If you don’t have the money to pay for the overaward from last year and the current semester, you don’t have many choices.
Your federal loans have a grace period of 6 months, you can elect to be put on income based repayment, then the monthly payments should be pretty low.
I don’t know about your private loans.
How much is your parents’ income, FAFSA EFC will largely depend on their income. You get an income protection amount of $6,420 plus credit for soc sec, state and federal taxes paid.
I don’t know if your college is open next week, but you need to ask the financial aid office these questions. Why your aid is less this year, with a lower EFC.
@mommdc - The financial aid office at my school has been extremely unhelpful in helping me with anything and I plan to go to their office first thing on Monday morning however I am honestly not hopeful they’ll be able to answer anything. At one point after asking for a schedule B from my parents taxes (which my parents were not required to file) and when I sent them a letter stating that my parents did not have to use a schedule B they took an entire month to reply to me (which put me past the FAFSA verification deadline) stating that they needed more documentation. Another time I was trying to get my parents to fill out their portion of the FAFSA and I went to the office to ask them for help trying to explain to my parents have to use the DRT and they (not a student worker an actual employee of the school) told me to tell them to google it essentially.
My mothers income is a little less than 45,000 between her two jobs , my father is a taxi driver at the moment and is considered an independent contractor so his situation is more complicated. This may be a dumb question but what income protection mean? Does that mean that 6,420 of my income will not be counted towards my EFC? What if I made more than that in a year?
Yes, after the FAFSA formula deducts $6,420 from your income and credits for any soc, state and federal taxes you paid, the remaining income is assessed at 50% towards your EFC.
@mommdc - That is a good question, that I asked, and received no sufficient answer. I believe that the rules changed for the 2017 school year which made it so that a non-filing letter was required for people with no income, and my best guess is that I got verified again because I didn’t file taxes in 2015 and thus was required to submit a non-filing letter.
another dumb question, say that I could theoretically up my withholding on my w4 would this be helpful to lower my income for FAFSA purposes? Are tax refunds counted as income?
What probably happened is that the 2017-2018 fafsa was flagged…and the error was found. This triggered the 2016-2017 verification…because, as noted…same income data was used.
@thumper1 I’m a little confused by this answer because I was verified for the 2016-2017 school year prior to starting school and sent in my parents documents before ever coming to the school. So I was flagged originally before the 2016-2017 school year (I have no idea why they flagged me it could be for a bunch of reasons and I don’t feel like wondering that would help me at this point), and then was flagged again for the 2017 - 2018 and that was when the mistake was caught (they didn’t catch it the first time) despite the fact that both years were based on the same information, they didn’t catch the mistake the first time.
One thing to consider about leaving is that if they have an amount they say you owe from last year you will still have to pay that back even if you go to a different college later because they won’t release your transcript without being paid and any school you will want to attend will insist on a transcript. We get verified every year so now as soon as you can request tax transcripts/non-filing letters (I think it’s mid June) I send the form into the IRS to get them so I have them ready the second we get verified.
In terms of getting less aid the 2nd year from your school, some schools are just that way where they give you a lot the first year and then much less after that. Since another student you know has the same situation it sounds like that could be the case. Definitely worth having a sit down with FA before deciding to take a semester off assuming there is still time to do that and still be able to drop without penalty.
@thumper1 - yeah. I’m beyond trying to figure out what caused me to get verified at this point since it doesn’t really matter.
@ccccguideg I actually found that making an appointment at the local IRS office was a much faster way to deal with getting documents, I made an appointment and ended up walking out of the office with the needed documents in less than 30 minutes. Much easier than trying to call them or get them online.
I realize that I will have to pay the grants back and since I payed part of my tuition out of pocket before taking out the private loan for the rest I’m hoping that if I decide drop before the tuition deadline I will have this money refunded to me and then I will be able to use it to pay back the pell grant.
To make a long story short the main reason I came to this college is because it was most affordable of my options at the time. I desperately wanted to go to an out of state college but when I realized that wasn’t possible I applied to colleges in my home state I got into every college that I applied and fell in love with a private college with a similar campus culture which had everything I wanted. However, I settled for this college because of cost and because of the fact that it has a high rate of admittance to graduate school. (I’m hoping to go to law school after finishing here). It would be much easier to finish at this college especially since this college is notoriously hard to transfer from due to the fact that they don’t issue grades and issue narrative evaluations instead, but, my mindset on this whole situation having thought about it for a few days is that this college is not worth being $10,000 in debt (on top of the Stafford loans that I took out) just from a single year.
My parents managed to scrap together some money by borrowing from a friend, among other things, and offered to pay half of the pell grants back that I owed when I told them that I was thinking about leaving school, (this came as a huge surprise to me but I was very grateful for the offer) however, even that didn’t make the payment seem feasible as I would end up with about 4$ to my name and a bunch of credit card debt (I have a line of credit open for emergencies and for reoccurring payments to help build credit) which I did not feel was a good idea because I still have yet to buy books because of the hurricane and don’t expect to get paid much as I have only been working about 8 hrs a week since I’ve been back in school because my schedule has not allowed for me to start picking up extra hours yet.
Discussed my options with financial aid. They can’t do anything for me at this point, they think that I got flagged for verification because my dad’s income in 2015 was all zeros and my parents filed jointly but he doesn’t know for sure. They told me that they’d look into what would happen with my private loan but as I don’t believe they can do anything right at this point I took that matter into my own hands, and called the bank, it looks like the money for the first semester has already been distributed to the school and the school may or may not send that money back to them. I am going to take this up with the financial aid office tomorrow.
I went to my adviser who tried to convince me to stay in school and that after leaving I will be able to pay off the debt that I owe. At this point I all the stress that was building kind of came crashing down and I broke down in her office in tears on the verge of a panic attack because of the way that my parents handle money I have always tried to be the exact opposite and be financially responsible and not being able to know where I was going to get the money to get groceries/school stuff/emergency money from was a panic attack waiting to happen for me. She then suggested that I see a counselor at the school to see if talking to someone would help me.
I went to the counselor who suggested that I take an emergency leave of absence from school for at least a semester because of the stress and anxiety which this situation has caused and that is where I am at at this point.
If I leave before Friday I won’t have to pay anything for my tuition and will be refunded for the portion which I paid out of pocket as well as what is left of my meal plan. I will have to pay for the housing which I have used which is understandable and will be able to pay that + the retroactive pell grant with refunds that I will receive.
I do not want to leave this school but at this point I believe that this is the best option for me.
For anyone reading this thread let this who may be in a similar situation to what I was in. Let this be a warning do not depend on the financial aid office at your school to do anything for you. If they are not responding to you keep emailing/calling/whatever it takes to get your documents submitted on time. If you get selected for verification get the documents in as soon as possible. I’d even suggest taking some advice from this thread and proactively getting a non-filing letter and transcripts of your parents taxes to send in. If you are getting verified call/email/whatever to make sure that your documents are received and request confirmation and ask for other documents that may be needed ASAP. Do not let the financial aid office screw you. Continue to hound them to make sure that your verification is completed on time because no matter who’s fault is is that the documents didn’t get turned in on time, simply put, if they don’t get turned in on time you’re at risk for not getting the amount of aid that you could have gotten and there’s probably nothing that anyone can do about it if that’s how the situation unfolds.
Also, if at all possible, make sure that your parents do the FAFSA correctly. If all else fails just try and get their information and do it for them if that’s easier because if they make a mistake and it gets caught you will be on the hook for their mistake.
I feel bad for not chiming in earlier - school started on the 11th, and I missed this entire conversation because I only had a few minutes here & there to check on this forum during that time.
I am willing to bet you got selected for verification AND you had a 399 code on your FAFSA. This code, used during this year of using 2015 income a second time, results when income info reported for 2016-2017 differs from income info for 2017-2018 (it should be the same, since both years use 2015). The aid office is required to verify income for BOTH years, and they must make changes for both years. Since it sounds like your income documentation issues were not resolved before the verification deadline for 16-17 passed, there was nothing that could be done to change the 16-17 Pell issue.
The real bottom line is that the parents must complete the FAFSA correctly, and the student must complete the FAFSA correctly. To blame an aid office if the FAFSA was not correctly completed is pushing the blame where it doesn’t belong. If the FAFSA is selected for verification, it is important to collect the required documents quickly - and yes, the issues with the IRS this year did really mess things up for both students and aid offices where this is concerned. The aid office was required by law to collect the documents that did not come quickly, so it’s not that they wanted to mess with you. Sometimes, unfortunately, the aid office will receive documents that raise more questions, and they then must collect more documents … they are required by law to resolve any conflicting information. It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for your situation, but I do know what it’s like to deal with a messy situation like yours … rules cannot be bent, even if the aid officer wants to be helpful.
@kelsmom - I’m not trying to place blame onto the financial aid office. I realize that my parents didn’t fill out the FAFSA correctly, however, in the process of trying to verify that they at one point took an entire month to respond to me despite the fact that I turned in everything that I could as fast as I possibly could.
Anyway, as it turns out my understanding is that for some reason the financial aid office removed my entire pell grant from last year (as per the business office at my school who are still just as confused as I am about this) and are supposed to add it back in at the lower amount that they quoted me, but have yet to do that which is why my account shows a balance more than the amount of the reduction in the pell grant. When I went to the financial aid office the guy (an employee of the financial aid office not a student worker) told me that his supervisor was aware of this situation and that it would be worked out with time which I believe was incredibly unprofessional of them since they are aware that I am leaving the school and will not be able to have in person correspondence with the to get this issue sorted out.
Even if I wasn’t leaving the school the deadline to pay any fees is today and they have yet to add my pell grants back onto my account at the correct amount which means (according to my school) that to avoid being withdrawn from classes and paying a late fee I would have had to either pay half of that amount of the full amount of the pell grants that they removed from my account and wait around for them to put the pell grants back onto my account to get a refund.