(The Wall Street Journal) By Jillian Berman —
The college-application and decision process just got a bit more complicated.
That’s because the 2017-2018 college-application cycle marks the first time students and families could apply for federal financial aid in the fall, several months earlier than in the past. The government’s goal in opening the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, on Oct. 1 was to give students and families more time to evaluate their financial-aid options.
Students and families file a Fafsa, which includes their income and other financial information, as part of the college-application process. Colleges and other institutions that provide financial aid, such as state governments, use the form to determine how much a family can reasonably contribute, how much the institution will provide in grants or other “free money,” and how much they will ask the family to pay out of pocket or take on in loans.
So far, it appears that many families are applying for federal aid earlier, says Peter Farrell,a managing director of enrollment services at EAB, a Washington, D.C.-based company that helps colleges manage their enrollment. In a recent survey of EAB’s clients, 41% of participants reported “significant” early activity in Fafsa filing and 43% said they had moderate early Fafsa activity.
But while financial-aid experts agree that initiating the Fafsa process earlier will ultimately be a boon to students, by making it possible to receive more detailed offers from schools sooner in the whole application and admissions process, families that have been through the process before may now need to alter the way they approach the next several months.
If financial-aid offers come in from some schools earlier than in years past, applicants may be tempted to commit to a school earlier, before they’ve received financial-aid offers from all of the schools where they applied.
Some say that colleges, too, may consider adjusting the ways in which they extend offers. For instance, with more applications coming in earlier, the schools will have to decide whether to make offers earlier—and consider how an earlier offer might affect a student’s decision. Families may have to be patient as the schools navigate this uncertain terrain.
Here are answers and advice for questions that parents and prospective college students may have as a result of the new, longer process:
What is different about the aid-application process this year?
For the first time, students can apply for financial aid in the fall, much earlier on in the broader college application process. Ideally, that means that students should have a better sense of whether they can afford a school earlier in the process, assuming schools extend offers earlier as well. The reality is that the new process will take some adjusting. Students need to more closely monitor aid-application deadlines and get their requests in sooner. But they won’t necessarily receive timely aid offers from all of the schools where they applied.
Time Management
How college enrollment managers say schools are dealing with the earlier availability of the Fafsa
Does the new Fafsa deadline change when students have to make decisions about which school to attend?
Even though students may see some financial-aid offers trickling in early (more than half of schools surveyed by EAB said they would be sending their offer letters weeks earlier than in the past), students and families should be wary of jumping on the first decent-looking offer that comes their way. The deadline to choose a school is still typically the same: May 1.
“The last thing you want to do is accept one school’s offer and then have buyer’s remorse four days later when you get another aid offer that’s much more generous,” says Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Cappex.com, a college and scholarship search site.
It appears that at least some students are already accepting the earlier offers. Mr. Farrell says more families are sending in their deposits earlier than in the past at a broad array of schools working with EAB. But he adds that even a relatively small difference in financial-aid packages, say $1,000, can balloon over time if a student opts for the less generous package and is forced to assume $1,000 in debt.
How does the new aid timeline affect early-application options?
If not all schools give aid offers earlier than in the past—despite receiving the applications earlier—what can students do to best make use of the offers they have received before they hear from the rest?
Having offers in-hand earlier does give students and families the opportunity to more thoroughly evaluate their options, says Mr. Kantrowitz. For example, if students get a generous aid package from a school that wasn’t initially at the top of their list, they now have more time to take another (or their first) look at the campus and re-evaluate it in this new light.
Having potentially more time between receiving an offer and having to accept an offer also gives students more time to consider a school with concrete information beyond the glossy brochures provided to them by college staff. “It removes that gauze in the recruiting relationship,” Mr. Farrell says of the earlier award letters. In the past, the gap between when students applied to a school and when they found out how much it would cost them meant that often college recruiters found themselves trying to push students to fall in love with a school, while knowing that at the end of that process the students may find themselves disappointed because they couldn’t afford it, Mr. Farrell says.
“That’s still going to happen, but the likelihood of that happening as much goes down” with the earlier timeline, he says.
What should students do if their families’ finances change between the time they applied for financial aid and the time they receive their award?
This year, it is more likely than in the past that families’ financial circumstances will have changed between when they filed the Fasfa and when they received their award. That’s because for the first time, in this application cycle, families are required to use their tax information from two years prior. Thus they’re using 2015 tax-year information for the 2017-2018 application year.
Doing it this way encourages families to use the IRS data retrieval tool—since few will have filed their 2016 faxes already—and so increases the odds that their tax information is accurate. Also, Mr. Kantrowitz says, if applicants were given the option to submit tax data from either one or two years prior, they would likely choose the year most beneficial to them. Thus, he says, requiring that the data be from two years earlier ensures consistency.
If a family’s financial situation has changed considerably in the time between the filing of its tax data and its applying for financial aid—including the loss of a job or a divorce—the family should alert the colleges, which may be willing to create a better aid package.
What should families do if they simply want a better award?
Families who seek to negotiate an aid offer should appeal to the schools they’re interested in as soon as they receive their award letter, says Mr. Farrell. But if the offer comes early, families should be prepared to be patient as financial-aid officers work through the new financial-aid landscape.
Families should update schools with any new information, such as test scores, awards or competitive financial offers from other colleges. Families may also have a better shot at getting schools to listen to their appeal if they identify exactly what it would take—say an extra $5,000—for the student to attend the school.
With people responding earlier, should you be worried that money will run out?
The new financial-aid timeline shouldn’t affect a student’s chances of getting aid from individual schools. The Department of Education asked colleges in a memo last year to resist the urge to move up their deadlines for students to apply to receive priority for financial aid.
About a dozen states that dole out their grants on a first-come, first-served basis began the financial-aid process earlier to align with the new financial-aid timeline, says Mr. Kantrowitz.
States that in the past required students to get their paperwork in later, for example, in March or April, generally didn’t move their deadlines any earlier, but it is possible that in the future those states may move up their deadlines, he says. That way states can limit the amount of money they hand out.
Ms. Berman is a reporter for MarketWatch. She can be reached at [email protected].
