Possible FAFSA Problems

Here are some problems you may encounter in submitting your FAFSA form:
• Wrong Social Security Number or Incorrect Name. If you have submitted an application using an incorrect Social Security number or the wrong name, there is no recovery; you will have to fill out a completely new FAFSA form.

• Name Change. If your name changes because of marriage, adoption, or other reason, a previously submitted FAFSA cannot be deleted. You must resubmit a form with the new name, and then notify any college to which the information has been submitted that they may receive two applications under your
name or Social Security number. Tell them which is correct.

• Rejection Code 14, 15, or 16. If your form is rejected and you
receive one of these uninformative numerical codes, the system
is telling you that it has not received an acceptable signature.

If you encounter a problem with your signature, you can take one of
the following four steps to correct the problem:

1. If you have obtained a PIN you can electronically sign the application;
on the www.fafsa.ed.gov page click on “Provide Electronic Signatures”
in the section about filling out the form.
2. You can print out and sign the Student Aid Report (SAR) and mail it in.
3. You can print out a Signature Page from the FAFSA Web site and mail
it in, again delaying processing for at least several days.
4. If you are currently enrolled in college, the institution’s financial aid office
may be able to assist in filing a signature electronically.
Read More: Possible FAFSA Problems

FAFSA Worksheets A, B, and C

A section of the FAFSA dealing with various tax credits, welfare benefits, retirement savings, and education credits collects information from three separate worksheets you must fill out. (A sample of this section, on the sixth page of the FAFSA Pre-Application Worksheet, is on page 129.) If you are using a printed version of the FAFSA you’ll have to enter the numbers, do the math, and transfer the results to the appropriate line on the form; if you are working on the FAFSA on the Web, the numbers will automatically be taken from the onscreen worksheet and placed into the form for processing.

Both the student and spouse, and the parents of dependent students
must provide information on each of the worksheets. On the printed form,
the student/spouse and parent information is entered in separate columns; for
the online version, the questions are asked separately for each filer.

The calculations are summed at the bottom of each of the three
worksheets, and just one number is entered on the FAFSA. The reason for
this is that the complex federal methodology for calculating the Expected

Family Contribution assigns different weights to various types of income.
Also, state or institutional programs may have different ways of accounting
for certain types of income in their own methodologies.

Worksheet A
This worksheet asks about the following sources of credits or benefits:
• Earned income credit. This refundable tax credit is available to
persons who work but earn low wages. It is intended to offset
the cost of other taxes such as those for Social Security and
Medicare. As a refundable credit it can be issued to people who
pay no taxes or pay taxes that are less than the amount of the
credit, both of which result in a payment to the family. In order
to be eligible, a low-income worker must maintain a home in the
United States, with at least one child living there.
• Additional child tax credit. Every taxpayer with less than
$110,000 in modified AGI is entitled to a tax credit for each child.
The amount was $700 in 2005, and is scheduled to increase
to $800 per child in 2009 and $1,000 per child in 2010. Very

low-income taxpayers—and those who have higher incomes
and a large number of deductions that bring the modified AGI
down to near zero—can also receive additional tax credits.
• Welfare benefits, including Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (TANF).
• Social Security benefits that were not subject to tax (such
as SSI) received by any household member. For retirees
and other recipients with relatively large amounts of personal
income from other sources, a portion of Social Security
payments received may be taxable. This question seeks to
determine—for financial aid decision-making purposes—the
total amount of those benefits that were not subject to taxes.

For more information about untaxed Social Security benefits,
consult the Social Security Administration by calling (800) 772-
1213 or visiting www.ssa.gov. Excluded from this section are
food stamps and subsidized housing payments.

Worksheet B
This worksheet is a grab bag of other sources of income and credits that
are not specifically identified on some tax forms or in other questions on the
FAFSA. In most cases, this is a situation in which the federal government
is seeking to avoid giving double benefits to people who receive credits or
payments that are not subject to tax; when it comes to calculating financial
aid, that money will be taken into account when the U.S. Department of
Education calculates the Expected Family Contribution.

For many financial aid applicants, many of these questions are not
relevant.
• Payments to tax-deferred pension and savings plans. These
include funds paid directly or withheld from earnings and
reported on the student’s or parent’s W-2 Form. These might
include 401(k) and 403(b) pension plans and tax-sheltered
investments available through employers. If you have any

uncertainty about this question, consult a qualified tax preparer,
the IRS, or a financial aid office.
• IRA deductions and payments to self-employed SEP, SIMPLE,
and Keogh and other qualified plans. The information sought
here is the total amount of tax-deductible payments to private
retirement accounts set up under qualified programs.
• Child support you received for all children. Child support is
not taxable, but the financial aid formula takes it into account
in determining the EFC. Do not include foster care or adoption
payments in this total.
• Tax-exempt interest income. Some or all of the interest
on certain governmental bonds and other special financial
instruments are exempt from taxation.
• Foreign income exclusion. Certain U.S. citizens and residents
living in foreign countries can deduct a portion of their living
expenses or exclude from taxation some income received as
compensation for work performed abroad. Although this may
not be taxed by the IRS, this income is included in the calculation
for federal student aid and must be reported here.
• Untaxed portions of IRA distributions, and untaxed portions
of pensions. Certain withdrawals from an IRA or a qualified
pension are not subject to taxation after a set age. Again, the
financial aid formula is seeking to account for untaxed income in
calculating financial aid. Do not include rollovers—the transfer of
funds in one IRA or pension account to another account without
a withdrawal to your personal funds.
• Credit for federal tax on special fuels. Certain nongasoline
fuels used in motor vehicles on public highways (not on private
property, including farms) are not subject to tax, and users are
given a tax credit; some of these special fuels include diesel,
kerosene, LPG (propane), CNG (compressed natural gas), and
experimental fuels. If you received a credit for use of these fuels
you are required to report it on IRS Form 4136, and the credit

earned on that form is reportable here. The credit is considered
untaxed income when financial aid is calculated.
• Housing, food, and other living allowances paid to members
of the military, clergy, and others. Certain payments including
living allowances or free room and board may not be considered
taxable on IRS forms, but are of interest to the Department of
Education in calculating financial aid. If a benefit, such as free
room and board, was provided to a parent or student, the cash
value of that benefit must be calculated and listed here. This
line is not meant to account for rent subsidies received for lowincome
housing.
• Veterans’ noneducation benefits such as Disability, Death
Pension, Dependency & Indemnity Compensation (DIC), or
VA Educational Work-Study allowances. Untaxed benefits
are considered income when it comes to calculating federal
financial aid.
• Any other untaxed income or benefits not reported elsewhere
on Worksheets A and B, such as workers’ compensation, untaxed
portions of railroad retirement benefits, Black Lung Benefits, and
disability. This is a catchall category seeking to account for any
other untaxed income or benefits not reported elsewhere on the
first two worksheets. Excluded from this question are student
financial aid, Workforce Investment Act education benefits, or
benefits from flexible spending arrangements (also known as
cafeteria plans) in which workers are given a choice of cash or
nontaxable benefits.
• Money received, or paid on your behalf not reported elsewhere
on this form. If the student (not the parents) received cash
support from a friend or relative other than parents, or if someone
other than the student is paying some or all of the cost of rent,
utilities, and other expenses while he or she is in school, that is
considered untaxed income for purposes of calculating the EFC.


Worksheet C
The items accounted for here include education credits claimed on
IRS forms, child support paid to other households, and taxable income from
federal work-study and other employment programs.
• Education credits. The HOPE Education Tax Credit is a tax
credit available to parents or students for the first two years
of college or postsecondary education. The Lifetime Learning
Credit provides a tax credit to parents and students at any time.
As noted in Chapter 8, you cannot claim both credits for the
same student in the same year.
• Child support you paid because of divorce or separation or by
court order or other legal requirement. This amount does not
include support for children in the student’s own household, or
in the parent’s household.
• Taxable earnings from need-based employment programs,
such as federal work-study. Also included are any need-based
employment portions of fellowships and assistantships. Do
not report any other sources of need-based income that are
accounted for elsewhere on Worksheet C.
• Student grant and scholarship aid reported to the IRS as
part of adjusted gross income. Included here are grants,
scholarships, waivers, AmeriCorps benefits, and the grant or
scholarship portion of fellowships. Note that the question is
asking for that portion which makes its way into the AGI.

Federal School Codes
Applicants for financial aid need to inform the Department of Education
of the code number of the school or schools to which they want the SAR and
EFC sent. If you have already been accepted to a college and plan to attend there,
you should enter only the code for that institution. If you are applying to more
than one college or university, you should enter all applicable codes so that you
do not miss any financial aid deadlines. The codes are available from the schools’
financial offices, from Web sites, and as part of the FAFSA on the Web.


If you are using the FAFSA on the Web and are filling out a renewal
of a form submitted in previous years, the codes used in the past will be
automatically filled in. The first time you filled out the form you may have asked
the government to send the data to more than one school; you should remove
any schools that you are not planning to attend in the coming school year.
For each school code you will also be asked to indicate your expected
housing plan: on-campus, off-campus, or with parent. Your selection here
will affect the total cost of attendance and may be relevant to a particular
school’s institutional financial aid.
Read More: FAFSA Worksheets A, B, and C

How To Figuring Out The FAFSA?

The doorway to nearly all federal grant and loan
programs and most state and institutional (direct
from the college or university) funding is through the
Free Application for Federal Student Aid, universally
referred to as the FAFSA form.

Some programs are even more demanding of
information, requiring an additional privately managed
document, the CSS/Profile. And depending on your
particular circumstances, you may also be asked to
provide specific additional information about your
investments and sources of income.

THE KEY TO THE VAULT
For most students, the quest for financial aid begins with the FAFSA.
Throughout this chapter I will be speaking primarily to the parent or guardian;
be aware, though, that the student is also responsible for filling out the portion
of the form that relates to his or her assets and earnings. In most families it
probably works like this: the parents and student work together to answer the
student-only questions, and then the parents work on the rest of the form. As
a parent you have no obligation to disclose all of your finances to your child,
but you do have to do so to the U.S. Department of Education, at least if you
want to be considered for financial aid.

You can obtain a printed copy of the form through high school guidance
counselors, from many colleges and universities, and directly from the U.S.
Department of Education. It’s a good idea to hold one in your hands and read
it to get an idea of the sort of information it demands. But when it comes
time to fill out the form, the easiest and fastest way to do so is through the
government’s online Web sites: www.fafsa.ed.gov and the more general www.
studentaid.ed.gov site, which explains many available federal programs and
offers entrance to the FAFSA site.



Applicants for financial aid can file a FAFSA by hand, filling in the
form and mailing it to the processing center. Filling in the form by hand may
require more than an hour.

But if you have access to a computer, you will save time and possibly
avoid rejection of the form due to errors by filling in the form over the Internet
through the official government portal (www.fafsa.ed.gov) and submitting it
electronically.
Using the Internet has several advantages:
1. There is built-in help for every page of the form; click on the
Help icon for further explanation of questions.
2. You can fill out the form a section at a time, saving your work in
progress and returning later. Information saved in progress is
kept in storage for retrieval and editing for forty-five days. If you
do not file the form within that period, you will have to start a
new application.
3. Worksheets that are linked to the form can be used to calculate
the answers to some of the financial questions, and the
resulting numbers are automatically inserted into the FAFSA
you are working on.
4. Based on some of the answers you give to questions, the
computer will skip over areas that are not relevant to your
personal situation or your finances.
5. Before the form is completed, the computer at the other end
of the connection will proofread your form and check the math,
alerting you to omissions, errors, and contradictory answers.
6. Filing the form electronically will shorten the processing time
by as much as two weeks as well as avoid delays caused by
the postal service.
7. Once you have filed electronically, you can easily re-enter the
site to correct, change, or update information.
8. In subsequent years you can begin the process with much
of the background information automatically filled in from the
original filing.


If you don’t have a computer with an Internet connection, you should
be able to arrange for use of a machine at a friend or acquaintance’s home,
at the student’s high school, or at a public library. Be aware that if you use
a public machine, there may be a risk that some of your private information
may be observed or recorded by others. One step you can take to protect data
is to shut down the Internet browser after you have completed your work in
order to clear the “cache” (pronounced “cash”) of recent work.


Deadlines and Details
The FAFSA for the coming academic year can be filed between January
1 and June 30 of the overlapping calendar year. That means, for example,
that the 2006–2007 FAFSA (which covers the academic year from July 1,
2006, through June 30, 2007) can be mailed or electronically filed no earlier
than January 1, 2006, and no later than midnight (Central Daylight Time)
on June 30 of that same year.

Corrections to forms filed on the Web must be submitted by midnight
Central Daylight Time in the middle of September; for 2006, the date was
September 18.

It’s probably not a good idea to wait until the last possible date and
minute to file a FAFSA anyway, because if there is a problem with any critical
piece of information, the form may be rejected after the deadline.

Warning: Some schools may ask for all of your financial information on a
date before the final FAFSA deadline. Or the college may require that the form
be submitted and processed by a certain date, in which case you will need to
include sufficient time in advance of the submission deadline. Be sure to read all
application requirements and call financial aid offices if you have any questions.

If you file online, the computer will display a confirmation page after
you have electronically signed the form using your PIN. The confirmation
includes a code number; you should print out the page or record the number
for your records in case there is any doubt about the date of submission.

The code number is twenty-two characters long for the initial submission
and includes within it the date and time the form was received. If you file a
correction, the number expands to thirty characters in length.
There’s another number associated with a successfully submitted FAFSA.

A Data Release Number (DRN) is included on the bottom left corner of the

Student Aid Report (SAR), which you will receive several weeks after you
file the FAFSA. The DRN is necessary if you contact the Federal Student
Aid Information Center to make corrections to your mailing address or your
school list, and it is necessary in order to release FAFSA data to schools you
did not select on your original form.

If you fill out the FAFSA online but do not have a PIN or choose not
to sign the form electronically, the final step in the online process is to print
out a signature page, which will be prefilled with a student ID made up of
a code for the type and year of the application, your Social Security number,
and the first two letters of your last name. The form must be signed by the
student and at least one parent if the student is a dependent; for a renewal or
a correction of a previously filed FAFSA, the parent needs to sign the page
only if information about the parent has been changed.
However you sign and submit the form, you are agreeing to the
following:
• Federal student financial aid will be used only to pay the cost of
attending a school of higher education.
• The student will not receive a Federal Pell Grant for more than
one school during the same academic year.
• The student or parent are not in default on a federal student
loan and do not owe a refund of a federal student grant.
• The financial aid office of the college you or the student attends
will be notified if a borrower goes into default on a federal
student loan after the FAFSA is submitted.
• You and your student give permission to the U.S. Department
of Education to verify income and other data reported on the
FAFSA with the Internal Revenue Service and other federal
agencies.
And just for the record, intentionally providing false or misleading
information could be punished by a fine of as much as $20,000 or a prison
sentence or both.
Read More: How To Figuring Out The FAFSA?

FAFSA Timeline

In order to maximize your financial aid planning strategies, you should implement them a few years before enrolling in college. The following is not a strict timeline for applying for financial aid. Nor should you despair, thinking it is too late, if you are already a senior in high school. However, here is a basic outline of when you should embark on the financial aid process if you are applying for college-based aid:

8th Grade

• Find out what courses you should take in high school to best prepare you for college. Think about subject areas that interest you. 
• Create a filing system. Be sure to set up a file where you can keep track of all the information from each school. Include the names of the administrators that you meet, especially in the financial aid office. Better still, file all your information in a computer, cell phone, or electronic notebook that you can easily access.

9th Grade

• Talk to a school counselor about your future, what colleges might best serve you and what they might cost. Work with your parents to establish a plan to finance college. 
• Spend time in your library, researching four-year colleges, performing arts schools, community colleges, and alternative schools.

10th Grade

• Write to colleges for catalogs and brochures to get an idea of their offerings, admission requirements, and financial aid policies. 
• Take the PSAT to prepare for college admission tests. 
• Create your own personal databank of all the information that you may need to complete applications for colleges: scholarship applications, FAFSA, and any other form required pertaining to college.

11th Grade (Fall):

• Attend college fairs, meet with college representatives who visit your school to talk about specific institutions. 
• Make a list of colleges that interest you. Write for the admission and financial aid information. 
• Talk to your counselor about your PSAT scores and their implications for your college career. 
• Visit a library at school, in your community or at a nearby school to research lists of private scholarships for which you might qualify.

11th Grade (Spring)

• Develop a resume of high school activities and awards that you can update as necessary. 
• If you haven’t taken any achievement tests like the SAT or ACT, and your college asks for achievement tests, then take them. 
• Narrow your list of colleges and make plans to visit them. Write for an appointment at the admissions office. Allow time to talk to students and professors. 
• Research scholarships online. Begin your offline and online search for possible scholarships that match your interests, skills, academics, and talents. 
• Create a list of scholarship possibilities from your online and offline searches. Be sure to watch for deadlines for each. Retain the contact information for future use, including name of organization, eligibility, prizes, requirements, and deadlines. 
• Write to private scholarships requesting information. 
• Write several basic essays and be prepared to revise one at the last minute to meet a deadline for a scholarship application.

11th Grade (Summer)

• Request admission and financial aid forms from the colleges to which you intend to apply. 
• Review your career plans and decide which type of college is right for you—large or small, public or private, two-year or four-year. Contact the admissions office of each college in which you are interested to obtain information on admissions, scholarships and financial aid. 
• Apply for private scholarships, government grants, and student loans.

12th Grade (Fall)

• Make sure you are taking courses to meet the requirements of colleges for which you are applying.
• Think about your application essay. Talk to your counselor and English teacher about it. 
• Attend college fairs and meet with college representatives. 
• Watch the mail for college acceptance letters and financial aid award  letters to determine the college and package that best that meets your needs. 
• Request letters of recommendation from counselors, teachers, volunteer contacts, pastor, etc. Provide each person a copy of your resume to inform them of your high school work, employment, and activities. Send each a note of thanks for the letter. 
• Sign up to retake the SAT/ACT to better your score. Order scores to be sent to possible colleges you plan to attend. Make sure your scores are sent to the colleges to which you may submit applications in the future. 
• Compare the financial aid award letters received and watch for response deadlines. You must sign and return a copy of your financial aid award letter to receive financial aid. Also, once you have selected a college, notify the colleges you decide not to attend.

12th Grade (Winter)

• Respond immediately to any request for more information or additional documents in your financial aid application. 
• After you get letters of acceptance and financial aid awards, decide which college you will attend. Accept its offer by its deadline or the spot may go to someone else. Decline other offers in writing. 
• Be sure your high school sends a transcript to colleges where you have applied. 
• Work with your parents to collect financial information. Submit financial aid application as soon as possible after January 1. As soon as possible after January 1, complete the FAFSA and submit electronically or by mail. 
• Review the financial aid package with your parents. Be sure you understand each kind of aid offered to you. Schedule an appointment with the school’s financial aid director if you have questions.

Read More :  FAFSA Timeline