10 Tips for Getting More Financial Aid

Schools are approving a record number of appeals and giving more aid

By Kim Clark

Posted June 16, 2009

During the boom years, the nation's college financial aid officers used to swap tales about trivial, selfish appeals for more aid that students and parents occasionally filed, like the father who wanted more grants for his daughter because he'd just spent $25,000 on another daughter's wedding and the mother who demanded more scholarships for her child so the mother could spend her savings on a cruise.

Not this year. Colleges say they are being flooded with all-too-serious appeals for additional aid. And many colleges say they are scraping together extra grants or scholarships for the vast majority of appealers who can document a decline in income or an increase in expenses. But financial aid offices warn anyone with hidden income not to assume that appeals are risk-free: Appealers whose tax and other documents show that they falsified aid applications can lose all their aid and be fined or even sent to prison.


Mary Smith-Hammond, who retired from her job as a financial aid officer for the University of California-Berkeley in 2007, was called back this year to help with a big jump in appeals. She estimates that she has approved more aid for about 85 percent of the appeals she has processed so far, up from a historical average of about 50 percent. "The unemployment rate wasn't as high back then. And we had different standards," she says. Smith-Hammond, who long ago denied the appeal from the mother who wanted to save her money for a cruise, says she is even approving appeals for students whose parents last year reported incomes of about $400,000 but this year are collecting unemployment insurance. "Their stocks are gone, their 401(k) is gone. They may only keep their house for another year," she says. Some have seen their industries get wiped out, reducing the chances they'll find another high-paying job. "I have not seen an appeal that was frivolous" yet this year, Smith-Hammond says.
Normally, colleges award financial aid for each academic year based on a family's financial situation in the previous year, as reported by the family on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. But the U.S. Department of Education this spring asked colleges to help those whose parents have lost their jobs or suffered a pay cut in 2009 by estimating a family's need for aid based on this year's lower income instead. Aid officers are also taking into account expenses that aren't reported on the FAFSA, such as medical bills.
Students or parents who feel they have a real need for extra aid will have more luck if they follow these Dos and Don't's suggested by Smith-Hammond and several other veteran aid officers.

Do:

• Make sure you've filed all the necessary aid applications. If you haven't done so already, fill out the FAFSA. If your college is one of the 300 or so that also requires the College Board's CSS/Financial Aid Profile, fill that out as well. If you have filed the aid applications, check them to make sure they accurately represent last year's finances.

• Check your college's financial aid Web page. Some have instructions or forms for filing an appeal. If you don't see any instructions, call the office and ask for help.

• Send a letter to your college's financial aid office asking for a "professional judgment" review of your award. Give specific reasons why you need more aid. "Give actual numbers. Don't just say, 'My medical expenses are high,' " explains Patricia Williams, director of financial aid at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. "Detail what the medical costs are, how much insurance paid, and how much you paid. We work with formulas that require real numbers."

• Provide documentation for your claims, such as copies of W-2s, tax forms, hospital bills, and the like.

• Send the appeal and documentation as soon as possible. Some aid is first come, first served. "When the money has been committed, the school may not be able to offer (latecomers) any assistance," says Pat Watkins, director of financial aid for Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Don't:

• Lie or shade the truth. Most aid officers demand lots of corroborating evidence, and they scrutinize it. And the government can take back your aid, fine you, and even send you to prison for lying on the FAFSA.

• Let shame, embarrassment, or ego stop you from filing a legitimate appeal. You've got lots of company right now, notes Smith-Hammond. "It is your right. You are a taxpayer. You need help, and we are here to help you," she adds.

• Demand grants to replace student federally backed Stafford and Perkins loans or earnings from a work-study job. Although a handful of schools are promising enough grants to allow low-income students to graduate debt-free, the vast majority of schools can't afford to give out that much aid. "The basic premise of financial aid is that the student and family will do all they can first. Taking out loans is how the student does his or her part," McDaniel's Williams says.

• Expect a bankruptcy filing to guarantee you more aid. Since bankruptcy typically wipes out debts, colleges may conclude that you now have more money to spend on tuition, notes Eckerd's Watkins.

• Have your appeal filed by your accountant. Financial aid officers say the most persuasive appeals are filed by students themselves. Letters from parents also are often rewarded. If you can still afford to pay an accountant big bucks, aid officers may suspect you can afford more tuition, too.

How to ask for more financial aid

Focus on Financial Aid

Is there such a thing as negotiating your financial aid award package? Yes and no. No in the sense that your school’s financial aid office is not like a car dealership with a dean of admissions in the back room who will give you the manager’s Wednesday special. Yes in that if you can prove beyond question that your financial need and circumstances are greater than what’s provided via the usual financial aid paperwork like the FAFSA, schools can be flexible.

Before we get started, I recommend strongly reading this article on StudentLoanNetwork.com about how to read a financial aid award letter.

Get Your Budget In Order

If you don’t use any kind of personal finance software, be it a desktop application like Quicken or a web-based application like Wesabe, Mint, or Geezeo, I strongly recommend starting with one. The web-based applications are free, so if you’re trying to save money from every angle, start with one of those.

Start by importing any electronic records of your finances and your family’s finances for at least 90 days. You’ll want to take the time to categorize your expenses in terms of mandatory and discretionary, followed by breaking them out into individual categories, like mortgage or rent, utilities, etc.

Once you’ve got your budget broken out, you’ll want to compare it against your award letter, especially looking at what kind of discretionary income you have compared to the expected family contribution, or out of pocket expenses. If your EFC from your award letter divided by 12 (for what’s essentially a monthly EFC) is greater than your discretionary expenses budget (dining out, entertainment, etc.) then you’ve got a good starting point for a conversation about what you can and cannot afford.

Get All Your Paperwork Together

If you’re going to be asking for more financial aid based on changed economic circumstances, have ample paperwork available to back up your claims and requests. Did someone lose a job in the family? Have termination notices, unemployment insurance, or other papers ready. Did your income change? Use any of the budgeting software described above to graphically illustrate your monthly cash flow, along with things like pay stubs, tax returns, etc.

Know What To Ask For

It’s not enough to ask for more money. That’s way too generic. Ask for specific amounts, ask for specific assistance, and try to know some of the different types of things financial aid administrators are permitted to do. Financial aid administrators are permitted to make professional judgement overrides on:

- dependency. If you can prove that you are an independent student due to the involuntary dissolution of your family (i.e. parents in jail, social services removed you from the home due to abuse, etc.) a financial aid administrator can override the dependency requirements for undergraduate students, letting you complete the FAFSAand other financial aid paperwork without parental income information.

- future earnings and income. If you can prove that you or your family has had a significant change in income that impacts your ability to pay for college, a financial aidadministrator can grant you more assistance. Be prepared with termination notices, tax returns, and every scrap of paper you can find to make your case.

Updated April 2, 2009: The Department of Education has offered additional guidance for this scenario. See this post at FinancialAidNews.com about the changes.

- cost of attendance. If you can prove that expenses in your student budget (transportation, medical, disability, dependents, and a few other select cases) do not reflect your situation, a financial aid administrator can alter your student budget, allowing for additional aid. If you pursue this override, again, be prepared to document every step of the way to show why, for example, traveling to and from your school requires a transportation budget greater than allotted.

- special circumstances. In some cases, parents divorce during the financial aid award year, but the FAFSA cannot be changed to reflect the divorce. With appropriate court documentation noting the dissolution of the marriage, a student can ask for a special circumstances override that will let them use the income of the custodial parent.

There are other, more narrow circumstances that apply as well. If you don’t know what to ask for, haul as much documentation to your financial aid administrator as possible so that they have as complete a picture of your finances as possible.

Be Polite

The single thing that will do the most good or harm in getting additional aid is how you approach the financial aid office. The best time to approach them is before you need their help, as is the case with virtually all professional networking. Stop by from time to time casually, and say hello. Ask if there are any new scholarships that have been posted. Check in. If you find a scholarship that you’re not eligible for but other students at your school might be, let someone in the office know about it so it can be posted in the office. If you want a real education in financial aid, apply for a work study job in thefinancial aid office.

If you know your parents are, shall we say, less than diplomatic, then try to mediate any discussions with the financial aid office so that overly aggressive or insistent requests don’t harm your chances of getting help.

Check Your School For Scholarships

One of the tips in our Scholarship Search Secrets eBook talks about using keywords for finding scholarships in Google. Another tip is to restrict your search to your school’s web site using the site: restrictor. Go to Google.com and try out this search:

scholarship site:yourschool.edu

For example, if I wanted to search for scholarships at Franklin & Marshall College, I’d type:

scholarship site:fandm.edu

This restricts the search only to F&M, showing scholarships for this particular school. I’d bet that the financial aid staff at F&M probably know about half of these – and even the individual professors in the departments awarding the scholarships may not necessarily know about them.

Try it at your school to see what’s lurking on the college’s web site that could help you pay.

Ask!

Above all else, ask. Ask politely, ask frequently, but ask. There’s an old joke about God and winning the lottery:

One Sunday, Shane walks into a church and kneels down at the altar and begins to pray to God, stating that he owes many people money and asks to win the lottery. After he is done praying, he gets up and walks out. The next Sunday he goes to the same church and pleads with God through his prayers to let him win the lottery so that he can pay these people back.

The next Sunday comes around and Shane enters the church very upset and close to tears, he kneels at the alter and asks why God is doing this to him and say’s that he has asked to win the lottery for three weeks now and nothing. Suddenly there came a loud bang of thunder and God spoke, “Shane, meet me halfway: Buy a bloody ticket.”

If you don’t ask, you’ll never get the opportunity for more financial aid. Schools andfinancial aid offices are swamped right now with people needing additional help – make sure you ask for help if you need it!

Campus Based Aid

The Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (FSEOG), Federal Work-Study (FWS), and Federal Perkins Loan programs are called campus-based programs because they're administered directly by the financial aid office at each participating school. Not all schools participate in all three programs. Check with your school's financial aid office to find out which programs they participate in.
How much aid you receive from each of these programs depends on your financial need, on the amount of other aid you receive, and on the availability of funds at your college or career school. Unlike the Federal Pell Grant Program, which provides funds to every eligible student, the campus-based programs provide a certain amount of funds for each participating school to administer each year. When the money for a program is gone, no more awards can be made from that program for that year. So, make sure you apply for federal student aid as early as you can. Each school sets its own deadlines for campus-based funds, and those deadlines are usually earlier than the Department of Education's deadline for filing a FAFSA.