<p>My father lost his job (of like 30 years) just this week. It's pretty distressing because his job probably gave us over 80% of our income. Can anyone tell me what this means for my financial aid? I'm concerned because he was laid off from work this week. FAFSA was due back in March of this year. Since FAFSA takes into account your tax forms from the previous year (2010), does this mean I am just seriously out of luck? I am going to be a senior this fall so 2011-2012 will be my last year in college...</p>
<p>Sorry to hear about your dad.</p>
<p>Since your dad was just laid off, schools don’t usually make adjustments because they want to “wait and see” if your dad finds another job within the next 2-3 months. </p>
<p>Since your dad has worked for 30 years, did he get a severance package? Is he being paid for any untaken vacation days? His income for the last 8 months and any severance/vacation pay and any unemployment pay will all get looked at if unemployment goes on for awhile.</p>
<p>Your parents may have to look into a Parent Plus loan to cover the costs for this remaining year.</p>
<p>I am so sorry, PoorCookie. Your father must be so devastated. </p>
<p>Every school handles this sort of thing differently. A couple years ago, we would have made families wait a couple months before looking at their requests for a loss of income adjustment. But awhile back, we stopped … no one in our area was getting jobs, so we felt we were safe to assume that a layoff would be relatively long term. </p>
<p>Contact your financial aid department and talk to them. It may or may not make a difference, but it is absolutely smart to find out for sure. Depending on how much your mom makes, you might be eligible for a Pell grant (no guarantees) - it is worth finding out.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for the kind words and the replies. </p>
<p>He actually didn’t receive <em>any</em> severance pay (you can imagine how upset he is after being such a loyal worker) although he got a check for untaken vacation days that should help us out in paying the bills coming up but I think we’ll be relying mostly on the unemployment pay. In a way it was all pretty abrupt; he didn’t even get a 2 week’s notice or anything. He was just called in one day and that was his last day. </p>
<p>I hate to think of it this way, but I fear that my dad probably will not be able to find another job any time soon. Even if he does find a job again soon, I am almost positive it will not come even halfway close to his old job in terms of salary. Just to add to this post, I believe he got laid off because my dad’s job was becoming obsolete & it was more cost efficient for the company just to lay off everyone, sell the old stuff, and get the job done by machines elsewhere for cheaper. Something like that. </p>
<p>That’s true, I was definitely thinking about talking to my school finaid office for sure, since it feels like there’s not much else I can do and I’m really confused how this will work out. I wonder how much power the finaid office has over adjusting my financial aid…I’m kind of under the impression that they don’t have much and it’s up to this FAFSA business. But let’s say my school has no power in adjusting my aid…is the FAFSA still adjustable at this point? If it is, I’m guessing only under the special circumstances section at the end or something. And then I’d have to have a form of proof and such. I’ve never had to adjust a FAFSA this late, nor do I even know if this is possible, so this is all new to me. Hmm.</p>
<p>Schools can use professional judgment to adjust your financial aid, within limits. As Kelsmom said, go talk to the FA office.</p>
<p>Is this school generous with aid when there is need.</p>
<p>You may be out of luck this year, but you’re never going to know unless you talk to financial aid. It sounds like your Dad did not get a large severance package which means that won’t be “income” for the second year…this was a huge shocker to me when I was laid off, my EFC went UP during the beginning of my second year of unemployment because of the severance which of course only paid bills (fortunately I found work about 2 months after I filed that shocking FAFSA) so if you father’s unemployment is protracted it may be reflected in the next year’s FAFSA has your parents will be able to check the dislocated box. However, mom2college is correct, in terms of federal aid that might open up a Perkins loan or some additional unsubsidized federal direct loans but it will help if your college is generous with institutional aid.</p>
<p>You can’t adjust your FAFSA, because you are only able to report what is requested … that is, the base year income (2010 for 2011-12). The school can use PJ to adjust the income. Unfortunately, the regulations regarding PJ are very vague. Each school has to decide what to do in loss of income cases, and each case has to be evaluated without using any kind of policy … that is, the regulations state that there can be no policy applied to a particular group for PJ, so one student might have a PJ done differently than another even at the same school. It is confusing.</p>
<p>In cases like yours, there are several ways the school may look at the income. They might look at the amount earned to date in 2011 & assume 0 income for dad for the rest of the calendar year. They would then adjust the reported income & recompute the EFC that way. They may also decide to use expected income for the 2011-12 school year, which means dad would be 0. Sometimes schools will use the unemployment income as expected income, but because the federal government allows them to treat unemployment income as 0 for PJ purposes, many will do this. Your mom’s income will be factored in, as well, when recalculating the EFC. Because of this, it is possible that you may still have an income too high for a Pell grant when the EFC is recomputed. We often found that there was no difference in actual aid even after PJ for some families … others would be eligible for more subsidized loan as a result (the total loans would remain the same, it’s just that some students who were only eligible for unsubsidized loans would now qualify for a portion of that as sub) … and others would be eligible for Pell grants. We did not have extra institutional money to award, but some schools may hold a portion of their institutional grant money to assist in PJ cases.</p>
<p>As you can see, it may or may not end up that your aid increases … but because it may, you absolutely need to pursue the review.</p>
<p>I second what everyone here has said–you should definitely contact the financial aid office. We’ve recently had a drop in income, too (health issue), and the school sent us a “Special Circumstances Appeal Form” to fill out, requiring documentation, etc. (I haven’t filed it yet.) I’m sure your school is very familiar with these situations.</p>