Hi, I’m a senior in high school and I’ve heard back from most of the schools that I applied to except Penn State. I will be paying for college independitly and am defiantly interested in applying for work study aid. I recently noticed that West Chester’s deadline for application into the work study program is Febuary 13. My question is if I could apply for the work study program before committing to attend that school because I defiantly will not be able to decide before then. If you have any information on this please let me know!
Federal work study eligibility is based on fafsa. Yes, you can and should be filing fafsa soon with estimated 2014 income numbers and actual asset numbers. Submit it to all the schools you are applying to. You don’t have to commit to schools just because you submitted fafsa to them. You don’t have to be accepted for admission to schools before submitting fafsa. After taxes are done you will update fafsa with actual 2014 income information. Work study funding is limited at some schools so you do want to meet the deadline.
Why are you so defiant?
Thank you that helps a lot! The only thing I was unsure of was the fact that west Chester seems to have a completely separate application for the work study program due before the fasfa, and the correlation was unclear.
Sorry I meant to type definatly.
Definitely!
How will you pay for college independently if your income is low enough to qualify for federal work/study?
I took a quick look at West Chester. Yes you should fill out their work/study application form and send it in. That is just a supplemental form the school uses IF you qualify for and are given federal work/study allotted hours. You will find that out when you get your financial aid package. The form helps them organize students and you seem to have to apply to them to get any. That’s a bit different from other schools, usually no extra application is needed but you do have to take steps to get hired for an actual job. I could only find the form for last year, but it has information to read that likely pertain to the 2015-16 year
http://www.wcupa.edu/_services/fin_aid/documents/2014-15FWSApplication.pdf
If you don’t get work study you still may be able to find a regular job on campus or off campus.