PSC-ED-FSA-TISD
Moderator: Christal Simms
12-15-16/3:37 pm CT
Confirmation # 1528335
Page 1
PSC-ED-FSA-TISD
Moderator: Christal Simms
December 15, 2016
3:37 pm CT
Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants will be on a listen-only mode throughout the duration of today’s conference. And today’s call is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. And now I would like to turn the call over to (Joann Himiss). You may now begin.
(Joann Himiss): Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you very much for joining me for tonight’s Webinar. We will be talking about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the FAFSA. We’re going to do a line by line demonstration. My name is (Joann Himiss) with Federal Student Aid. And we’re going to go ahead and start.
For this Webinar we do have people from Federal Student Aid assisting and answering your questions so if at any time you have questions during the Webinar please feel free to ask them in the Q&A section and we will try to get to them as soon as possible. So here’s an overview of what we will be discussing today. Why it’s important to go to college, what is financial aid, when do I apply, how do I apply? We’re going to do the line by line FAFSA on the demonstration Web site and we’re going to share some resources on where you can get more information about federal student aid.
So as we see here it’s important to go to college in order to get a better job with a better income. This information we got from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And you can find more information on our Web site or on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site.
So what is financial aid? At Federal Student Aid we have three types of different financial aid. We have grants which are free money. We have loans, which is borrowed money, and we have work study. Every year there is over $150 billion available from the government to help students pay for college in forms of grants, loans and work-study programs.
So for this year the FAFSA opened on October 1. So when do I apply for aid? If you are attending college for the 2017, 2018 school year you can have started applying as early as October 1. So if you are a current senior that will be graduating high school in May you can apply for the FAFSA now.
On our Web site on studentaid.gov we do have this table available that will give you the dates when you can apply for college and it will also give you the tax information that you will need to use for each of the FAFSAs. So for the ‘17, ‘18 FAFSA we will be using the tax and income information from 2015. So now we will go ahead and share my screen and go directly to the demo site so if you can hang on just a second.
All right so here is what the real FAFSA Web site looks like. This - what I am using right now is a demonstration site. So it is not a real transmission to federal student aid but it does have normal errors that will pop up when you are doing a FAFSA. So the FAFSA Web site is fafsa.gov, so F-A-F-S-A.G-O-V. That is the Web site where you go to apply for the FAFSA. You could also Google that or go directly from student aid.gov.
So now I will go and start as if I am filling out a new FAFSA. So I go here. I am pretending that I am a senior in high school that is filling out a new FAFSA for the first time. I will be attending college in August 2017. So I click on Start a New FAFSA and since this is only a demonstration site I will not be using an FSA ID but when you are doing a live FAFSA you will need an FSA ID. So if you already have one you will have the opportunity to just enter your FSA ID here or you will also get an opportunity to create an FSA ID while you are applying for the FAFSA or filling out the FAFSA.
In this case we will go to enter student’s information. My name will be (Janie Jones). This information that I’m using is just fake made up information. I’m entering my Social Security number. It’s very important that we check and double check our Social Security number when we enter it because those are the - one of the things that we cannot change on the FAFSA. And since this is a high school senior she was born in 1998.
So if you see over here on the right-hand side health and hints it gives you information specifically on where your cursor is located. So if you’re located right - your cursor is located where the student’s date of birth is. So over here on the right-hand side it gives you information about that specific field in the FAFSA so let’s continue. So it gives us a welcome, welcome (Janie). It’s very important. Sometimes it’s basic, it sounds basic but it’s very important to read the instructions carefully.
Sometimes we feel that the application may be difficult but in actuality it’s - it is - it’s not difficult. We just need to read the instructions and we could probably file a FAFSA in about 30 minutes if we have all the information that we need. So over here it asks us to make sure that the information that we have entered is accurate before clicking Next. It also says if you believe that you have already submitted a FAFSA and that the information provided on this page is correct contact us for assistance. So it gives you the phone numbers of where you can contact federal student aid for assistance. So we checked that the information that we entered for name and Social Security is correct and we click Next. Remember that it is necessary for you to have a Social Security number so that - to in order to apply for the FAFSA.
Okay so because this is a high school senior and I am going to attend college on of August 2017 I will be applying for the ‘17, ‘18 FAFSA. So I click here. The Save key is the Save key allows you to save your FAFSA and return at a later time if you cannot complete the application in one sitting. The application will be saved for 45 days or until you submit it for processing.
So over here on the right-hand side it has Help and Hints on how to create a save key. My save key is going to be application - no not application. My save key is going to be college with a Capital C. But it doesn’t matter because I’m going to finish the FAFSA right now. I will not have to come backwards. But just so you know for when you are filing your own FAFSA.
All right on here on the introduction page it gives you basic information and instructions on how to navigate through the FAFSA application. If you do use the Back button on your browser you may lose some data so it’s important that instead of using the Back button on the browser that you actually use the Next or the Previous button that will be here on the actual FAFSA Web site. Also it will give you on the hyperlinks here it will give you additional information about the FAFSA on the Web. So it will give you information on how to get help for completing the FAFSA, how long does it take, what information you need and all that information you can find on here.
So let’s go ahead and click Next. And pay attention that over here on the left-hand side it says Student and it’s blue. And we are filling out information for the student. Right now on the top it still says Student Demographics so we are filling out the student demographic information. It will give us again the last name, the first name, middle initial if the student has one, the Social Security Number. If you notice here it’s grayed out because we cannot change the Social Security Number anymore.
So this student is a female. Right here it asked for the permanent mailing address and this means that the address for where you will be attending college. So this will be your permanent mailing address. In the case of this student who is a dependent student that is still in high school we’re putting her parents mailing address. So this is the address of where the parents live.
All right and it asks about have you lived in the District of Columbia for at least five years? Yes. Now it asks for the telephone number. And it’s important to not put any parentheses and dashes when you are entering the telephone number. So then it asks for an email address. So again I’m going to make up an email address. The email address is important because this is where you will receive the confirmation page and the student aid report or any status of what - how the FAFSA is going.
So this student is single. And she will not be providing her driver’s license information. This is optional. So over here it’ll tell you, it’ll explain to you if you want to provide the information for your driver’s license.
So this here on student eligibility it’ll ask about the citizenship status of the student. So in order to be eligible to file the FAFSA they either need to be a US citizen and or an eligible noncitizen. And on here on the right-hand side it will give you more specification of what each of the statuses is. So if you have any question on your status when you are filing your FAFSA you can go here to help and hints and it will open up links and give you more descriptions. In case your status is not US citizen you can ask about that there are.
So in the case of (Janie) she is a US citizen. And right here on Question 26 it asks what will your high school completion status be when you begin college in ‘17, ‘18? So that means right now (Janie) is still in college - or excuse me in high school but when she goes to college she will have completed her high school diploma. She will have obtained her high school diploma. So that’s what I check.
What will your college grade level be? So over here again on the right-hand side Help and Hints it gives you information on what your grade level in college will be from seven - from July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018. So in the case of (Janie) she has never attended college. This will be her first year and she will be working on her first bachelor’s degree. On this question, Question 31 are you interested in being considered for work-study?
We always recommend that they check yes. This does not commit them to work when they’re in school but it may provide for opportunities that the student may not have been aware that existed. So I always recommend to students that they answer yes to this question.
Will you have your first bachelor’s degree by ‘17, ‘18? In the case of (Janie) know she will not. This question right here, are you of foster youth or were you at any time in the foster care system? In the case of (Janie) know she was not but if you have questions about that for a student of yours or for your specific application you can look on here and it will give you more help with that question. It will also give you a link to your state child welfare agency.
It asks about the highest school complete - highest school grade completed by parent one. In the case of (Janie) we’re just going to put other for parent one and other for parent two because we don’t know what our parent’s education level is. So we’re going to go to next. On here we’re still in the student demographic and it asks about the name of a high school.
So in the case of (Janie) we’re going to put this high school that is in Washington DC. And it’s going to search for it. If you know where the city is located that’s important to answer that. In big cities where there may be different school districts it’s very important to find out with your counselor the school code if you can. If not you can probably try to search with the exact name of the high school because it’s important that you do not get the high school switched in case you’re in another school district. So we are going to select this high school. This is (Janie)’s high school.
Then we hit next. So it says the application has been saved successfully. And if you see over here on the top we are now in the second section of the FAFSA. When you’re filing the FAFSA this is going to go a lot faster but because I’m talking through this it’s taking a little longer. Based on the information that you provided we have determined that you may qualify for federal student aid. So then we continue filling out.
On this section is where we can select up to ten different colleges to add to the FAFSA. If we know the college or university code we can enter that. If you don’t then you can look for it by using the search key. So this student is going to go to a school in Florida and it is in Tampa but I don’t know the school name so we’re going to keep looking.
Here we scroll down and we look for the university and I am looking for this one, University of South Florida System in Tampa. Oh it didn’t add. So that’s one of the errors that can occur when you’re doing a live FAFSA. So we’re going to add it here. And then we’re also going to add a university in Texas.
Okay we can choose up to ten colleges and universities so it’s important to remember that. So we’re just going to add two. If you think that you are going to apply to another school you come back later to the FAFSA even after you’ve completed it to add more schools. You can add up to ten total and they will all receive your FAFSA information once you apply to those schools.
So on this section here it asks you about the housing plan for each school. So for each school we’re going to put on campus because our mom still lives in DC. Now it’s asking all about dependency determination. So the application is saved when you click Next. Remember not to use the Back button on the browser. So were you born before January 1, 1994? No (Janie) was not born before ‘94.
As of today are you married? No (Janie) is not married. At the beginning of ‘17, ‘18 will you be working on a Masters? No (Janie) is working on her first bachelors. Do you now have or will you have children who will receive more than half of their support from you between July 1 and June 30. In the case of (Janie) no she does not.