When Mitchell Generette filed the FAFSA as part of his application to the University of Baltimore, he thought he had completed it successfully. Now a 24-year-old rising sophomore at UB, Generette had previously been a student at St. Mary’s College, but left after two years without attaining a degree. “I ended up owing St. Mary’s $14,000,†he says. His financial aid package had included loans, but despite receiving loan counseling, he didn’t fully grasp that there could be dire consequences if he didn’t attend to his loan debt. “I didn’t know much about it. I saw the mail but didn’t open it. I had a son and knew I didn’t have the money, so I just didn’t deal with it.â€
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Unfortunately, Generette’s loan had gone into default, delaying the processing of his FAFSA at UB. As a member of the inaugural cohort at BridgeEdU (see “A New Class of Freshmen,†BE Smart, April 2015), Generette worked closely with Financial Aid Adviser Ellen Frishberg who, along with other advisers, supports BridgeEdU students in their FAFSA process from application through disbursement. She says it isn’t unusual for students who have received loan counseling to still not fully appreciate what they’re told. “The implications of ‘If you don’t pay for this, you’ll never get financial aid again and you won’t ever go back to school’–I don’t think that’s clear to students,†Frishberg says. “We were able to resolve Mitchell’s default without payment, just by knowing the rules, which is something most students wouldn’t know how to do,†Frishberg says.
But that was not the end of Generette’s FAFSA problems. It was only the beginning.
The fundamental goal of student aid is to help more students attend college and graduate from college. Yet, low income students who need aid the most are often stymied by the FAFSA. According to Mark Kantrowitz of Edvisors.com; a site that provides information about paying for college, and author of Filing the FAFSA (Edvisors Network; $9.95), about 2Â million students do not file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid every year. In 2011—2012, the most recent year for which data is available, many of them would have qualified for federal Pell grants, money that does not have to be paid back, totaling as much as $9.5 billion (nearly $5,000 each) if they had filed. In other words, the neediest students are not filing the FAFSA and are not getting the aid they’re eligible for.
Filing the FAFSA is not complicated if English is your first language, you live a fairly stable life, and you have a responsible parent who can help you or, better yet, do it for you. Also, the Obama
administration has made changes to the FAFSA that has made filing it easier and faster. It now takes only about 30 minutes to complete instead of an hour or more. As a result, FAFSA filings have gone up nearly 30% since President Obama took office: 21.2 million students successfully filed the FAFSA in 2013—2014 versus 16.4 million students in 2008—2009. However, if you’re among the neediest students, it could literally take the entire school year for your funding to come through.(Continued on next page)
Many are now calling for greater simplification, including Senators Lamar Alexander and Cory Booker, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (full disclosure: BE Smart, a Black Enterprise education initiative, is a Gates grantee). A goal of simplification is to reduce the burden of verification, which often requires documentation that’s difficult to come by, and which falls hardest on the lowest income students.
FAFSA Complexity
Perhaps a simplified FAFSA would have helped Generette. To resolve the default, he first needed to consolidate his loans, a process that took about two months, then the school was willing to process his FAFSA so he could get the Pell grant he was eligible for. “But that started a whole new series of inquiries and paperwork that then took about five months before he got the money to
pay his tuition,†says Frishberg, alluding to the verification process by which college financial aid administrators request documentation to verify the information in the FAFSA. Many colleges verify 30% of their FAFSA applications, but there are others that verify 100%.When Generette attempted to file the FAFSA, he was younger than 24 but filed as an independent, which means he could not expect any financial assistance from his parents. He was also homeless, but had not gone to a homeless shelter, making verification of his homelessness difficult. “I never had a stable job. I did side jobs, I worked in home improvement. So I couldn’t provide pay stubs. I had to provide letters that said this is what I do to provide for my children, but there was no documentation.â€
The lowest income students are the ones encountering this kind of scrutiny. “It isn’t a straightforward process that anyone could simply understand how to cut through the red tape, especially students who don’t have a permanent place of residence, or who aren’t traditional–living at home with mom and dad,†says Frishberg. “Filing the FAFSA itself is not that hard, but once you get through that process there are so many more levels of scrutiny and proof that students have to go through, especially the lowest income students. We found that our very lowest income students got more questions than anyone else. So it wasn’t a straightforward process to receive the funding they were eligible for.â€
Frishberg says the required documentation for her lowest income students was hard to come by and involved dealing with estranged fathers, child support payment documents, tax returns from a parent they no longer lived with.
The good news for Generette is that BridgeEdU came into his life. He has re-enrolled for the fall, and “this time his FAFSA went through smoothly!†says Frishberg, who also credits Generette’s determination. Unfortunately, not all students have access to similar programs. In the 2010—2011 school year nearly 750,000 students failed to resubmit FAFSAs that were returned because of insufficient data. For them, a simplified FAFSA could have made the difference.
FAFSA Resources
Sandy Jimenez, a trainer/college access counselor at the Goddard Riverside Community Center in New York, recommends that students who have difficulty filing the FAFSA connect with a local community-based organization, their own high school guidance counselor, or a volunteer organization, such as your city’s version of New York Cares. She also notes that undocumented students are not eligible to receive federal aid and should not file the FAFSA.
In addition, FAFSA is on Facebook and Twitter. Each month, Federal Student Aid hosts an hour-long session during which anyone can tweet questions to #AskFAFSA. Answers are provided in real time.