<p>Well…losing SEOG could easily happen if you didn’t file your FAFSA ASAP after January 1. When did you file your FAFSA?</p>
<p>SEOG is also not guaranteed to anyone. Remember the has limited funds regarding SEOG.</p>
<p>The parent in this case should ask the director exactly what it was in this years PROFILE that caused an increase in the expected contribution as UVA calculates it when the difference in the FAFSA EFC was just $400. I’d be interested in knowing what would do that. I am suspicious that the school is just converting an in house grant, not SEOG but a grant from UVA coffers into Perkins, Subsidized Direct loans and Work study, thereby going under the radar of the common data set that can flag this kind of activity by replacing grants by self help rather than out right cutting. The way it shows up on the common data set, is that this kid is getting the SAME amount of financial aid as the year before. Pretty danged sneaky, if you ask me.</p>
<p>Having read all of the posts that followed mine, I’ll repeat what I said before - Redscorpion needs to find out the difference between last year’s “low income” criteria and this year’s.</p>
<p>Sure, UVa has eliminated its “no loan” policy for new students - but how is it treating its continuing students, and is the change so drastic that it’s arguably unfair to continuing students who previously had no loans?</p>
<p>Redscorpion needs to find out, and if she thinks the unanticipated change unfairly impacts her continuing student, then she should take it up the food chain.</p>
<p>Who knows - maybe UVa is “testing” the policy change on continuing students . . . and if no one complains, it’s just saved itself a bunch of money! But if it gets a lot of complaints from continuing students, maybe it will reconsider. Redscorpion needs to ask questions . . . and speak up if she thinks something is wrong.</p>
<p>It could also be something as simple as in order to get the package that her son got that one needs a “0” EFC. Something as simple as a cost of living increase on a fixed income ( ex. Pension, SS, etc) a 3% rise in salary, or a decrease in a credit that parents took last year, or if parent was at the uppee level of income for their EFC literally $1 more can be enough to throw of EFC from one bracket into another. </p>
<p>While $433 may be a nit and it certainly does not make the family automatically wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, it could be just enough if eligibility is a 0 EFC, no make the family no longer eligible.</p>
<p>I’m going to guess that Sybbie is correct. It is very possible that some of the grant money was reserved for $0 EFC students, and these grants were lost because the EFC is no longer $0. The Pell grant amount would be about $400 less also.</p>
<p>While it IS a change, this student would graduate from UVA with about $30,000 in loans over 4 years (none last year) which is about the Direct loan amount for students accepting Direct loans. Is he also able to cut some personal costs…books, travel, discretionary spending? Those would lower his annual costs to attend college. Ditto summer earnings in future years.</p>
<p>While I agree this change was unexpected…there are many students who would sell their soul to the devil to be able to attend UVA for a sum total of $30k for four years.</p>
<p>I will say…this is a continuing student. The student enrolled with a no loan policy. I think the family needs to ask why, therefore, the loans are included in this package. I would say that work study is another issue altogether.</p>
<p>Or maybe this student family income is now above what is used for no loan awards.</p>
<p>According to post #56, their income must have gone up and they no longer met “low income guidelines”, which is one of the criteria needed to get a package with no loans at all. Even if they came in with the “no loan” program, that was for the neediest students and they may have gone above the lowest income level needed to maintain that for future years. Since financial aid is reevaluated yearly, they might have just made enough more to bump them into having to take out some loans.</p>
<p>I do not know UVA’s policy with regard to merit awards…but at most schools, merit awards also reduce financial need. If this student had merit awards, it is possible that the need component was not as low as COA minus $433.</p>
<p>Plus as noted upstream…the FAFSA EFC has nothing to do with the awarding of institutional need based aid at UVA…which also uses the Profile.</p>
<p>Th FAFSA EFC of $433 would reduce the Pell grant by about $400.</p>
<p>I agree that the PROFILE expected contribution need not be the same as the FAFSA EFC. BUt the maddening thing here is that UVA gave the SAME package as the year before, just replacing the grants with loans. Now, had they reduced the AMOUNT, saying that the PROFILE need is less than the year before, so their package is reduced, that’s a whole other thing. THey did not do that. They just switched out grants to self help. </p>
<p>It is possible that any EFC over zero means loans, but considering UVA doesn’t have all that many PELL eliglble students even, I can’t imagine they have that many with a zero EFC. Looking at their numbers, though they guarantee to meet full need, they are not exactly a school catering to low income kids, and a state school to boot, so that a $400 EFC is pretty dang low for them.</p>
<p>Eligibility for AccessUVA</p>
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</p>
<p>Poverty level guidelines</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/tools-for-advocates/guides/federal-poverty-guidelines.html[/url]”>http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/tools-for-advocates/guides/federal-poverty-guidelines.html</a></p>
<p>The no loan policy has always been for the lowest income students. Many kids receiving aid still had to take out some level of loan. There are many kinds of things that can change year to year. There is no way to know the specifics of this case. It is pure conjecture and rather inflammatory for a poster to call it “bait and switch” over the course of two different threads. UVa is not perfect but has been known for generous financial aid. The family in question can file an “appeal for reconsideration” if they feel the school does not have all their correct info or they feel they have been treated unfairly.</p>
<p>A change from 0 EFC to anything but 0 can throw a wrench in things. Schools have a particular packaging philosophy, and many give the best aid to 0 EFC - and others do not benefit from the largess the 0 EFC folks receive. Couple that with OOS, and I think it was a recipe for disaster (from the family’s point of view, although clearly not from the school’s POV). I am so sorry for your son.</p>
<p>The student will be able to receive a UVA education and degree for $30,000 total loans. I’m sorry, but that is close to the cost of ONE YEAR of attendance as an instate student in many places. </p>
<p>I know this isn’t what this student expected, but it sounds like the financial situation changed just enough for loans to be included in his package. The aid was not reduced by $14,000. It was repackaged, apparently because the family no longer are eligible for the no loan award. STUDENT loans ARE considered part of many need based financial aid awards at the vast majority of college’s (UVA joining this group next year).</p>
<p>The cost of attending UVA per year exceeds $50,000. The student has gotten aid to cover theses costs…but now it includes loans instead of all grant money.</p>
<p>The family will have to decide if these student loans are acceptable to them.</p>
<p>Our kids both took the Direct loans. Personally, I don’t think the loan amount here is onerous for an OOS student at UVA.</p>
<p>To the parent…look at the table provided…did your income exceed 200% of the poverty level for a family your size? It sounds like that could be the case.</p>
<p>Red scorpion…you mention in another post that the college made a change to your FAFSA. What was that? Did you ever find out?</p>
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</p>
<p>the difference is as both you and OP stated is that last year, the EFC was 0. this year, the EFC is no longer 0.</p>
<p>In addition as you see from the pell table there is a $1 difference between being pell eligible where an EFC of $5081 will net you $605 in Pell where an EFC of $5082 no longer makes you Pell eligible.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/financialaid/documents/PellChart1314.pdf[/url]”>http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/financialaid/documents/PellChart1314.pdf</a></p>
<p>This can be a big deal at the CUNY CC level if the student is ASAP (where the biggest criteria is being Pell eligible and being awarded at least $5 in pell). An ASAP student receiving the minimum Pell can get free tuition, books, metrocards, internships, where not being pell eligible will give you a marginal amount of TAP and Loans.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yes, sybbie, we understand that. What we don’t know is whether that is the reason for the change in this student’s aid package. It might be. But it is equally, if not more, likely that there was a change in policy. The income cutoff for a student to be considered “low income,” and thus eligible for no loans, may have changed.</p>
<p>For that reason, I and others have encouraged redscorpion to ask for a more detailed explanation of why her student no longer qualifies.</p>
<p>Remember eligibility for AccessUVA is as follows:</p>
<p>students who are Pell eligible and whose family income is equivalent to 200 percent of the federal poverty line or less and whose family assets do not exceed $75,000.</p>
<p>Perhaps while, income may not have substantially increased, perhaps the family’s assets are **now more than 75k<a href=“an%20increase%20in%20the%20value%20of%20the%20family%20home,%20business,%20interest%20on%20investment%20-that%20may%20have%20flown%20under%20the%20radar%20on%20the%20FAFSA%20could%20have%20knocked%20the%20family%20out%20of%20the%20box”>/b</a>. One of the things that redscorpion should do is go over her paperwork with a fine tooth comb.</p>
<p>If it is important for redscorpion to know what the fine distinctions are. As someone pointed out it is entirely possible UVa is now packaging as many kids as possible with federal direct loans. Redscorpion’s student will still graduate from a very fine school with no more loans than many kids including kids whose families are not at poverty level. If I missed something and redscorpion’s family is being gapped I apologize. I tried to go back and quickly skim.</p>
<p>Redscorpion posted in June that the school had made a change to her FAFSA. I still wonder what that was, and if it was an accurate change. Even so…it is the info on the profile that is important here.</p>