I will be starting FIU in the summer of 2016. If anyone has done FIU during the summer, how much aid did you receive? It is my understanding that if I’m starting during the summer, I can only take a maximum of two classes.
You will need to find out if FIU considers the summer session as part of the prior year or the following year for FA purposes (does the school year run Sept to Aug or June to May?) If Sept to Aug, you may be able to apply for FA for the 2015-2106 school year and get a Pell grant or Stafford loan, and still have a full FA package available for the school year. If it is June-May, you’d be starting your FA year and they may limit it to the number of credits.
Bright Futures is NOT available for summers. I’m not sure about state need based FA but I think it is not available. Some of the state schools make more of their own funds available for the summer because they encourage summer starts.
In my letter of acceptance I was told to apply for 2015-2016 FAFSA in order to see if I qualify for some aid during the summer, and to also apply for 2016-2017 FAFSA to receive money for fall. Would the amount received for summer be significantly less than the amount received for fall?
It looks like summer is part of the prior year. If you are a full time student in the summer you might get a loan and a Pell grant, maybe as much as during the school year semester. For the fall, you’d receive half of a school year of pell and loans, bUT iF you get that during the fall and spring, you might not have any pell or loan funds left for the summer of 2017. That’s okay. Just go ahead and file fafsa now for next summer and in Jan for the 2016-17 school year. Applying doesn’t bind you to anything. In the spring you’ll get the FA award for the full school year, including bright futures and other state grants, and you can decide what you want.