Yesterday I got a notice saying my Fafsa had been successfully updated. It said by “College” I am not sure what is updated althouogh our EFC increased by about 3K (so about 10%). I have not touched Fafsa in months and already have a solid aid package from the school I accepted.
I recently accepted an offer from a private college that is way above our EFC, would this be the reason, package was put together last week? I am also on a bunch of mostly private college waitlists, could this be the reason, the FA office is poking around before giving an offer? While I hope it is the second one, anyone know how or why this works assuming it is not that. How is a college allowed to change my Fafsa? Or did they just update some of their attendance statistics, where it asks how many students end up graduating, maybe their numbers changed and they were updating it for everyone who had listed them?
Well this hasn’t happened to me, but from reading here, while you are waiting for a better person to answer…
It seems the colleges can change your FAFSA if they see something they identify is wrong. Like it doesn’t match the tax form, for one example. This has nothing to do with anything but the fafsa questions, like income, assets, family size. Nothing to do with the school costs or attendance statistics.
I think you should go over the numbers carefully to see what has changed. You can’t identify which college did it?
Hopefully you printed out and saved a copy of your original fafsa. If so, take it out, and compare line by line. You should be able to see where the change was made. There are way too many fields on the fafsa for us to guess which one your college adjusted.
Do you believe that your original FAFSA was correct? Had you updated after the 2014 tax return had been filed? What kinds of changes did the college make?
This happened to me as well, but it was back in March and the college that made the changes is not the college that my S ended up choosing. When I received the update I was shocked that the FA would make the changes without as much as an email exchange about the discrepancies that they “thought” they found. I say “thought” because the FAFSA was 100% correct and some incompetent person in the FA decided to make their own interpretations. When I contacted them they acknowledged that the changes were incorrect, but without apology and then they took their sweet time submitting another correction…only for it to be wrong, AGAIN. At that point I didn’t even care because I knew S was not attending there so I contacted FAFSA and did my own correction, back to the original figures.
Anyway, my point is, don’t blindly accept that their changes are correct. It really is hard to believe that a college would not at least give a student a courtesy call/email/letter before making the changes, but apparently they can, and do.
As for why a change was made-the college that made the change looked at your supporting documents, tax returns, w2s, CSS profile, ect. and felt something did not match your FAFSA reporting. It is nothing more sinister than that. They call it “professional judgment.” and it has nothing to do with wait lists, etc.
I know how stressful it is and if you have any more questions let me know.
You can look at the FAFSA update and see what school made the changes as well as what lines were changed. If they were correct in their interpretation you are going to need to update your FAFSA with the school you are attending.
This is NOT professional judgment. This is the financial aid office doing their job. The colleges are REQUIRED to make sure the information is accurately reported on the FAFSA, AND make changes if it is not accurate. They need to be quite sure that the information on your financial,aid application forms is accurately reflective of that on your tax returns.
People make mistakes…you might have…the financial aid office might have.
The ONLY way to know is to find out what the change is.
I believe you can access previous versions of your fafsa on the fafsa website. Look LINE BY LINE to see where the change was made. You know…it might be accurate! Then again, it might be an error.
If your EFC increased by $3000, something like a Pell Grant would likely reduced by that amount.
@thumper “professional judgment” was not my term, it was the term used by the FAFSA representative that I personally spoke with about my actual experience.
Also there is no reason do a line by line comparison as it is quite simple-lines that were changed are displayed on the updated FAFSA-again personal experience.
Sometimes it is possible that lower count posters with specific experiences are in a position to provide valuable information.
The bottom line is the OP needs to look at where the change was made…and determine if it is accurate. You know…it might BE accurate. It could be an error on the part of the OP…or the financial aid folks.
Thank you for the responses. Ok I went line by line again. You can compare the versions side by side online. My parents have an HSA Health Savings Account (not flex more like a health IRA) that they contribute the maximum to every year which is a tax deduction. It does not expire at the end of the year. We broke it out on the CSS Profile and on our taxes but I guess not on the Fafsa. Should this even be considered untaxed income? I know it is treated as its own category on the CSS and on tax returns. I was surprised that it went up so much $2800 on $6450?, basically it is almost 50% on the dollar. My parents told me they had to contribute 20% of their income.
The change was not highlighted in any way, if I did not have the old one to compare I would have no idea. Which college was not highlighted either.
To answer questions, while I did get decent offers of financial aid at both colleges (first one and wait list) we are moderate need so not eligible for a Pell Grant so the Fafsa is somewhat irrelevant for us as long as it is consistent with the CSS Profile and our taxes. All of my prospective colleges require the CSS Profile and none rely only on the federal methodology. Also, in every college I got an offer our cost was above what the Fafsa said we need to pay which is what we were expecting based on the IM.
One question, does EFC include my contribution or just that of my parents? In one school parental contribution was at the level of my old EFC but when you add mine in it is above the new level.
My parents filed an extension and they do own a business. We did not use the tool thing to complete the information. All of the colleges so far have been surprisingly understanding and accomodating about using 2013 instead of 2014. One of the schools has not even asked for 2014 (they accept 2013 for everyone). I realize that our package will change based on actual 2014 numbers but we are not worried, 2014 was not a better year financially according to my parents. Also, our financials will change drastically after the first year when my sibling goes to college too.
The version that was amended has the old school listed and at least 2 of my wait list schools.
We just cannot figure out which school it was which is probably what I am most interested in. It might have been the old one which only got the letter of withdrawl yesterday afternoon, the new school or one of the waitlists. I think the new school may not even be currently on my Fafsa as I have more than 10 and I did them in batches and frankly it was not the school I thought I would be going to for many reasons (I am good with it though). In my experience the two schools that hounded me the most back in March for missing 2014 forms were the ones that ended up accepting me. Several schools that asked for documentation in February (which I could not give) did not follow up in March (need blind so I do not think it was the reason for rejection or for the WL, do not track interest). What makes the most sense is that it is the old school. I doubt it is the wait lists since the new schools FA did not do my analysis until they were notified by admissions after I was notified.
Anyone know if that is normally what happens to wait lists at need blind schools, FA is the last to know? Thank you and I appreciate all the ideas.
It is very possible that the lack of tax filing status for 2014 taxes is what triggered this.
If it were me, I would contact the financial aid office at the school to which you committed enrollment. Find out if anything has changed there…and also see if you can find out what will happen once your parents complete their return for 2014.
An HSA is a pre-tax diversion of income. There is usually a cap on how much, not a mandated %. The govt encourages the use of HSA accounts by not taxing those amounts, as long as they conform to guidelines. I’m wondering if that 20% went over the family limits. (I’m seeing family is $6650 max- what did they list and what’s the change?)
You understand quite a bit- but there is no “what the Fafsa said we need to pay.” The Fafsa is to determine federal aid eligibility. Over time, on threads, most of us found the colleges determined a higher “family contribution” than the Fafsa number, especially with the CSS.
The way the IRS treats some line items and the way a college may, can be different.
I thought you meant, your parents said they “had to contribute 20% of their income” to the HSA, which sounded off.
Is there a college policy that they will only assess 20% of income? Or where did that idea come from? We know how assets are tapped- but the rest of the mechanics is usually hazy, a formula proprietary to the college.
If they added the HSA back in and it raised Family Contribution 3k, maybe you went over a tier. Without more numbers, we’re sort of in the dark.
I found this info about HSA and FAFSA income. It seems that the HSA contributions are added back in for FAFSA purposes as untaxed income similar to 401k contributions probaby because they are (voluntary) pre-tax contributions. The good thing is that the balance in the HSA account apparently doesn’t count as an asset.
Also the number that should be used for final financial aid calculation would be what your parents contributed in 2014. If that was less or more, your EFC might change again.
@mommdc Very helpful. I had no idea, glad they corrected it. I just am shocked that the additional $6400 of “income” raised our EFC by $2800. I would have thought it should only raise it by 6400 x 20% or $1200. Thank you
Look at the numbers on parents’ 2013 W2 in box 12, code W? Does it match the $6,400?
The problem is that these contributions and similar like 401k don’t show up on the tax return (because they are
untaxed income, the contributions get withheld from paycheck pre-tax).
But you are supposed to list them on the FAFSA as untaxed income on the appropiate line.
I probably would have forgotten to list our 401k contributions on the FAFSA, but I did my taxes with Taxact online and it had me print out a handy FAFSA worksheet which listed AGI and other items and which line to put them on the FAFSA. Very helpful. I don’t know if it would have caught an HSA contribution, but I assume it would come up in the tax interview questions and it is listed on the W2.
Did you recently send any college W2’s from either 2013 or 2014? Did any college ask for W2’s or did they just want tax returns? Since the tax return and your FAFSA didn’t list the HSA contributions, but the W2 did, then that’s why they changed it now.