It’s May 1st and I still haven’t heard back on financial aid awards from my school. I was admitted in December, and submitted my FAFSA in February. I have only received money from one of their scholarships.
One of my friends, also attending, received her award letter almost a month ago. I contacted the financial aid office two weeks ago and was told they were still in the process of sending award letters out, and to be on the lookout for it. I don’t know if I’m just being impatient or if this is taking longer than usual but I just need an opinion, or more like reassurance. It’s honestly stressing me out a lot, so should I contact them again or should I wait patiently? Are most schools still sending out award letters around this time or is my school late?
I would have been calling the school everyday a week ago, not waiting until Decision Day (on a Sunday) to ask complete strangers on the internet for permission to even call the school.
You really have to deposit someplace today… if you “wait patiently”, you may not be able to go anyplace. Do you have other choices that are affordable?
How do you know already that this isn’t the financial aid award you’re waiting for?
@GMTplus7 At several schools, my D got early notification of a merit award with need based award following much later.
@Texas0023 Do you have a student portal at the school in question? At some schools the award is posted in the applicant’s portal long before a paper copy arrives in the mail.
@GMTplus7 I’m not asking for a stranger’s permission, I’m asking for opinions. I’m sorry, I don’t have any older siblings, parents, or grandparents who have gone through this process and that I can ask about this. Thank you for responding.
@alooknac Yes ma’am, I’ve been looking at it every day. I’ll call them again early tomorrow.
I’m sorry. I did not know you don’t have family members to guide you in this. My apologies if I came off as harsh-- my bad…
Just some general advice for you to file away for future reference:
Whenever you have incomplete information, do NOT let the last business day pass with contacting the key parties.
Call them first thing on Monday.
I suspect that your FAFSA was selected for verification and somehow you aren’t aware of that. Maybe others can chime in with the answer to this question…If your FAFSA has been selected for verification, then where on the portal would that be shown?
Also, did they say if they were waiting for information from you?
You said you filed FAFSA in Feb, were the taxes done then? Did you update FAFSA with IRS Data Retrieval Tool after your tax return was processed?
Did you try the net price calculator on the college’s website to see what costs and aid you might be looking at?
Only look at tuition, fees, room and board minus grants and scholarships for the net cost. You can take out a $5500 student loan as a dependent freshman student.
Did you get any emails from the school? What was your FAFSA EFC?
Is the school a private or public college, instate, OOS? Do they offer need based institutional aid?
Look in your spam folder. Sometimes emails about financial aid verification end up there.
Were you selected for verification? Did the college ask for ANY additional information?
I believe I might have been chosen for verification too. At this point, I wouldn’t even care if I was because I just want to know what happened and what to do next. When I called them last, I asked about it and they said I would be notified through email and that it would also be in my student portal…There’s nothing there yet. There’s also nothing in my spam folder.
I’m calling them again today. Thanks everyone for replying.
If you have been chosen for verification, you will not receive a package until the verification process is complete (this is why you have not received anything yet).
Let us know what happens!!!
I am sorry this is happening to you. It can be difficult to try to navigate financial aid alone. Is this a large school? Sometimes things can fall through the cracks at a big school - you call & ask a question, which gets answered by someone who doesn’t really look carefully to see if there are issues that need attention. As a first-time-in-a-college student, most schools would provide you with a tentative financial aid package even if you have been selected for verification. Even if they don’t do that, you definitely should have received emails asking you to submit documents - and your student portal should show those documents as outstanding. If you don’t see anything, I would be concerned that there is an issue that someone with a clue needs to investigate. Contact the aid office & ask to speak with the aid officer assigned to your account. If you don’t get any answers, contact the customer service manager or Assistant Director - if you want to PM me with the name of the school, I will give you a contact (or post the school here, if you are comfortable doing that).
The reason as to why I haven’t received any financial aid is because they do not have my SSN on file. I was not able to provide it at the time I sent my application, but I didn’t think it would matter since I provided it to FAFSA. I really wish they would’ve told me about this the first time I contacted them more than two weeks ago. I was told they received my FAFSA but couldn’t do anything because they were missing my SSN. A notification about missing information would’ve been nice but you can’t expect a large school to notify you about everything, I guess. Now I have to travel to the university to provide them with it in person. I hope this doesn’t affect the amount of aid I receive, and I hope that I still don’t have to go through the process of verification. I doubt this will help others but if you ever have this problem, consider that they might be missing your SSN!
Glad you figured out what it was, at least. Good luck!