5 Fatal FAFSA Mistakes

5 Fatal FAFSA Mistakes

February is Financial Aid Awareness month so I thought it would be a great time to review the 5 most common overlooked or misunderstood items to maximizing your Financial Aid award.

The most common mistake is not filing a FAFSA application because you believe that you are not eligible for or won’t qualify for any Federal aid. Remember that states and most schools are going to require a competed FAFSA in order to distribute any type of local aid including merit aid which is not based on financial need. In fact nearly all students that complete the FAFSA receive some type of aid.

Shawn O’Neill, Director of Financial Aid at Ramapo College, NJ cites incorrect spelling or usage of an individuals name as a recurring theme. “Write your name as it appears on your Social Security card.” and be consistent in using it across your college applications and correspondence.

Shawn also offers this critical tip for parents who are remarried, “you must include the step father’s or stepmother’s financial information when calculating your parents total financial profile.”

New Jersey residents applying to any of the state’s public institutions must list an instate school as their first choice in order to be considered for state assistance programs like TAG. Do this even if it’s not necessarily your first choice college.

Finally when you’ve completed your FAFSA application and printed out your “confirmation” page look for the “Optional Feature - Start Your State Application” in the lower left corner of the page to update your State of New Jersey aid application with the information you already entered on the federal form. If you missed this step log onto www.hesaa.org and click on the word “Apply” in the blue box on the left. You’ll have to register and manually enter the data but it could be worth significant dollars for your student.

There are numerous resources for parents and students available on the web. You can also seek out a financial aid professional or attend one of the free NJ FAFSA day events sponsored by NJASFAA and HESAA. Dates and locations can be found at http://njfafsadays.org