<p>I submitted a FAFSA back in late January.At that time,my parents had not done their taxes but I had so I reported my information without theirs and listed that my parents will complete theirs later on.A week ago my parents had their tax forms done and I submitted the new information yesterday.I was wondering if I will get lower financial aid awards?also,does financial aid come into account with UC decisions?(I haven't heard from the 4 remaining UC's that I applied)</p>
<p>Your admissions to the UC’s has nothing to do with your financial aid (99.9% sure of this). Perhaps they can see on an application if you are an out-of-state-student (OSS). If so, they may be more likely to accept you based on the idea that they will get more money because your paying OSS tuition? IDK… But they definitely are not looking over your FAFSA when they are deciding your fate.</p>
<p>As for changing your tax status from “will file” to “filed”, I don’t see why this would result in you getting less financial aid unless the income was greater for the “filed” than the “will file”.</p>
<p>You’re actually suppose to include estimates of your parents’ financial information, not leave it blank until their information is available. You go back and update numbers with the correct information once it is available when you submit your FAFSA as “will file.” Also, as long as you filed the original “will file” FAFSA before the March 2 deadline, you’re fine. The UCs will consider it in on time for that deadline.</p>
<p>The UCs are need blind meaning that they do not consider need when they consider admission. These are two completely separate departments. They will happily offer admission to you (if you qualify) even if you are unable to afford to go. The UCs do not meet need for even in-state students.</p>
<p>In general, as long as you submitted needed supplementary material (that was requested) before whatever deadline each financial aid office set to receive a package before the decision deadline (for example, UCSC’s is April 15), then you should have an aid package available for review in your portal before you have to submit an SIR. Contact each UC’s financial aid office if you are concerned. They can give you much more detailed and UC specific information.</p>
<p>The most likely sources of funding affected by completing your FAFSA after the UC’s priority filing date are Federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant (FSEOG), Perkins Loan, CAL Grant, and Federal Work-Study (FWS) awards. </p>
<p>FSEOG is only awarded to the applicants with greatest need and the average award is less than $1,000 for the year (max $4,000). Having 0 EFC is not necessarily enough to qualify as funds are limited.</p>
<p>FWS awards can often be made after the fact if a student was too late to be awarded in the initial batch, provided the student is offered an actual work-study position and would have been eligible originally by EFC. Basically what that means is if you don’t see FWS in your aid award letter, but you have a low enough EFC to qualify (if you qualify for federal loans, your EFC is probably low enough), go convince a faculty or staff member that they really want you for work-study, and they can request you by name from financial aid. There are tons of students who are awarded FWS but never decline it or find a job, and there are usually more FWS awards than there are jobs to fill, so if you’re eligible and you find a job you can probably get the award even after the fact. I awarded students FWS in this manner routinely when I was working in financial aid.</p>
<p>Perkins is helpful if you have extreme need, but it’s not vastly superior to a Stafford loan unless your unmet need is high enough that you max out the Stafford and need more. Even then, PLUS may be an option for dependent students. I’m not sure of the exact process for the CAL Grant, which is not awarded in-house (as are FSEOG, Perkins and FWS) but by the state. The good news is that Pell Grant and Stafford Loan awards, which are the meat of the federal aid package for most eligible students, should not be affected by completing your parent info after the priority deadline.</p>
<p>In the future it is probably better to have your parents estimate their information than to leave it blank until after the priority deadline. As long as you replace the estimate eventually with actual values, you’re not going to get in trouble for an honest estimate that turns out to be too high or too low.</p>
<p>bakemaster: The OP submitted FAFSA before the deadline according to their post. Making corrections after the deadline does not affect that initial filing date. The initial filing date is the one that all campuses will use.</p>
<p>Kender: Are you in a position to officially represent UC financial aid policy? I don’t mean to be rude, I just don’t know who everyone is around here. FWS, FSEOG and Perkins are administered by participating institutions rather than by the DOE, so it makes a difference what the specific institutional policy is. I don’t know official UC policy, but I used to make the policy at a CCC regarding FWS, so I know that it’s not necessarily standard across Title-IV-eligible schools.</p>
<p>bakemaster:
Are you? You seem so sure about the policies you state for someone who has no direct affiliation. All we know about you is that you are a new user and that you claim you used to make up CCC policy regarding these matters. Yet you don’t even know how Cal Grant works. Anyone who worked in a FAO capacity at a CCC (even a former one) should be aware of how this rather straight forward state grant program works. It is much more clearly stated than Blue&Gold is. That is, of course, if you worked on CCC FA policy when Cal Grant came into existence. However, if your time was before Cal Grant existed, then doesn’t it stand to very logical reason that your concepts of how policy works could be very much out of date?</p>
<p>I am not nor have I ever claimed to officially represent any UC. I am however very personally familiar with the financial aid process as I am an independent student who must support herself through all of this by reading all of the information she can and talking to advisers within the financial aid office. The UCs use the date the FAFSA was first filed. If you do not believe me, then call a UC FA Office and ask them.</p>
<p>I politely suggest you spend some time in the financial aid forum to update yourself on the generally accepted policies for many colleges as well as individual little quirks that pop up (avoid NYU threads as they are just heartbreaking to read). Many of the regular users in there are very well informed. The “submit FAFSA before the deadline and the previous date will be the one accepted by colleges” is a fairly common rule and there are some FAOs who kindly give their time in the financial aid forum to answer questions.</p>
<p>Allow me to clarify. I made policy at one particular CCC, regarding FWS awards only. My responsibility was for third-party grants and scholarships, which is to say, gift aid that is neither governmental nor institutional. While we were certainly involved in the disbursal of CAL Grants, the extent of our involvement with the awarding of CAL Grants was to submit GPA verification for students. And that was done by the Registrar, not by Financial Aid.</p>
<p>I listed the CAL Grant as potentially being affected simply because I do not know the ins and outs of their award policy. I have no specific information which suggests it would be affected.</p>
<p>I am not in a position to officially represent UC financial aid policy, which is why I have not stated that any award will be affected by completing parent information after the priority filing date. I’ve only meant to distinguish between those awards which are not at all likely to be affected, and those which could potentially be affected. There are a lot of complexities involved in the process which you can’t be expected to be familiar with as a student. To be perfectly honest, a lot of times the official policy we give to students is not the complete truth. That’s a fact of life when dealing with a public institution.</p>
<p>I don’t expect you or anyone to take my at my word. This is the internet, after all. Just trying to add some detail about a fairly complex process.</p>
<p>As I said, if you doubt the information I have provided, you are more than welcome to verify it. All I have stated is that the submit date the UCs use is the original submission date of the FAFSA, not the date it is updated. If they used the update date, then several students would immediately become disqualified for several types of aid (Cal Grant in particular). This policy is a fact. But apparently being a student negates my word despite having direct experience with this fact. You, being a former CCC FAO must obviously know more about UC policy than anyone despite not having any direct experience with it.</p>
<p>Note that I am not saying that limited funding will be available. It is not even always available for those who submitted FAFSA with taxes already filed and made zero corrections after the deadline. I am only stating that the priority consideration date used is the one on which the FAFSA was originally filed. I have always filed on time and have both made corrections after the deadline and not made corrections on different years. My packages have been nearly identical. The only differences resulting from the fact one package was only for two quarters while the other was for three.</p>
<p>I will not respond to you further as this is delving off topic and I find it rather pathetic to debate with someone who won’t do their own research, yet attacks a user’s student status as being proof that said user cannot properly understand a fact in FA policy despite said user having direct experience with said fact, and admits to having no direct experience with the policy in question oneself. I know what is the correct policy and if you do not believe what I have stated, then that is your issue.</p>
<p>Some friendly advice: research any new policies before you attempt to speak on them. Using outdated information is detrimental to those who might believe you. Also, it is rather rude to presume that student status means one lacks the intelligence to properly understand a financial aid policy. Particularly a simple fact such as which submission date for the FAFSA will be used.</p>
<p>I’m sorry if I offended you, but there’s no need for this to become uncivil. I have made no attacks, nor have I attempted to claim any knowledge beyond my area of expertise. Merely stated my opinion as informed by my training. I don’t feel this was deserving of such hostility.</p>
<p>bakemaster, put a sock in it already.</p>
<p>Financial aid is based off when you initially submitted your FAFSA. If you submitted it on March 1st and had to update it (adding schools, changing income, etc…) on March 10th, then guess what? All schools would still consider your application submitted before the March 2nd deadline and you’d still get priority funding. u jelly?</p>
<p>You are wrong brother and you need to have a seat right over there…(queue Chris Hansen of dateline NBC)</p>
<p>That may be true in theory, but it’s just not always true in practice. If the award has already been made and you were ineligible pre-corrections, but become eligible post-corrections, you may slip through the cracks. The awarding process for FWS at my institution went basically like this: The director would tell the database to run a certain procedure which adds an award to all files that meet the qualifying criteria for FWS. This happened early on in the year, because FWS is awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. But after the procedure ran, that was it; the software didn’t keep track of changes or add any more awards. At least, PowerFAIDS didn’t; you would have had to go in and manually add the award to the individual file.</p>
<p>The reason I know this happens to students is because I was the one they came to about not having been awarded FWS. I was the one who had to go into the database to find out what had happened, confirm their initial filing date, their old EFC, their new EFC, and so on. And if they didn’t come in to ask why they hadn’t been awarded in the first place, I never would have had any reason to check their file and give them the award.</p>
<p>The reality is that this kind of thing happens. Does it happen at UC? I’ve said many times that I don’t know their policy. Which means: Maybe. It could be a possibility at one campus and not another. Do all the UC campuses use the same student management software? Who here can answer that question?</p>
<p>Internal procedure isn’t shared with students, and few offices will admit to making this sort of mistake because they have neither the time nor the funding to implement a general fix. It won’t happen with Pell or Stafford because they are administered by the DOE; it might happen with FWS, FSEOG or Perkins because they are administered by the participating institution.</p>
<p>(By the way, I’ve never been accused of being a sexual predator on the internet before, but I believe the proper response is, “Cool story, bro.”)</p>
<p>@bakemaster - So were you a financial aid officer or did you work as a clerk in the financial aid office at a CCC? If you were a financial aid officer, are you getting a second bachelor degree? I’m asking because I saw your post on the UC Davis acceptance thread where you say that you also applied to Davis for this fall and you worked in the financial aid department at a CCC. I always assumed financial aid officers had some type of bachelor degree.</p>
<p>I was a financial aid officer, not a clerk, and I am getting my first Bachelor’s degree. It’s been years since I interviewed for that job, so I don’t remember the exact requirements, but it was one of those “education or equivalent professional experience” situations. I had worked previously as a clerk at a big name school back east, which is probably what got me an interview, and I interview pretty well. Of the four of us in the financial aid office, only the director and the loan officer had Bachelor’s degrees. I live in one of the more sparsely populated parts of California so this isn’t really out of the ordinary.</p>