Please note that this transcript was auto-generated. We apologize for any minor errors in spelling or grammar.

[00:00:00] Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Stephanie Wells, and thank you for joining us today. I have my colleague Jennifer Bento Pinion in the Q& A chat room, so feel free to send your questions in to the Q& A. And I apologize if I sound a little weird today. I have a really bad cold. So, um, the chat feature has been disabled.

So we’ll just go through some logistics while folks are still logging in. You can use the live transcript. If you do have a question, we will stop a couple times for questions. Leave plenty of time at the end for questions. So Jennifer will be assisting me by answering the Q and a so the chat features disabled, but you can type in any of your questions in the Q and a, um, we don’t we won’t be using the raise your hand feature and everybody is on mute.

So feel free to type in your questions and we’d be happy to answer those for you.[00:01:00]

So also, we’re going to show this QR code, um, towards the end as well, but if you want to scan this QR code, we’ll put it up again at the end of the webinar so that you can have access to MIFA email curriculums. We have a great email curriculum for families based on the age of your child or children. You can put in for multiple children, and we’ll send you emails based on the age of the student, um, with appropriate, timely information about the college enrollment process.

So if you have a junior, we’ll be sending you information about admissions and of course if you have a senior, which most of you probably here for your high school senior, we’ll be walking you through the whole process, you know, through the day that you’re ready to pay the bills. So it’s great information.

It’s not spam. We don’t sell the emails to anybody. Um, and it’s not one every day. It’s like, you know, one or two a month. So feel free to sign up for that and follow us on all of our social channels. Again, we’ll put this slide up again in a bit. [00:02:00] At the end. All right. So a little bit about MIFA and who we are.

Excuse me if I’m coughing. We are a non profit. We are a quasi state authority here in Massachusetts located in Boston. And we’ve been around for over 40 years. So one of the oldest lenders in the country. And since we were created to offer a low cost loan program. And since 1982 we’ve gone on to create college savings plans.

So many of you may have a U fund or a U plan that you’ve been saving in. And we also have great resources for guidance and education, so I’m going to be talking about those free resources as we go through the webinar, and it’s also good to know that we are recording today’s webinar, and we will share the recording as well as copies of the PowerPoint slides that you’re seeing today with everybody who registered, so don’t feel like you have to write down every phone number, email, or website that we’re going to talk about.

You’ll get these slides with all the QR codes to sign up [00:03:00] for webinars and things like that. So feel free to, uh, listen in and send in your questions as we go. So here’s what we’re going to talk about today. I want to make sure everybody understands the types and sources of financial aid that are out there.

So it’s not just gifts, it’s not just the gift aid that people think of, grants and scholarships, it’s a lot more than that. How does this application process work? And how do colleges make those financial aid decisions about what you’re going to get for financial aid? So we’ll try to take some of the mystery out of that.

And really, you know, give you good, solid advice on, on what’s actually going to happen. And also towards the end, we’ll talk about how families pay the bill. We have lots of resources that we’ll go through, you know, throughout the year. For example, in the spring, we have paying the college bills, seminars and webinars that we do online to.

Once you have your financial aid offers in hand, we can help you understand those and compass strategies to pay the bill. So we will talk a little bit about [00:04:00] it today, but we’re really going to focus on the financial aid aspect of it, how to apply what it is and how that process works. And throughout, we’ll be talking about free resources that are available to you.

So just before we even get into the meat of the program, I want to just kind of set the stage for what’s happening right now in the FAFSA world and financial aid. Many of you may have heard in the news this past year, lots of problems with the FAFSA, which is the main financial aid application that every family needs to fill out.

It’s a federal form. It’s a brand new form as of last year, so there was lots of changes to it. And unfortunately, some of the technical aspects didn’t quite work out the way they had hoped. So we had a lot of issues with the FAFSA last year. And due to those issues, they are delaying the release of the FAFSA for seniors this year who are entering college in 25 26.

Normally, it opens on October 1st, but they’re going through a lot of beta testing to try and, you know, [00:05:00] I already know all those wrinkles and it will be released on December 1st. So just know, you know, there’s lots of help throughout this process. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, whether it’s MIFA, the colleges or your school counselor or other community based organizations you’re working with.

We’re going to share lots of those resources with you. So let’s talk about the types and sources of financial aid. So what is financial aid? Of course, it’s money to pay for college, and many folks think of financial aid as the grants and scholarships gift aid, which is free money that you don’t have to pay back, and that’s the best kind of financial aid to get.

That’s the really good stuff. But financial aid, it also consists of work study and federal student loans. So work There’s a job that a student would get on campus. And the money they earn in that job can be used in, you know, part time, uh, paycheck, bi weekly paycheck, usually 10, 15 hours a week, to earn a little money to help pay for those, some of those unbilled expenses, like books, [00:06:00] supplies, pizza money, that kind of thing.

The money comes from the federal government. It’s allotted to colleges to, um, award to their students who might qualify for work study. So it is a needs, um, Based type of financial aid, and then we also have federal student loans. So underline the word student, because there’s lots of loans out there for families to help pay the bill.

There’s MIFA loans, there’s federal plus loans, which is a parent loan. But when I talk about financial aid being a loan, I’m really focused in on that federal student loan. Not all the other types of resources that are out there to pay the bill. And the reason why we talk about federal student loans as financial aid is because it really is a unique type of loan.

And many of you, if you’re parents, you may have borrowed this type of loan when you were in college. And it’s unique because a student is the sole borrower on the loan. There’s no credit check. So there really isn’t a way for, you know, an [00:07:00] 18 year old with limited or no credit, maybe not working to go to a bank and say, I need, you know, about 27, 000 for four years of schooling.

And I don’t have a job yet. And I can’t pay you back for four years. You really can’t do that with any bank or lender, but with the federal student loan, students are able to take out this loan without a cosigner to really sort of help contribute towards the bill and have a little skin in the game. Um, you can see the limits.

The annual loan limits are on the right here. So as a freshman, the maximum amount of freshmen can take out is $5,500, and part of that could be subsidized in mo. Some of it will be unsubsidized. So what does that mean, subsidized and unsubsidized? The subsidized portion would, um. be for families who qualify, who have that financial need.

And that could be up to 3, 500 of that freshman year 5, 500 loan. And then the rest of it, the other 2, [00:08:00] 000, or if a family doesn’t qualify for the subsidy, the entire 5, 500 would be unsubsidized, meaning interest will accrue while the student’s in school. So the subsidized portion, no interest while they’re in school, which is really great.

Then when they go into repayment, the interest starts accruing. For both of these portions of the loan, the payments of principal and interest are deferred while the students in school and in their deferments. Um, if they’re military, Peace Corps, there’s lots of flexibility with deferments on these federal student loans.

In the rates right now are the highest we’ve seen in a long time at 6. 53 percent fixed. That’s the current interest rate for this current academic year 2425. For students who are seniors and going into school next year, that rate will be set in May of 2025 by the feds, and it will go into effect on July 1st.

So that’s the schedule. That’s how it works every year. [00:09:00] Hopefully, knock on wood, the interest rates will go down this year. No crystal ball, we don’t know, but they have been going up a little bit each year. So 6. 53%, a little bit higher than we’d like to see it, but still relatively low compared to most credit based loans that are out there.

And again, there’s no payments due while the student’s in school, and when they get out of school, they’ll have multiple repayment options to choose from. The standard is a 10 year loan, and that payment, if they borrow the maximum each year, will be about 300 a month for 10 years. So, with interest, it’s gonna be, you know, 32, So, there is a lot of opportunity to extend that if that payment is too high.

Um, but you know, most students hopefully in whatever field they’re in will be able to afford those payments if they stick to just the federal student loans. It’s when students start borrowing additional loans like co signed loans for example and maybe they can’t afford those payments and they don’t have anybody to help them [00:10:00] with those payments.

That’s when students start getting into trouble or they have their undergrad loans and then they take out a lot of graduate loan debt. So you do want to, you know, be cautious of how much the student’s borrowing, but if they’re sticking to the federal student loans, they should, should be okay. So where does financial aid come from?

What are the different sources? It comes from a lot of different sources. The main, biggest source of financial aid is going to be the federal government, of course. So it’s grants and the work study and the federal student loans we talked about. Tax breaks, such as the 529 plans, for example, that you may have saved with, those are tax breaks.

It’s tax deferred until the student, um, you, unless you use it for college, then it’s tax free, which is a really nice, uh, source of a tax break. Then you have studentaid. gov is the federal website that you can go to, to learn more about these options. Basically, what you’re going to do is fill out a FAFSA form, which we’ll talk about to be considered for this federal aid.

[00:11:00] And then in Massachusetts, the last couple years, if you’re a mass resident, the state of Massachusetts has really upped its game and, and putting much more funding towards higher ed financial aid here for mass residents. So we have the mass grant and we have mass scholarship. So basically for most to be considered for most of the aid here in the state, you’re just putting that you, you know, live in Massachusetts on your FAFSA form.

And that information will go right to the office of student financial assistance that processes mass state aid. And they will consider you for state aid as well. The colleges and universities can also be a big source of funding, particularly those that might have bigger budgets, um, bigger endowments.

They might be able to give a lot of financial aid. It really depends on the school and the student, and we’ll talk about how that works. But they do have, you know, scholarships and loans, um, available. Sometimes they might have a small loan, you know, if a student needs a gap loan for 1, 000 and they don’t have a co [00:12:00] signer.

Some schools have their own institutional loan for small amounts. But we’ll talk about where families can, you know, get resources for loans. If you need it to help pay the bill, help pay what you are going to have to come up with. And then there are other resources for scholarships. We call them outside scholarships, above and beyond what we just talked about with the feds, state, and colleges.

So these can come from a number of different resources. You do want to check with your school guidance counselor. If the student’s a senior, they should be getting information this fall or early winter about your local community scholarships, so you do want to start there as a resource, because if you think about it, there’s less students applying for those local scholarships in your town, so there’s going to be less competition, um, and also don’t be afraid to have the student apply for scholarships that require an essay, Oftentimes they can use, you know, an admissions essay that they’ve had to [00:13:00] repurpose it based on the questions that are being asked, unless students want to fill out another essay or create another essay.

So again, there’s less competition for those scholarships that require an essay. And then above and beyond that, there are online scholarship search tools that you can use that are really more national in scope. So we have MIFAPathway. org, which is a college and career web portal that MIFA offers free of charge, so we have a great scholarship search on there, as well as other college planning tools that are free for you to use.

is another popular website that you can go on to, uh, to search for scholarships, but basically the way these type of online scholarship searches work is you put in demographic information of the student and then the student will get emails back about scholarships they might be eligible to apply for.

Um, so just, you know, keep that in mind that they’re going to have to be checking their email to see what’s coming through. But all of the outside scholarships, it’s definitely worth [00:14:00] the work to apply. Just because it’s not a 10, 000 scholarship, it might only be 1, 000, that’s, you know, books for a semester or, you know, spending money for the semester.

So, every little bit adds up. So there’s a lot of money out there and we just want to teach you today how to, how to access that and apply for it. So excuse me for the coughing again, I have a cold. And then, um, so financial aid can come out to you in two different ways. One of the ways that you might receive financial aid is through a merit, through the college, university, or even through some of those scholarship searches, or through the local community.

Now, merit based aid, it’s going to be based on the student’s achievements or skills. Could be artistic, athletic. But most merit based aid is going to come through for their academic qualifications. So really, the college will look at their overall admissions application to determine how they want to utilize their scholarship dollars to [00:15:00] try and meet their enrollment goals.

And may offer the student, um, some merit based aid, regardless of your family’s financial circumstances.

Now, it is important to know that merit based aid may or may not be renewable. You just want to know what the requirements are. Typically, if you get a merit scholarship from a college, they’re, they’re awarding that for four years. So they may say, congratulations, you’ve been accepted and we’re going to give you 100, 000.

four years, 25, 000 a year. But you do want to make sure the student understands what their responsibility is to maintain that scholarship, whether it’s a minimum GPA, or if they have to stay in a certain major to keep that scholarship. Do you want to make sure that they understand that? Because if they don’t meet that GPA, they might have a little too much fun the first semester in college.

What’s going to happen? You want to know what the will happen. Will they lose the scholarship, [00:16:00] uh, maybe lose a percentage of it, or maybe they’ll get a semester to get their grades back up. It really depends on the school and the scholarship. And even within one college, they may have different levels of scholarships with different criteria.

So typically through the college, it’s going to be the admissions application that is your application, so to speak, for these scholarships. But, you know, locally or through outside scholarship searches, um, it will be a separate application. And you do want to be, you know, searching through. You know, your employers, civic groups, church groups that you’re part of to see, do they have scholarships available for their members or constituents?

Now, these application deadlines could be now for admissions and for financial aid, especially for students who are playing early action early decision. November 1st is a very common early action deadline, but a lot of schools might be in December as well. And then the financial aid deadline might be that date as well or soon thereafter.

So it’s important to just know [00:17:00] what are the deadlines. It’s very important to know the deadlines for financial aid as well as admissions. Now most of the aid that’s given out nationwide is going to be based on financial needs. So the family’s financial eligibility based on those financial aid forms that we’re going to talk about.

Now need based aid is based on standardized formulas that treat everybody equally, whether it’s the college’s need based formulas or the federal. Department of Education or, you know, the Massachusetts Office of Student Financial Assistance. They have standardized formulas and they take in the information on those financial aid forms you’re filling out to determine what you’re eligible for based on the budgets that they have.

So grants, federal student loans, especially the subsidy of those federal student loans, and work study are all need based programs. Now the student does need to be making a minimum GPA of 2. 0 and be making satisfactory academic progress towards graduation to maintain their need based [00:18:00] aid. So typically it’s a lower threshold than merit based aid, but some colleges might even have a 2.

0 for their merit based aid as the minimum GPA. So you really just want to know, um, what each school is awarding you and what the criteria is to maintain it. So I’ll stop here real quick to see if we have any burning questions from Jennifer, um, that might be coming in the door. And while, while I’m letting her hop on, as a reminder, we are recording today’s webinar and we will provide the slides to everybody who registered.

So don’t feel like you have to write down every website that we go through. And we haven’t had any questions come in as so far. All right, great. So far, I’m doing my job then. All right, well, let’s talk about how to apply for this financial aid. And again, the timeline is really important. You’ll hear me say meet those deadlines over and over again.

MIFA has a great college application manager, so you’ll get this website here. You can also create your own spreadsheet. You just want to make sure that you stay [00:19:00] organized. You typically, the student is going to be pretty organized with their, um, you know, admissions deadlines and what they need for transcripts, letters of recommendation, things like that.

And, but you also want to have that financial aid deadline right beside it with the admissions deadline. Uh, MIFA pathway also has a great tool for this to keep track of the, um, applications. So you’re going to likely be applying for financial aid before you even know if the student’s been accepted to college because the dates, the deadlines are so closely intertwined.

Um, especially early action, early decision, those deadlines could be as early as October, November. Regular admissions, rolling admissions, typically those deadlines are in February, March, um, and that’s on a, you know, a normal year where you have the FAFSA on time, hopefully December 1st, but you do want to meet those deadlines because colleges are going to prioritize their budgets and their.

Their institutional aid to families [00:20:00] that are meeting their deadlines, and you might be, you know, out of luck at a college if you don’t meet their deadline. So definitely stay organized. Very important to do that. Now, the FAFSA is a form free application that everybody is going to have to fill out to be considered for federal, state, and many times institutional aid from the college.

Every college is going to require this and every student in their family is going to have to fill this form out each year while the students in college. So, as I mentioned, usually this forms available October 1st, but this year it will be delayed while they do additional testing and it should be available December 1st.

So, for 25 high school graduates, you’re going to be filling out the. 2526 FAFSA. So if you’ve already started filling out the FAFSA, you might want to just stop because you’re filling out for the wrong academic year. You’re filling it up for this current academic year. If you’ve already started, you can’t fill out this FAFSA until it becomes available [00:21:00] on December 1st.

Now, if you’re signed up for those MIFA emails, I’ll put the QR code up again at the end. Then you’ll be able to get, you know, alerts from MIFA also on our social media channels. Um, you know, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, we’re going to be alerting everybody once the FAFSA is available. And we are going to have lots of FAFSA festivals, online tools, and resources for you to get help filling out these forms.

In fact, tonight we have a FSA ID festival that I’ll tell you about the FSA ID and what that is in a second, where we’re helping families sign up for their FSA ID. And basically what will happen is the contributors on this form are going to be everybody who needs their information on the FAFSA form.

That’s going to be a contributor. So the student is going to be a contributor on the form. Obviously the parent or parents would be contributors. And each contributor on the FAFSA is going to have their own section to fill out. So they log in with their secure [00:22:00] FSA ID, which I’m going to talk about on the next slide.

And they’ll fill out their section. And then usually we find that with this new FAFSA, it’s much easier if the student is the first one to go in and fill it out. Parent and student can be sitting side by side on two separate laptops. You do have to have two separate computers if you’re going to be on at the same time, um, helping each other fill it out.

And then whoever the last person is to complete the FAFSA, whether it’s, you know, the parent or the student, that can be the person that submits the FAFSA. So it’s important that once you start the FAFSA that you keep, keep working on it. You can stop and save it, save your progress, and go back to it later.

But if you don’t complete your FAFSA and don’t even Open it up again for 45 days of no activity at all. No, no editing, no saving. Then it’s going to wipe out your work and you’re going to have to start over. So you’ll, there’ll be a ticking clock in the corner of the FAFSA that [00:23:00] tells you, you know, how much time, days you have left.

So don’t get stressed by that. As long as you’re filling it out and making progress, it won’t shut off on you. MIFA has webinars for every step of this process, including an Understanding the FAFSA webinar that is recorded, and you can go on and watch that. It will help you walk through the FAFSA of how to fill this out.

So I mentioned the FSA ID. The FSA ID is going to be the credentials that all the contributors will need to access the FAFSA. So each contributor is going to have their own separate username and password. So you’re going to need this. You can set up your FSA ID now. Tonight we’re going to have from four to six FSA ID festival, uh, online where you can pop in on a zoom room and get help from myself or Jennifer, one of our friends and colleagues to create an FSA ID.

And it’s good to just get that out of the way now, [00:24:00] because once you apply for your FSA ID, it does take two to four days to process before you can start your FAFSA. So if you get that out of the way now, then, you know, once it opens on December 1st, you can just get started. And the website is right here on how to access that FSA ID application.

Each contributor does need a separate email address. So you can’t just use one email address for all the contributors. As I mentioned, the student is going to need an FSA ID because they’re going to be one of the contributors. If the student is married, then their spouse will need one. If the, if they did not file jointly or if the spouse, um, you know, file, but you know, filed separately.

And the parent or parents will be listed on the FAFSA as well. So if parents are married and they filed jointly, then only one parent will need the FSA ID and they can fill out the information for both of them. But if the parents [00:25:00] are married and file separately on their taxes, then each parent will need to fill out their section separately.

Now, folks who do not have a social security number can access the FAFSA electronically with the new FAFSA, they can get an FSA ID, and they’ll be able to apply for it through the same website, and they’ll be, um, rather than having a social security match, they’ll be answering, uh, knowledge based questions from, pulled from their credit history to apply for that FSA ID.

So what is going to be reported on the FAFSA? It’s going to be general. Demographic information, you know, name, phone number, address, all that good stuff, but also citizenship status. Um, so all U. S. citizens and eligible non citizens can receive federal aid. Here in Massachusetts, undocumented students may be eligible for mass in state tuition and aid from the state of Massachusetts.

So they might not be eligible [00:26:00] for federal aid, but they may qualify for Mass State Aid through the new MASFA form, which I have a slide on Mass State Aid at the end, which I’ll go over that. You’re also going to be reporting all the colleges that the student is applying to. And once this form is submitted, the information will go to each of those colleges.

So you can fill out up to 20 colleges initially on the FAFSA. It will be sent to it can be sent up to 20 colleges and if the students applying to more, they can send it to more colleges after the form is submitted and processed, then they can make changes to the form. So the parents information is going to be on here as well.

So if the parents. are married, whether same sex marriage, it doesn’t matter. Um, both parents are going to be on that form on that FAFSA form. If the parents live together, whether they’re married or not, both parents will be on the form. Now, in the case of a divorce or [00:27:00] separated situation, it doesn’t have to be a legal separation.

It could be, you know, a new separation. Um, The parent that’s going to fill out the form, the FAFSA form, is going to be the parent who provided more financial support to the student in the last 12 months and their spouse if they are remarried. So if parents, let’s say parent is, you know, mother and father and they’re divorced, um, But they provide equal support.

So I’ll know a lot of families, you know, they’re, they’re splitting everything down the middle. If it is 50 50, usually it could be a little bit more than 50 for one or the other, then you’re going to want to use the parent with a greater income and assets, if it, if it is a true 50 50 split now for students who might have legal guardians and they don’t have parents or, you know, the parents might.

They might not have access to the parent information, um, and they’re in a legal guardianship, then they do not need [00:28:00] a parent information on that form. So there will be a section that the student fills out that they’re going to be asked a lot of these questions, and it will automatically, um, the form is smart enough, has a good skip logic to basically skip over, um, the parent section based on how the student is, uh, you know, answering some of those questions.

The number of dependents and the number in the family is going to be listed there. It will pull from the IRS as well, but you can update that as well as the number of children in college will be listed on the form. Now that’s not going to be used in the calculation for federal and state aid. Excuse me, if you have more than one kid in college at the same time, but some colleges may want to use that.

To determine their own institutional aid. So some colleges are going to use the information on the FAFSA for their own institutional aid as well. Financial information is going to be on [00:29:00] there for high school seniors right now who are filling out the 2526 form in December. You’re going to be pulling in your 23 income and income from the IRS.

So it’s a very easy process. It’s almost so easy now with the new FAFSA that folks don’t even realize that their IRS information has been added to the FAFSA. You basically just have to provide consent in it and it pre fills the information. Both tax and untaxed income that appears on the tax return is going to be filtered right onto your FAFSA form to make it a lot easier for you.

Parent and student assets are also going to be reported, um, so the value of checking, savings accounts, businesses, farms, you know, the assets of those properties, maybe a vacation property, you’re going to also include any education savings accounts, like your 529 plan. And that’s going to be reported if you have a 529 plan, for example, which a, you know, a [00:30:00] plan that a lot of families have used to save for college, that’s going to be reported as an asset of the parent, not for the beneficiary who would be the student.

And that’s good because parent assets are treated much more favorably in the financial aid formulas. Um, and just also keep in mind that income is a big driver. on the financial aid form. So the income is really going to be a lot of what determines how much aid you’re going to receive, but assets are considered.

Now you’re not going to be reporting as an asset, the primary, the value of your primary residence. So that’s not going to be asked for as well as any of your retirement funds. You don’t want to be reporting that or life insurance. So it’s really just, you know, cash on hand investments. things that are outside of your retirement plans.

And child support received is going to be reported as an asset. Debt is not reported on the form, um, unless it’s, you know, debt related to [00:31:00] an asset. So credit card debt, student loan debt, none of that is reported on this form. Now, The FAFSA is the first form you’ll need to fill out. Some of you may already have started filling out the CSS profile as well.

So the CSS profile is a form that’s used by many colleges that have Their own institutional aid to give out usually typically private colleges with bigger endowments, and they want to ask a lot more questions in the simple FAFSA form is asking to determine their own institutional aid. There is a cost for this form students can use their college board login to apply.

Now, a family who has income of 100, 000 or less or meets other federal needs based mean criteria. Then they won’t have to pay for the fee, but there is a fee, so there could be a fee waiver depending on your income. Um, but if you do end up having to pay for the fee, it’s 25 to have [00:32:00] the information sent to one school, and then 16 for each school on top of that.

Now, with the CSS profile form, the non custodial parents also are going to fill out their own CSS profile form. So the way that will work is, You know, the student and whoever the student is living with will fill out the profile form, pay the fee if they need to, and then put in the email address of the non custodial parent.

And that parent will get their own separate private profile form that they fill out. And if they are remarried, their spouse’s information will be on there as well. So it is, you know, there is a secure. Divider. So parents, you know, especially divorced or separated parents can’t see each other’s information.

We do have a webinar for this as well on MIFA. org. We just launched a new website to make all of this. It’s very easy to find. So check that out if you need help, um, filling out the profile form. [00:33:00] Now some colleges, they may use the FAFSA for their own institutional aid. They may use the profile or they may have their own institutional application that they want you to fill out to determine your eligibility for their own institutional aid.

So that’s why it’s really important to keep a list of all the colleges. And know what forms do they require and what are the deadlines for admissions and financial aid. Now after you apply, after you submit your FAFSA, excuse me, the colleges that you listed on that form and the state that you reside in if they offer scholarships will receive that data electronically in addition to the feds.

And then the student, once that FAFSA’s process a couple days later, they’ll get what’s called an FSS, so their FAFSA submission summary via email. Very important for everybody to be checking their email during this process. [00:34:00] Don’t ignore the email because it’s going to be important information coming through email.

Now, in addition to filling out the forms, after you submit your information, the college may need to verify some information. So they may ask you for additional documentation, either for their own aid, uh, review, or maybe the feds, um, are asking them to get information from you for their own review. And we’ll talk about verification in a second, uh, in a little bit more detail.

But then the colleges, once they get all that information, they’ll review your applications to determine your eligibility and give you a financial aid offer once the student is accepted. Financial aid, maybe it may come with the admissions offer, um, or, you know, a week or two later, depends on the school, uh, but you can find out how that’s going to work usually on the college’s website, um, or if you’re attending, you know, maybe one of the financial aid sessions, um, at an open house or something like that.

Now I mentioned [00:35:00] verification. Not everybody’s going to have to go through this process. Um, it really depends on the family and what schools are looking for and whether, you know, the Department of Ed selected you for verification. But those requests are going to come from the college, even if it’s on behalf of the Department of Ed.

And you do have to comply with that information because your financial aid won’t be finalized until you get in the information that they’re asking for. So it could be business statements, tax return transcripts. They may have a worksheet for you to fill out. Again, not everybody’s going to have to go through this, but if you do, um, have to submit the information you get this request, make sure that you respond to it quickly.

And if you have questions about what the college is looking for, then definitely, um. You know, ask them what what they need. Now this, these requests could come through mail, email, or it could be a request in the college’s, um, web portal. [00:36:00] So make sure a student is logging into that regularly as well for all the schools they’re applying to.

Excuse me. Okay, so the financial aid office at the college or university is there to assist families. So I, I talk to a lot of families all the time, every day, and some of the questions I get a lot of concerns I hear are really unfounded where families are worried that if they ask financial aid questions, or if they apply for financial aid, or they ask for more aid or ask how their aid was.

You know, determined or anything like that, they won’t don’t want to be perceived as complaining or asking too much questions and have that impact the students admissions decision. And I just want to reassure you that that is not how financial aid offices operate. They are there their job is to try and get you as much financial aid as you’re eligible for based on budgets and allocations so they want, [00:37:00] they want to help you, and they want to answer your questions so they can.

Answer questions and a lot of the times this is on their website about how you determined their financial aid, how, what their criteria is to maintain merit or need based aid, that kind of thing. If you get a very large, you know, outside scholarship, will that impact your financial aid offer? Um, you know, if there’s changes in the family circumstances, remember you’re filling this out, maybe in December.

By the time the student makes the decision or maybe gets financial aid offers in March or April, maybe a parent has lost a job or there’s some sort of, um, you know, situation in the family, medical, um, situation, God forbid, a natural disaster, you know, up here in the northeast, we get those, um, blizzards and nor’easters.

So. Things happen, so you can appeal if there’s a circumstance like that, and that will go through the financial aid office. So really [00:38:00] think of them as a resource there to help you. You can call them, email them. It’s good to keep stuff in writing and have a record trail, um, but also sometimes they have a chat online, or you can even maybe schedule a an online zoom call, a meeting.

So, you know, virtually if you can’t get to their office in person and you really want to, you know, see someone face to face, especially if it’s a school that’s far from home and hard to get to, that’s always a good option. And colleges are used to setting those up now as well. So I’ll just stop real quick to see Jennifer, if we have any questions.

We do not have any open questions at this time. All right. Great. Sounds like you’re taking care of those behind the scenes. Thank you. All right. So let’s talk about how colleges come up with the financial aid offers. How do they make these decisions? It’s not, it is standardized formulas. There are a [00:39:00] lot, there’s a lot of oversight about with financial aid.

So they have very strict criteria they need to stick to. And basically what they’re going to do is, In a simple format of how they figure it out is they’re going to take your cost of attendance, which is going to be the billed cost, such as tuition and fees. Students living on campus and food and housing is also going to be billed costs.

If the students living off campus, then food and housing is part of the budget, but it’s just considered an unbilled or indirect expense. But it is still part of that cost of attendance. Transportation, books and supplies, personal expenses are all part of the. Cost of attendance or sticker price that a college has.

Then they will take your student aid index, which is going to be a number that’s determined from filling out that FAFSA, and it represents your family’s financial strength for that current year to pay for one year of schooling. The same federal formula is used for [00:40:00] every family. As I mentioned earlier, income has a much heavier weight on these formulas for For really all federal, state, and institutional aid, much more than assets.

Up to about 5. 6 percent of assets are considered, so that’s a pretty small percentage comparatively. Um, and colleges may have their own institutional formula that they’re using. But at the end of the day, it is the call, it is the family’s primary responsibility to pay the bill. Now, if you have done an SAI calculator or, you know, when you fill out your FAFSA and you get your FSS, your submission summary back, it will have your student aid index on there.

Now, if it’s a really low number, you know, don’t get too excited because that’s not necessarily what you’ll be expected to pay. You most likely will be expected to pay more than that. Um, in most situations because most colleges don’t have the budgets or the [00:41:00] endowments to be able to fill up a hundred percent of a family’s Need so they’ll take that cost of attendance deduct your sai your student aid index and whatever’s left over That’s your need or your financial aid eligibility that the colleges will then try to fill in So if we look at this college that costs 45 000 They’re trying to fill up this bucket.

So let’s pretend this, this square here, this bucket is, is the cost of attendance. You’re always going to have to pay your SAI first, your student aid index. In this example, it’s 5, 000. So that’s always going to go in. You’re always going to have to come up with that. Then the college is going to put on there, on the financial aid offer, all the free monies.

So the free money, merit, and need based scholarships from the school, feds, and state. That will be on there. Then you will see the federal student loan. So freshman year loan of 5, 500. [00:42:00] Then if the student’s eligible for that work study, you might see that on there to help pay for some indirect expenses. So getting close to filling up this bucket, they’re doing pretty well giving financial aid to this family, but they have unmet need of 5, 000.

So they fell 5, 000 short of meeting the family’s full financial eligibility of 40, 000. So when I mentioned S. A. is usually student loan. Starting point. This is what I’m talking about. The SAI of this family is 5, 000, but they also have to come up with that unmet need of 5, 000. So really, they’re going to be paying 10.

And this is again, just an example, using some round numbers. If you’re, if you’re a family who has younger students, uh, freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and you’re Dying to know what your essay I will be or what you might be expected to pay to college. Every college has what’s called a net price calculator and they’re required to have this on their website.

It’s a private [00:43:00] tool that the college does not see the data. They don’t collect any of the data on there. That allows you to fill out information basic information to determine what you might be eligible for at that school. Now, every school’s calculator might be different. Um. So it might not be, some might not be as sophisticated as others, so some might even include merit based aid in their financial aid calculator, their net price calculator.

They might ask for GPAs and test scores to give you an example or an estimate what you might be expected to pay at that school. And again, it is an estimate, it’s not a full FAFSA form or a full CSS profile form, but it might give you, you know, a good, a good, a good idea of what you might be needing to come up with at a school.

Now, financial aid offers can vary from school to school, how they are presented, the format, and the amounts can vary. So, one school might email you the form, one might, for freshmen, send you a paper [00:44:00] financial aid offer, and another might send it through their college web portal, or might do all three. It really depends on the school.

So just be aware of how you might be receiving the financial aid offers and know that, you know, they might be different from school to school. So here we have three colleges as an example that costs 45, 000 each and we have our 5, 000 SAI. So the family’s eligible for 40, 000 at each school. Now there, you can see that not every school is meeting 100 percent of the family’s need.

So that’s very common. So College A. They, they have the, the budget and the student might be a very, you know, meritorious student at that school. And they’re getting a lot more grants and scholarships than they are at College BNC. You can see the student loans are the same, work studies the same, because the colleges cost the same.

So they should be eligible for about the same federal and state aid at the schools that cost the same. [00:45:00] So why would that be that college B and C aren’t giving as much? Could be a number of different factors. You can ask the college, especially if it’s a school that’s a competitor school of theirs, it costs about the same why you’re getting so much less.

It could be just a matter of budgets. It could be, let’s say for example, college C, maybe that’s a more competitive college than college A or B. So they’re not giving the student as much merit-based aid, for example. It could be just, you know, College B and C don’t have as much money as College A. It could be a number of different things, but you can ask the college about that.

Over 600 colleges nationwide are participating in what’s called the College Cost Transparency Initiative to make these financial aid offers more clear and standardized across the country so that it’s a little bit easier to figure out what your bottom line is at each school. And MIFA has a great process in the spring, understanding your financial aid offers.

We have a whole [00:46:00] curriculum to help you through webinars and online services to help you through this process. Now, on these financial aid offers, again, same cost, same SAI, you can see that the unmet need looks like it’s the same from each, at each school. But you really do want to look at the line items in the financial aid offer, because not all financial aid offers are the same, even if it looks like the bottom line is the same.

So you can see, you know, College A, most of their money is being put into, you know, free money, grants and scholarships, whereas College C. In college B aren’t giving as much in college C isn’t giving any free money, uh, but they’re putting a boatload of money on a federal parent loan on the financial aid offer.

Now, if you see a federal plus loan on a financial aid offer, that is a loan that parents can take out for their student. It’s over a 9 percent interest rate, so even higher than MIFA interest rates. So [00:47:00] that might not be the way you want to pay your bill and it’s not financial aid. The parent loans outside of that federal student loan or not financial aid.

But what colleges might do sometimes, and not all colleges do that, most don’t, package federal PLUS loans, is they might put that parent loan in there as an example of how you can pay your unmet need. So it’s a little, it, It can be a little bit confusing, um, and some parents come up to me and say, you know, I don’t want to take this loan.

It’s too expensive. Or I want to pay with a different, a MIFA loan or my college savings plans or a payment plan and, and you don’t have to use that loan. They’re just showing as an example of how you might be able to pay the bill. All right. So I know we only have about 10 minutes or so, and I want to make sure everybody gets this done in their lunch break, but I’ll stop real quick to see if there’s any burning questions with Jennifer.

Okay. Okay. No questions. All right. Thank you. [00:48:00] All right. So how do families make the numbers work? How do you, how do they pay this bill? So I have an example here of a combination strategy for a 20, 000 balance. If you have 20, 000 in the bank and that’s your bill, then you have a college savings plan. You can pay that, you know, with cash if you want, you know, write a check or pay it online.

But most families, especially if they have a big balance like this, they might not be able to do it all from savings. They might not have saved all of it. And that’s very common. So you can also utilize, you know, present income such as payment plans or your current wages or salary and future income in the form of loans.

So in this example, Rather than put it all on a loan for 20, 000 at about 200 a month, this family can afford more than that minimum loan payment. So we don’t want to borrow right away. We want to borrow as a last resort. That should always be the last thing you consider. So in this example, the student worked over the summer.

They’re going to put in 1, [00:49:00] 000. Maybe parents saved about 16, 000. So they’re going to do 4, 000 a year over four years. So that they have a little bit in savings. So there we go. 5, 000 using past income and savings chipped off the bill. Then payment plans. Every college has a payment plan, which is an interest free way that you can spread out part or all of what you owe over a period of 10 months or so.

Interest free with a small fee and maybe 50 to a hundred dollars to participate. So in this example, they’re gonna put 500 a month ’cause they can afford more than that loan payment, uh, towards a $5,000 payment plan. So by using savings and payment plan, they’ve, they’ve chipped their bill in half. They still to borrow 10,000 on an education loan at maybe a hundred dollars a month for that $10,000 loan.

But it’s better than borrowing the full 20,000 off the bat. So even, you know, taking a few thousand off the loan by putting it in a [00:50:00] savings plan, you know, payment plan or using savings, that can save you a lot, not only in what you’re borrowing, but the interest that’s going to accrue. So some of the questions and conversations every family should be having now, especially for high school seniors.

Is really just understanding what is going to be the bottom line at each school. You’ll really be able to get that net price once you have all your financial aid offers in hand. And what is, you know, the right path for the student? Not every student is going to be on a typical, you know, go into a four year school right off the bat.

There’s lots of options, um, for students. So you do want to, you know, be flexible and consider all the options, whether it’s a gap year, community college, um, maybe military, Peace Corps, you know, whatever it might be. You know, every student has to kind of figure out, you know, what’s going to work best for them, because not every student and not every family is the same.

But you do want to make sure that you have a balanced list of the student, of the schools the student’s going to apply to. [00:51:00] Obviously, on the academic side, reach schools, mid range schools, maybe, you know, financial safety schools. You want to have some financial safety schools on that list as well. Don’t rule out a college from applying.

Don’t rule a student out from applying to a college because it has a high cost of attendance. Some colleges cost over 90, 000. That’s a lot of money, but most families aren’t coming anywhere near paying that full sticker price. So you might get enough money at a private college that has a high price tag where it might cost about the same to go there as it will UMass Amherst or maybe, you know, a little bit more where it might be affordable.

So, you know, give yourself lots of options. Consider that community college route, uh, to save maybe students, if they, you know, had some struggles with their grades in high school and they need another year or two to get, you know, some study skills and time management skills under their belt. Get some of those [00:52:00] core classes out of the way at a community college.

It’s going to cost a lot less. And they’ll be able to transfer those credits to another public college and sometimes even to private colleges. So it can be a good way to save as well as, you know, help the student is they’re trying to figure out what they want to do, maybe what they want to major in. You also want to consider, do you have other kids coming down the line that you might need to?

Borrow for or help pay for. You don’t want to max yourself out borrowing on the first kid. If there might be others coming down the road. So you just want to come and think about that. Also very important to think about a four year plan. So it’s an annual process. You have to fill out the FAFSA each year, but you are really kind of committing to a four year plan.

So if you can’t make the numbers you work year one or barely can make the numbers work at a particular college, It’s not going to get easier, sophomore, junior, senior year, it’s going to get harder to pay for that. [00:53:00] Um, so just know, you know, what is that going to be? And if borrowing is part of that conversation and student is expected to help maybe pay some of those parent or co side loans back, will they be able to do so based on the field they’re going into?

What is going to be their starting salary? Or do they need to go to grad school? Um, and maybe borrow for grad school. Let’s say they want to be a doctor. You don’t want to over borrow as an undergrad, knowing you might have a loan of medical school loans. So, got to kind of keep that long term plan in, in place in, in, in your periphery as well.

And then, of course, other needs, such as, um, students who might have disabilities or learning styles, or they might need an IEP plan at a, at a college. You want to make sure that The college they’re attending is going to support them in those aspects as well as the academic and the financial side, and sometimes students might, might want to take a gap year to, um, work [00:54:00] or, you know, try and figure out maybe, maybe go to a prep school or something like that.

So I’ll leave this, you’re going to get these slides. So you’ll get this website where you can see all the, all the great programs that Massachusetts has to offer. Again, I mentioned that. A lot more is going into the higher ed budget in Massachusetts the last couple of years, so there’s more money available and more programs available for students to access.

So Mass Educate has free community college for all students, tuition fees and book allowances based on income. And then there’s Mass Reconnect for students who are over 25 years of age that don’t have a bachelor’s degree to get. free community college credits. And then there’s additional, um, programs such as MassGrant Plus, which is even more, uh, help for students, especially lower income students.

And then for undocumented students, they can now apply for [00:55:00] MassState aid and receive in state tuition rates. Now there is some caveats to this tuition equity law where. They need to have been a student for at least three years at a Massachusetts high school. So there are, you know, rules that they have to abide by.

But there is a lot of resources out there as well as being able to transfer, you know, start at community college. Um, maybe even if they start a four year school, uh, commute to school to save some money on tuition, uh, for room and board, for example, lots of great resources in Massachusetts at the public colleges as well as the private colleges to save.

So I’m just going to keep going through the end and then we’ll, we’ll do question and answer at the end. So I mentioned, uh, Free resources FAFSA day. Usually the events are October through February, but this year it’ll be December. Probably even beyond February this year to help [00:56:00] families fill out their FAFSA online.

You basically join online and enter a Zoom room or private Zoom room with someone like myself or from a college to help you fill out the FAFSA if you get stuck. If you need in person support, Mass EDCO has resources all over the state. They have different locations that you can go to to get help in person.

And MIFA Pathway, which again is MIFA’s free college and career planning tool that is online, has great, um, resources to help with, you know, there’s college, um, calculators and things like that for families to use as well as career planning, uh, resources that are all free of charge. You shouldn’t really have to pay anybody to get through this process.

So this timeline is on our website as well. So you have the website down here. But basically, where we are right now, we’re in, if we’re in fall of senior year for seniors, you’re, you’re in a really busy time right [00:57:00] now. A lot of bullets on that fall senior year. So, applying to schools, getting your essays, letters of recommendation in hand, applying for the FAFSA, getting your FSA ID.

There’s lots to do right now, filling out that profile. And then. Through the winter that will continue potentially with the financial aid forms and you want to start applying for those private scholarships in the winter as well. Now, come May 1st. That is the national decision deadline that every student has to accept where they’re going to go to school.

So you have to choose a school by May 1st. So I’ll leave this slide up just for a second here if you want to scan any of these QR codes. Again, if you sign up for those emails, the blue QR code. You’re going to hear about FAFSA today. You’re going to hear about our FSA ID festivals, like the one we’re having tonight, but you can also get your FSA ID now, even if you can’t fill out your FAFSA.

You can be researching those deadlines [00:58:00] and required applications. You can access that timeline I mentioned on the yellow QR code, and any of our MEFA webinars, the green QR code. So again, I’ll go back to this slide so you can send it for the emails, but I do want to let you know that on the last slide of the FAFSA.

PowerPoint that you’ll receive. We’ll have our phone number and our email address there. So MIFA is available free of charge Monday through Friday, nine to five to call us if you have questions, email if you if you’re more comfortable doing that, whatever it might be throughout the whole college enrollment process.

We’re there to help. We have experts on hand that can help you through. So I’ll put it back on this slide and I’ll just leave this up here so that you can scan it if you want to send up for the emails and I will open it up for questions with Jennifer to see if there’s any that you haven’t been able to answer or you think.

Everybody should hear, um, no, we didn’t really have to too many questions. I just put a [00:59:00] link to the page of all the colleges that require the CSS profile. So that’s in the chat, but oh great nothing open right and we’ll have all that resource on me for. org as well so check out me for. org we have a great podcast as well if you if you like podcasts.

Lots of free guidance and education. We’re always coming out with new stuff, um, and new curriculum. So hopefully we’ll see you at one of our webinars coming up. But thank you everybody for joining us today and thanks Jennifer for helping with the Q& A. And we will email a link to this recording and the slides, uh, probably in the next day or so to everybody who registered.

So thanks everybody and have a great day.