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FAFSA Financial aid question

N

nietsni3

Banned
i heard that there is something called BUDGET in financial aid for student, is it right? please dont mistake this with the budget of your expense for the time attending school. the budget i am talking about is the max amount of money from financial aid that you can receive each school year based on your status of dependent or independent. do you guy hear anythign like that?

cuz today i came to the financial office to get some workstudy paper and the woman there after checking out my profile told me that i dont have enough "room" for work study grant in this school year because i have been overbudget. and she said that was because the Stafford Loan that i borrowed this year make me overbudget.

this is the break down:

PELL GRANT $4050
FSEOG $600
STAFFORD LOAN $3000
TOTAL $7650

my EFC is $0

and she said the budget in my school is $7500 for dependent students (which i am), so i dont have a corner of the workstudy pie like last year any more.

do you guys' colleges have such capping system? and what is that for?

thanks
 
i'm sorry, proper english?

since work study is a federal program, as are all your other items, you cannot borrow or take any kind of aid past what the school budgets for an individual going to that school.

you should have read your offer more carefully though. i would have declined the loans and taken work study only just so that i wouldn't have to pay anything back, especially since you are already receiving a grant.
 
Yes, of course.

It is not a capping system of the school. It is really the federal government putting a limit on how much financial aid they will give you. The estimate just varies depending on how expensive the school is.

EVERY school in EVERY state puts together an estimate of what it will cost someone to attend school for one school year. This includes tuition, fees, books, housing, food, and some miscellaneous personal expenses. You cannot get more federal student aid than what the schools estimated budget is for the year. This includes the combination of federal loans, federal grants, and federal work study. So if your loans and grants are as much as the estimated cost of attendance, you will not be able to get work study.

Your schools estimate is 7500. Your EFC is 0. So you should be able to get federal aid of 7500 total including loans, grants, and work study. The one thing I don't understand is why they gave you 7650. It sounds like they made a mistake in giving you more than the 7500 you should have gotten.

EDIT: freesia's suggestion of declining the loans and doing work study instead would only work if they had work study money available. There is often only a limited amount of work study funds available. So if they had already used up all their work study funds and you declined the loans, you'd be screwed. If you are interested in doing that, talk to the financial aid office before you accept the aid offer next year.
 
i see, thanks

Shanti, do you know how they determine that budget? lets say the tuition and fee is $10.000, the cost for books, carfare, etc (estimated by the school) is $7.000. so the total is $17.000, right ? then does the Budget have to be exactly that $17.000? could it be significantly higher or lower?

cuz i have a friend. he is a dependant. his EFC is also $0. his school tuition for 1 year is around $8000-$9000. and on his financial award letter they calculate his total need to be $24.000. however, in this school year for example, he gets totally only $9600 (he doesnt know if that is his school's budget or not). so which one is his school budget? the $24000 or $9600?

thanks you all, guys
 
I forgot to mention that there are limits to federal aid programs other than the limit of the total estimated cost.
You cannot get more federal aid than the schools estimated cost of attendance, but you may get less due to limits on individual programs.

There is a limited amount of work study available depending on how much money the federal government has allocated to that school. I have no idea how that is determined.

There are limits to the amount of federal grants. Not sure what they are.

There are limits to the amount of federal loans you can get each year and these are lower for dependent students. Your friend's estimated cost of attendance is 24k. That is the max total financial aid package he could get. Unfortunately, the max amounts on each program are much lower, which is why he is only getting 9600. If he was an independent student, the limits would be higher for the loans and he would get more money.
You can find a lot of information at http://www.finaid.org

Here are some numbers:

The amount of Perkins Loan you receive is determined by your school's financial aid office. The program limits are $4,000 per year for undergraduate students and $6,000 per year for graduate students, with cumulative limits of $20,000 for undergraduate loans and $40,000 for undergraduate and graduate loans combined.

Stafford Loans allow dependent undergraduates to borrow up to $2,625 their freshman year, $3,500 their sophomore year and $5,500 for each remaining year (independent students and students whose parents have been turned down for a PLUS loan can borrow an additional unsubsidized $4,000 the first two years and $5,000 the remaining years). Graduate students can borrow $18,500 per year, although only $8,500 of that is subsidized. There are also cumulative limits of $23,000 for an undergraduate education and a $65,500 combined limit for undergraduate and graduate. (For independent students and for students whose parents were denied a PLUS loan the cumulative limits are $46,000 and $138,500, respectively.)
 
Originally posted by: nietsni3
i see, thanks

Shanti, do you know how they determine that budget? lets say the tuition and fee is $10.000, the cost for books, carfare, etc (estimated by the school) is $7.000. so the total is $17.000, right ? then does the Budget have to be exactly that $17.000? could it be significantly higher or lower?

cuz i have a friend. he is a dependant. his EFC is also $0. his school tuition for 1 year is around $8000-$9000. and on his financial award letter they calculate his total need to be $24.000. however, in this school year for example, he gets totally only $9600 (he doesnt know if that is his school's budget or not). so which one is his school budget? the $24000 or $9600?

thanks you all, guys
Click to expand...


the budget is set by each school. students really have no say in what the budget is. for example when i was in at school, education fees (there's no "tuition" allegedly for instate students) was under 4k/year, which included insurance and activity fees and all that. because i was in LA, housing was considered expensive, so they gave nearly 12k/year max for housing, transportation, books and personal expenses. in theory you can live on the 17k that they budget in a year. that is all you are allowed to take out FROM THE SCHOOL.

i don't know what your friend did, but if the financial aid letter says that in one year of school you need 24,000 dollars, they try to find some way to get 24,000 dollars. they will give you so much in perkins loans, grants, stafford loans, work study, and PLUS loans. how they divide these things up is determined on your FAFSA info. not everyone gets all these things. for example, when i was in school, my financial aid was loans only. fafsa amounts were too high for loans, grants, they wouldn't give me work study, and all my loans were unsubsidized. it all varies from person to person.

the school budget is 24,000. that's how much the school says it costs to go there and live there for one year. really i don't understand where you're getting 9600 from, unless you say exactly what's in the letter. i'm guessing 9600 is all the federal money he received, and he has to make up the rest on his own through PLUS loans. if that's the case, he's not going to get any more federal money if that's all the letter is going to give him.
 
they said this in the letter:

PELL GRANT 4000
STAFFORD LOAN 2800
WS 2800
Total 9600
Need 24.000
Unmet net 14.400

that's it.


i see the point now. thanks alot for all the info 🙂
 
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