<p>I submitted the FAFSA for 10 colleges. After getting the SAR, I went back to add 2 more colleges.</p>
<p>After reading my summary, I realized I made a mistake on my mother's SS#. I corrected it today and submitted. But now I realized that I also made a mistake in her birthdate.</p>
<p>Can I make corrections now or should I just wait till we finalize our 1040 returns and make all corrections then?</p>
<p>I would suggest you wait & make all additional updates at once. It just makes mistakes less likely.</p>
<p>I know that the first year that I did the FAFSA I had seven separate corrections. Things just kept cropping up. </p>
<p>Take heart that next year will be much easier. The FAFSA has an auto fill option that will give you the option of keeping much of the already entered basic info (like birth dates).
Also, you will be working with just one college’s fin aid office. </p>
<p>I agree that you can amend small errors easily all in one sitting when those taxes are done. We work hard to get taxes done as soon as possible just so we know we’ve met all the deadlines (very important when you are trying to keep multiple schools happy).</p>
<p>The most important thing is to look at your Student Aid Report when it is sent to you (email if you provided one; snail mail otherwise). If there is a message that says your FAFSA was rejected & your EFC could not be calculated, YOU MUST FIX THE PROBLEM IMMEDIATELY! I have dealt with several students this year who ignored the information sent to them & did not fix the problems with their FAFSA’s. When they finally fixed the problems many months later, they missed out on aid they could have had. The date they filed the FAFSA is the date an OFFICIAL EFC is received … so they filed in January or February, but the official EFC was not received until late summer or even later. By that time, all work study, SEOG, and institutional grant money were gone.</p>
<p>I’m curious about one thing kelsmom, though it may vary by school. Do schools always consider the date you file FAFSA as the date for “being in line” for aid such as WS? My daughter’s school never shows documentation as being complete until everything, including verification documents if required, are submitted. So last year instead of estimating I waited a couple of weeks to file until I had actual final tax returns. Didn’t get verified, but my daughter did not get WS or SEOG which she had got the previous 2 years (same EFC). Never was sure if it was the slightly later filing or if there is some other criteria I was unaware of 9they don’t exactly publicize how they make the decisions.</p>
<p>I went ahead and filed early this year with estimates hoping she will get as least get WS rather than more loans. But if they verify it will be feb sometime before I can file actual taxes. Will be interesting to see.</p>
<p>Policies for awarding vary by school & can vary from year to year. For example, we have everything programmed into the computer for automatic awarding. Work study is awarded to students with an EFC below a certain number, in order of receipt of FAFSA. To be completely honest, I don’t know if students selected for verification miss out … because we don’t package a student who is selected for verification until after the file is verified, it is possible that there might not be work study left when the verification is complete. If it is left, I imagine that there is some magical cutoff date in the parameters that is used to decide if that student will be packaged with w/s. The folks who do the packaging parameters only share general policies with us (the specifics are left for us to wonder about). I know that we award SEOG to all students with 0 EFC who file before the priority deadline & who, if selected, complete verification before the verification priority date. If any SEOG is left over after the verification priority date, it is awarded automatically to all 0 EFC’s on a first-packaged, first-served basis.</p>
<p>
That’s what I had wondered about. You always read the stuff about filing early with estimates, but then if you are verified the estimates don’t really do a lick of good if you can’t finish taxes and provide the tax forms for the verification process. We still had everything complete pretty early last year but missed out on the SEOG and WS. </p>
<p>Well I will just keep my fingers crossed that we will have met some magical mystery deadline this year. She really enjoyed WS plus it is really hard to get a non WS in her college town if you don’t already have retail or restaurant/fast food experience (she has work experience, but not in retail or restaurant and that is the first thing they ask about). </p>
<p>I kind of wish the parameters used for these FA decisions were a bit more transparent. Not that I can do anything one way or another, but I just hate not knowing!! </p>
<p>Thanks, as always, for your helpfulness.</p>
<p>I think I would go in right away to correct things like names, birthdates and SSN’s, because I do think that FAFSA attempts to match these things up with IRS and SSA data pretty much from the start.
You could wait until later after tax returns are completed (or nearly so) to correct monetary figures.</p>
<p>Kelsmom…I keep trying to submit the FAFSA, but dragging info re assets and 401K contributions out of DH is like pulling the proverbial teeth. He insists that filing FAFSA is a waste of time, since our assets are such that DS won’t qualify for grants anyway. </p>
<p>I am hoping to submit it tonight (but I hope that every night…I finally got DH to tell me what we contribute yearly to 401K, but now he wants to revise the unprotected-assets number…it’s always something!)</p>
<p>Is January 6 too late for the best opportunities? Have we missed out on stuff by not filing Jan. 1 (my original plan)?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Anxious Mom</p>
<p>P.S. I am math-challenged. That’s why DH does all our finances.</p>
<p>Dumb question: What is SEOG?</p>
<p>It is a federal grant, I think it stands for supplementary education opportunity grant. It is one of the types of aid known as campus based aid (the others are work study and the perkins loan). They have very limited funding and schools are given a set amount of$$$s and must decide themselves how to distribute it. They are usually awarded to the neediest students. For instance, from what I have seen on CC, most schools give SEOG only to 0 EFC students. Even then funds are usually insufficient for all 0 EFC students to receive it.</p>
<p>I was able to correct my mother’s SS# and got the confirmation.
Do I only need to make this correction once (for my last submission with the 2 colleges)? Or do I also have to do the same corrections for the 10 colleges that I had previously submitted?</p>
<p>In other words, when I make a correction on my parent’s info, does this get automatically submitted to ALL the schools? Or do I have to list the schools all over again one by one???</p>
<p>This is soooo confusing.</p>
<p>It will only be submitted to the schools listed on that FAFSA. Every time you make any corrections you will have to make them twice - first change the data and send it to the schools on that FAFSA, then change it to add the other schools.</p>
<p>To reinforce a point made above, the most important first step is to get the social security numbers right, and to correct any inaccuracies ASAP. The system is designed to allow monetary numbers to be updated, but a wrong social security number freaks out the system.</p>
<p>I’m sorry for all the questions but where exactly will I be making the corrections for the previous 10 colleges that I submitted to correct my mom’s SS#?</p>
<p>When I go to the original SAR confirmation (for the first 10 schools), and logged on FAFSA, the parent column is not clickable. </p>
<p>I was emailed a few links for the SAR confirmation. Which one do I use? Do I use the latest one? Or the original one where the 10 colleges were listed?</p>
<p>I submitted the FAFSA for both kids two days ago with estimated numbers. The senior in hs was very straight forward, the college freshman was a little more confusing. By my calculations (since there was only one semester of scholarships/grants used thus far) $4,918.00 is the amount of scholarship/grant money that was used for room and board. This is, as I understand it, taxable; but it is less than the $5,700.00 earned income allowance - so, on the FAFSA question where it asked about taxable scholarship dollars we put zero, but now I’m wondering if I had filled in an estimated amount (because I won’t have the reported to IRS information from the college until late January) would I then have had other prompts to follow that further determined the amount to be less than the personal exemption?</p>
<p>Either way, I assume this is something I can/will correct when I have real tax numbers to work with at the end of the month. We were also assuming that my older child would not need to file a return (since she hasn’t worked, the scholarships/grants are her only income source) but the IRS website wasn’t exactly clear on that - although I did find a lot of information about foreign students filing taxes on their scholarships, so helpful!</p>
<p>The question is about taxable amounts of grants & scholarships THAT YOU REPORTED ON IRS 1040/A/EZ. If the kid won’t file, you don’t list an amount here. That is used as an adjustment to the reported tax info.</p>
<p>This brings up the issue of making sure you follow the directions carefully. Even though the instructions give people the EXACT line for taxes paid, they constantly put in the taxes withheld (or line 55 + self employment tax). The odds that this mistake will result in selection for verification are pretty good, I’d say - and the EFC will most likely go up unless it’s auto 0.</p>
<p>My daughter’s school will automatically require us to verify - so any and all mistakes will be found and fixed eventually. I am trying to file with what I know as early as possible so she won’t miss out on anything she’s qualified for; I would love to have everything perfect from the start but that’s unlikely (last year I overestimated parental income by several thousand, so at least that was a pleasant surprise).</p>
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Only in CC world is overestimating our income a pleasant surprise :rolleyes:.</p>
<p>As far as the taxable scholarships and grants are concerned. If total income including the taxable scholarships/grants does not exceed the threshold required for filing then your student does not need to do a return. So the taxable scholarships/grants would not be reported anywhere on FAFSA. Only if total income is such that the student is required to file a return would they appear on FAFSA. Initially in the students AGI, and then in the question about how much taxable scholarships/grants are included in the AGI. This question is used to reduce the AGI by the amount of taxable scholarships/grants before the EFC is calculated.</p>
<p>IRS 970 has all the information about education tax benefits.</p>
<p>As far as the $5700 cut off for a single dependent being required to file, it is the cut off as long as there is no unearned income. When there is also unearned income the cut off may be lower (it is some weird IRS formula). However, taxable grants/scholarships are treated as earned income for tax purposes.</p>
<p>FROM DIANE “I am hoping to submit it tonight (but I hope that every night…I finally got DH to tell me what we contribute yearly to 401K, but now he wants to revise the unprotected-assets number…it’s always something!)”
What do you mean “revise the unprotected-assets number”? How do you do that?</p>