High school seniors refresh their emails and concerned parents make phone calls as they wait to hear back. University financial services scramble to send out financial packages in the last two months before college decisions are due.
With the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) undergoing revisions in the past year, many incoming freshmen had to make college decisions with incomplete information or wait until the very end of the deadline to make their decision.
Additionally, since the applications did not return until late in the school year, universities everywhere also had to adjust the process they use to award financial aid packages.
Anna Lawson, a freshman nursing major from Kentucky, did not receive her financial aid information until late April.
“It was a little nerve-wracking because it didn’t open until so late,” she said. I needed to make a decision on which school I was going to go to, and a lot of that depended on how much aid I was going to get.”
Lane Smith, Executive Director of Student Financial Services and Retention, provided information on how Samford had to adjust during this period. One of the adjustments was asking families to complete the College Scholarship Service (CSS) Profile Lite, an application that colleges use to award non-federal aid.
“Using the Profile Lite meant that Samford was able to begin reviewing the needs of the entering class without relying on the FAFSA,” Smith said. “When the FAFSA results were finally made available by the US Department of Education some seven months later than normal, we released final financial assistance packages in the second week of April. That was a full six or so weeks later than normal.”
Although the financial aid results were released later than usual, using the CSS Profile allowed the One Stop office to provide the information much sooner than if they had continued relying on the FAFSA.
Samford’s One Stop team had to work overtime, nights and weekends, to keep everything on track and to keep incoming students and parents informed.
“This group of Samford employees worked incredibly hard to stay abreast of the daily changes that were being pushed our way from the US Department of Education,” Smith said. “It was a team effort that is normally spread out over many months from October to late spring and was condensed into just a few weeks.”
Lawson did end up receiving less aid due to the changes to the FAFSA. Because her family owns farmland, it is now considered an asset, and she received less aid than she would have had before the revisions.
“I got less aid, but you can’t like sell off part of your farm to pay for college,” she said.
From the tentative results of one year, Smith did see an increase in students receiving federal aid.
“We have seen an increase in Pell Grant recipients enrolled this fall compared to last fall,” he said. “That in and of itself tells me the changes worked in getting more student access to the federal Pell Grant.”
Although Smith deplored the execution of the FAFSA revisions, he would like to believe that the overall the changes constitute a net gain, to hopefully help students receive more financial aid.
News Editor
