pay. I will definitely call the school to let them know that my aid is not included in my bill. Thank you.
Give the school a call on Thursday. Your aid award came from your school…not the FAFSA folks. The FAFSA is the form your school used to determine your federally funded need based aid…and perhaps some of their own aid as well.
But FAFSA does not award money.
So contact your school bursar office.
Thank you, I understand. I just hope that they will fix it and will not deny me aid since the aid package is clearly shown on my LIU account–just not listed on my payment account.
I had to call my daughter’s school every semester. The bursar’s office and financial aid office didn’t seem to be on speaking terms. A phone call to the FA office will probably straighten things out.
Did you have to go into your account and accept or decline awards? Both schools my kids go to require that. Each have some awards they assume you will accept (merit aid, Pell grants) but others like work study you have to go in and accept.
I agree that the billing office and financial aid office don’t speak. The billing office at one daughter’s schools also likes to post and retract postings. I do not know why, but every semester they post the bill, then back off everything, then repost it with different amounts split out, then post credits from the FA office, then unpost it. again. This goes on and on until about 5 weeks into the semester. I do not know why, and I can’t always understand it because the ‘unposting’ makes no difference in amounts and they don’t match up exactly with the award.
On that daughter’s payment page, it will default to pay the entire amount due, but if you click on an arrow other options come up to pay a different amount. If you know that after the awards are correctly posted that you will owe about $3000 and not $15000, it will allow you to pay the $3000. I had to play around with the site for a while to figure that out the first year.
I did went to accept my awards back in April. Right after I filed FAFSA, they sent me an estimated award letter with all the awards listed and the estimated balance that I would have to pay,which is about 1k. My bill yesterday did not include any of the awards, only TAP, and said my balance was 15k.
OP put this in post 1. Sounds like she did what she needed to do.
Just contact the school first thing Tuesday morning. They will be able to answer any questions and figure this out with you.
After reading this, I looked at my daughter’s bill which posts on July 1. It is all messed up. The bill has tuition, fees and health insurance, but no room and board (she’s living off campus but signed up for a meal plan). On the credits is one of her state grants, about 1/4 of her athletic scholarship (which happens to be the amount of the meal plan that wasn’t yet charged on the bill) but none of the other scholarships,loans, or grants. Yep, just the start of the annual July posting and reposting of fees and credits on her bill.
I really don’t understand it, but it seems colleges just post what they want when they want.