Hi Senior Parents: 

I know many of you are starting to worry about the financial aid process, so I will be sending out a series of emails over the month of September to help reduce stress and answer your questions!

October 1 is the first day you can access, complete, and submit the FAFSA and CSS Profile financial aid forms. Do not try to jump the gun and get started early – you will be filling out the wrong version of the form by starting prior to October 1st

FAFSA & CSS PROFILE: WHAT ARE THESE FORMS?

• It is not often that you need to file a FAFSA to be considered for merit-aid scholarships
• The FAFSA is required at all colleges for the student to be considered for needs-based financial aid:
  • Institutional Grants
  • Federal subsidized student loans
  • Federal work-study
• You may also file the FAFSA to be considered for federal unsubsidized student loans (not necessary to prove financial need to take out those loans)
  • Subsidized federal student loans
    • The government pays the interest while the student is in school and for a period of 6 months after graduation
    • Requires financial need under the federal methodology
    • Limited to no more than $3,500 in year 1, $4,500 in year 2, and $5,500 in years 3 and 4 (but your college will determine whether you can borrow that amount as a subsidized loan or not)
  • Unsubsidized federal student loans
    • Interest accrues from the time of origination
    • No financial need requirement
    • Amount you can borrow set by the college in your aid package (but no more than $5,500 in year 1, $6,500 in year 2, and $7,500 in years 3 and 4 total (including subsidized loan amounts too)
• If the student is applying to any of the 200+ colleges (mostly private) that ALSO require the CSS Profile, you will need to file this additional form through the student's College Board account. You can see a list of colleges that require the form here
• To be clear, you would never file only the CSS Profile -- the CSS Profile is filed in addition to the FAFSA for those colleges that require it

SHOULD WE FILE?

• If your household income exceeds $200,000, there is not much likelihood that you will receive needs-based financial aid
• HOWEVER, even students from higher-earning households may want to take out unsubsidized federal student loans, and in that case, filing the FAFSA is a requirement. 
• If you only want to give your student the option to take out unsubsidized federal student loans as needed, you can file the FAFSA later after the student has made a final decision about where to enroll (more on that later)

WE THINK WE'RE GOING TO FILE -- HOW DO WE START?

Here are the steps you can and should do now to set yourself up for less stress in October:

• FSA IDs -- You can create the FSA IDs you will need to file the FAFSA ahead of time. It takes a few days after filing before it is fully-verified and ready to use in filing the FAFSA. You can watch a short informational video on creating the FSA ID here.
  • Student -- The student needs his/her own FSA ID. The student should create their own FSA ID (parents shouldn't create it on the student's behalf) 
    • Student's SSN 
    • Student email address -- don't use a school email for this purpose since that email address won't remain operational during college
    • Student's cell phone number
  • Parent -- ONE parent needs to create a parent FSA ID. 
    • Parent's SSN, email address, and cell phone number
    • Only ONE parent needs to create a FSA ID
    • If parents are divorced or separated:
      • For 2023-24, the filing parent should be the "custodial parent" -- the one with whom the student spent most of his/her time 
      • Moving forward, one of the FAFSA changes will be to require that the filing parent must be the one who provided the student with the most financial support 
• Gather Information that you will need for filing the FAFSA
  • Be sure your 2021 tax return is filed so that you can use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (but having a paper copy of your 2021 tax return handy is also helpful in case the retrieval tool doesn't fully work for you)
  • 2021 W2s, K-1s,1099s and other records of earned income
  • 529 plan statements
  • Stocks, bonds, mutual fund statements (if any)
  • Value of owned real estate (other than your primary residence)
  • Sources and amounts of untaxed income, such as child support payments & interest earned

Hopefully this has answered some of your questions, but I will be sending out additional information throughout September. Watch your email for more fun financial aid facts and tips!

Warmly,

Penny Linsenmayer
Founding Partner, 
Pathway Admissions, LLC