<p>My s will be attending college in 2010, and will be submitting his first applications next month. I, the parent, was recently laid off in July 2009.</p>
<p>I'll be completing the 2010-11 CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE in October as well. Here is my issue:
My 2008 tax return will show a 'high' salary, 2009 salary (due to my layoff) will be about 60% 2008's salary, and for 2009, if I can find work, I expect that I'll be taking a job at ~75% of my 2008 salary. So my 2008 tax return will look deceivingly high.</p>
<p>What tact will the college finaid people take with such a ambiguous situation? How will they 'weight' my 2008 (high salary), 2009 (low salary), 2010 (expected moderate salary)? Does anyone have experience in this area?</p>
<p>There is no definitive answer to your question, by law. Federal regulations currently require that the base year income must be used for the FAFSA - in your case, 2009 income. Financial aid offices are allowed to make adjustments to expected income based on individual situations … but they must do so on a CASE BY CASE basis. That means that no one can tell you what will happen until you submit your FAFSA with the required info & then do a Special Circumstances Appeal with each individual school. School A won’t necessarily come up with the same adjustments as School B. The law says that there can be no across-the-board policy on how to treat special circumstances; each must be evaluated on its own merits.</p>
<p>I know this is probably not what you want to hear given your difficult situation. You may well find that every school where you appeal adjusts your income, but you may not find that to be the case. In any case, you won’t know the answer until after your child is accepted & it’s time for aid offers to be made … perhaps not even until after initial aid offers are made, as some schools require the appeal to be made closer to the time school starts (in case the parent gets a job in the meantime). The best advice I can give is to make sure you have at least one financial safety in the mix, just in case.</p>
<p>This is something I’m really wondering about. I think in the past, generous aid schools with ample aid budgets were happy to help those who had lost a job. But with so many in this situation now, I’m not sure most can possibly afford to adjust everyone’s package.</p>
<p>I would really focus on the schools known to be very generous if your kid has the stats.</p>
<p>Thanks Kelsmom. That makes business sense for the schools- postpone any financial allowances til late in the game, given the potential for a changing job situation. For RD, that’ll be April of 2010 I believe. Also thanks for the fact that there is an official ’ Special Circumstances Appeal ’ process. Hopefully I won’t need to go through that!</p>
<p>hmom5 - From your knowledge, would you consider Ivies generous (Cornell, Brown for example?). Also any knowledge of these non-Ivies being generous? Boston U, Bucknell ? Thanks.</p>
<p>I read an article, in the NY Times (I believe), about the Department of Education writing to all college financial aid departments and encouraging them to revisit the aid packages for students with OP’s situation. It encouraged Pell grants for these students and asked for the schools to look at the current year and not just the prior year’s tax return. I personally know of a college that had the parents prepare a budget for the current year and upped financial aid considerably based on their current financial situation since the prior year’s tax return showed much higher income.</p>
<p>We have discussed the Department of Ed’s letter in our office at length. Because we have many students whose parents make just a little bit too much to receive a Pell grant … and because they have stuggled at this income level for years … we just cannot justify an automatic Pell grant for someone who lost a job JUST because he/she lost a job. We see families who have made $60,000 already this year before losing a job. We see two income families where one parent still has a job that pays well. We do not feel that we can automatically say, “Here’s $5350 for you” to these folks when our struggling parents who cannot get a Pell grant (or can only get a Pell grant of, say, $1300) don’t get the same assistance. It just doesn’t seem right to us.</p>
<p>There are schools that will go ahead & adjust expected income to $0 based on loss of a job in the family. We have noticed, though, that often the Pell is all the students get … institutional grants & SEOG don’t necessarily go along with the Pell in such cases. </p>
<p>Other schools will adjust income to $0 and award a whole bunch of aid. More power to them if they have the money to spread around. And I know some make the argument that the family who lost the job has expenses due to a particular lifestyle that don’t just go away immediately. </p>
<p>My school just cannot justify giving a huge sum of money to one while another who makes less gets nothing but loans. What we do is look at how much the family will earn during 2009 … for some, there is income during the year that will get counted.</p>