Ask UB if any Perkins Loan still available.
Are you sure your son was never notified of the change? A lot of those notifications are by email and sometimes end up in the spam folder. My daughter received a small ‘alum’ award from her school in April of her senior year. I didn’t know about it, we never got a notice, and she almost lost it because one of the requirements is that the student must send a thank you note to the alum. In the summer before they started school, I needed a copy of their bills for an outside scholarship. I called the schools to ask when I’d get the bills and was told no bills, go to the portals. I found all kinds of things on the financial aid/billing portal that I didn’t know about and one scholarship missing and the ‘alum’ scholarship notification (which I then had to look up because we didn’t know what it was). I also learned that the bill was due two weeks before classes started for one. It never occurred to me I wouldn’t receive a bill (addressed to me or to the student) in the mail. Nope, no bills, no notices. It is all on the portal and it is the student’s responsibility to go on there and get the bill paid.
My kids aren’t really good at telling me about these things.
I learned that I had to stay on it, to log into their billing statements, review their FA.
Thanks. He has already received a Perkins loan.
We checked the portal regularly and took care of everything they requested. There was never any indication that the aid was changed. In early August we were told to contact NY HESC because the TAP was going to be cancelled. When we contacted HESC my son had Clarkson listed instead of UB as his school of attendance. That was changed and we assumed everything was fine. That was the only request we received besides notices he needed to accept his financial aid loans.
I even showed his aid package to a financial aid advisor when we attended accepted student’s day in April and inquired why the grant aid from UB was different from the aid we received from Clarkson. She said the award we received would be accurate and likely to change very little. I feel deceived.
Our financial situation did change as my husband went from being self employed to working for a company again midway through 2015. Our income was about $17,000 more from 2014 to 2015 so apparently that made a big difference. We were just following the advice we received and filing early Jan as advised. We updated our FAFSA in the end of Feb. as soon as our return was accepted by the IRS. I don’t recall UB having any financial aid deadlines, just being advised the earlier you submit the better. It’s frustrating.
Unfortunately, the office you should have received was to estimate your 2015 income and taxes, instead of using 2014 information. Even in early January, most folks have a pretty good idea what their income for the previous calendar year was. It sounds like your situation was exacerbated by a lack of effective communication from the school, however.
Will you qualify for the AOTC (American Opportunity Tax Credit)? It’s a combination of $2500 tax credit/refund if you spend over a certain amount on educational expenses. Our son attends a SUNY and we roll ours over to his tuition. It won’t help this year, but will help starting next fall.
My son is a sophomore. The financial aid packages he’s received matched the award letters he got, but our numbers weren’t estimates. I don’t think 2 weeks is a long time. If the FAFSA was updated on Feb. 24 and the package was created on March 11, the college may not have had all the updated data. Did you have to link your taxes using the Data Retrieval Tool after the update? That could cause a delay too.
Most likely, the award change stems from the fact you had the wrong college listed on your aid application. How do you expect them to receive notification of adjustments to tap and pell if you just changed your attending college information in August.
Did your son qualify for work study or get an outside scholarship? My D lost her work study at another SUNY school when an outside scholarship was received by the school. Fortunately, she was able to replace it with a non WS job because I didn’t have money to give her for extras.
I don’t believe that you can check FA on the SUNY portal, but do check HESC and the student accounts section on the UB site.
@mom2collegekids - I don’t know that retirement contributions are added back in for SUNY Fafsa. I contribute to my 401 (k) every year, can’t max it out, but do put in enough for the match, and I have never been asked to add it back in. I have heard that this is done with the CSS, but I have never filled that form out personally so I don’t know for sure.
OP - call the financial aid office Monday morning and good luck.
Thank you Austinmshauri, I will look into the AOTC. I realize 2 weeks isn’t a long period of time but due to the fact that the package used the most current EFC I had no reason to suspect it wasn’t accurate. In addition he was chosen for dependent student verification for the purposes of financial aid and we resent everything again in the end of March including the updated 2015 taxes that the current EFC was calculated from. That request indicated that we would be notified if any further changes were made through the portal and we never heard a thing.
UB was listed as a college to receive FAFSA information and they did. HESC had Clarkson listed, but that should have only affected TAP, not Pell. I guess I’m just surprised how little communication we received. I was under the false assumption that the verification process would have caught any errors and our aid numbers would be adjusted to reflect that. Never in a million years did I think the aid would change at the late point in the game.
Qualified retirement plan contributions (like for a 401(k)) are added back on all FAFSAs; it’s not school dependent.
The amount is reported on FAFSA questions 45.a. (for students) and 94.a. (for parents) and the formula adds it back to income.
Contributions to pretax retirement accounts are added back in as income for FAFSA EFC calculation purposes.
YOU don’t add them in…but you do indicate how much you made in these contributions @BelknapPoint do you happen to know the line on the FAFSA where this retirement contribution is listed?
So for the OP, any pretax retirement contributions made in 2015 would be added back in as income.
The balances IN those real retirement accounts are not considered assets.
If you estimate that you will receive some/all of the $2500 AOTC for 2016, you could reduce/eliminate your federal income tax withholding now through December 31 thereby increasing your paychecks now to help with cashflow.
You could complete a new W-4 and change the exemptions up to 10 without your employer needing to submit it.
@thumper1 and Belknap -
Thank you for that info. I didn’t file a FAFSA for last year or this year because I received a small inheritance that would have disqualified me from FA so I didn’t bother, I just put the money into a 529 and used it for the tuition. I guess I didn’t remember correctly from years before. I’m glad I know because I will be filing a FAFSA for 2017 - 2018.
OP - I apologize for the misstatement. One suggestion I have is that you get access to your son’s portal, if you don’t already have it. I set up the accounts for all of my children on their school websites and I assigned their passwords. You can also set up a parent account with the student waiving FERPA. My kids were told that if they wanted me to contribute to their education costs, I needed full access. I go in and validate the bill, arrange for the health insurance waiver, drop the fees for optional things not being used (e.g., parking fees because my kids don’t have cars at school, the gym because my son never used it). Did you do that? Go through the bill again and see if there are any charges you can drop. At my son’s SUNY, the health insurance charge is almost $1100 a semester. My company insurance plan has coverage upstate so I don’t need to pay that fee. One year, I let my D handle it and she did it incorrectly. It took me two weeks to get that fixed.
Good luck.
When you updated the FAFSA with actual numbers instead of estimates, what did the SAR estimate your TAP and Pell would be? We’ve received 2 packages so far, and the numbers generated on the SAR were nearly identical to what he received.
Did your son check his college email and spam folders for messages? All the SUNYs my son applied to sent financial aid updates through the college email. If you don’t have access to his college portal, get it and check the financial aid section.
Was your son eligible to apply for a STEM scholarship (graduating in the top 10% of the class and majoring in STEM).
Did your son have an IEP in high school, where he would be eligible for Acces-VR benefits?
you can check the HESC website regarding your TAP
https://www.hesc.ny.gov/pay-for-college/financial-aid/types-of-financial-aid.html#horizontalTab1
When my D started college, in the summer the school reminded her and me by email and phone call to set up an “authorized payer”.
As an authorized payer I can see current account details, bill statements, and can pay the bill.
http://studentaccounts.buffalo.edu/billing/authorizedpayers.php
seems like UB has authorized payer access too.
@techmom99, was your inheritance more than your asset protection allowance?
Did you try an EFC calculator?
We don’t qualify for Pell, but for our state grant the EFC cutoff is much higher. My D also got a subsidized loan. So in the first year I filed FAFSA even though I didn’t know if we would qualify for any aid.
Some states do require that you list an instate school (first) on the FAFSA for a state grant and that you update them with the school you will ultimately attend.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/irs-withholding-calculator
this W4 withholding calculator can help you check your withholding
I think there are 7 biweekly pay periods left this year.