When my daughter applied to UCF her financial aid page showed a UCF Full Time grant of $750 per semester, UCF Orion Grant $700 per semester, FSAG grant $600 per semester and Pell of $423 per semester ($2475 per semester). After a review they removed all grants. The only thing I can tell is maybe her $3700 2 yr FPP plan wasn’t reflected originally in FASFA? Even still, that’s $3700 disbursed over a couple years and the grants were totalling much more. Has anyone had any luck contacting Financial aid to get grants re-instated? It is a huge chunk of money she was counting on when she picked UCF over UF.
Sorry, forgot to add, I don’t think UCF was looking at Bright Futures when this was originally done, so is it the bright futures that offset all the grants?
No, bright futures is an outside merit award with no financial need. It may not be appearing on the FA portal because it hasn’t been finalized yet. That happens a lot, where the schools are months behind showing the BF but it is there.
If you didn’t report the FPP on the FAFSA, it could very well have caused change in the need based FA. FPP is a 529 plan, an asset. The $3700 plan would have 5.6% included, or only about $200. That’s not much, but your Pell amount was close to the minimum, so it would have been easy to have it fall off.
The Orion and FSAG are for students showing "substantial financial need. " That’s a judgment call for the school’s FA office.
Thank you. We always fall into that teeny tiny gap of ineligibility by just a few dollars on everything it seems. So, If she were to use say 1/2 of her FPP for Fall semester, she may have a chance of re-qualifying for the grants next year? Do they do any financial aid analysis between Fall and Spring or wait for the next FASFA?
I read somewhere that as long as she has some FPP hours available she will be able to get the Fee differential credit, so I am thinking we need to keep some FPP hours available through grad school?
Your FAFSA is filed every year, so yes, next year 1/2 of her FPP will not be there anymore.
You should contact the FA office and have them walk you through it. It may be a mistake on their part or it may be that the $3700 was just enough to put you above the Pell eligible amount. They should be able to tell you if they changed the FAFSA/EFC numbers.
After waiting over 45 minutes to get through to financial aid, I was cut off. So, I guess I will be making a drive over to UCF this week. If you happen to know the answer to one more question I would appreciate it! I understand that with the FPP we get the Tuition differential credit, even if we choose not to use FPP for any particular semester. I am wondering if we lose that credit once FPP is exhausted? My son has two FPP credits leftover from community college showing on his UCF account as a transfer student. He will most likely be at UCF 2-3 years. Should I be “witholding” those credits to get that differential credit? Or do we always get that credit simply because we “had” FPP, even once all FPP credits are used up?