I just finished putting myself through school with no support from my folks. It was a private university in New York City, so not only did I need the 20-odd K for tuition, I needed to support myself in NYC. I became somewhat of an expert at working the financial aid system.
First of all don’t lie on your FAFSA. It is just not a good idea. I’ll leave it to someone else to get into the ethical reasons behind it, I’ll just stick to the practical side.
Why not lie? First of all, take a look at how the FAFSA works. It has been a year or so since I looked at the exact formula, but it pretty much boils down to this - Take what you earned. Subtract a standard deduction (something like $4,500) and subtract some for taxes. Now take that number and divide in half. That half is your expected family contribution (EFC). You can see why to get this number down you’ll have to do a lot of lying on the form, not just forgetting to report a part time job or two. Calculating the EFC is what the FAFSA is all about.
The EFC is generally used by three groups: The Feds, to see what grants you get, the banks, to see what loans you qualify for, and the school itself to help it decide how much money to hand you.
The Feds use the EFC chiefly to determine eligibility for a Pell and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG). You don’t even begin to qualify for the grants until the EFC falls below some ludicrously low number, something like five thousand for the Pell, two thousand for the SEOG. (Just to get it to this starting point you’ll have to claim less than $15,000 in income). Once you qualify, you get a percentage of the maximum grant until your EFC is zero.
And for what? We are not talking about tens of thousands of dollars… IIRC the maximum Pell (that is, with close to a zero EFC) is around three thousand for a year, and SEOG maxes out at about thirty-five hundred. Six to seven thousand dollars is a lot, but you only get that if you zero out on the FAFSA. It is going to send up one heck of an audit flag if you claim anything near that.
An you will get audited. From my conversations with the FA staff at school, [hearsay]I learned that as a Federal grant program, they (the Feds) are free to put all sorts of restrictions and conditions on a school for qualification for grant disbursement. The audit is not necessarily an IRSque reaming of your personal life, but the double-checking and cross-referencing is pretty thorough. [/hearsay] Anyplace that gives you a legitimate W2 also furnished that to the IRS.
So miss a W2 or two, and maybe you’ll be OK. Miss them all, and don’t expect much sympathy from the FA officer, and expect to be disqualified for all future government educational grants. Even if you are a senior and don’t plan on grad school, it is not a good thing to piss off Uncle Sam. Also, do you want to deal with patching up the situation in the middle of the semester?
But all is not lost. Here is my advice: Beg. No, I’m serious. Beg. Practice in front of the mirror looking desperate. And then go and see the FA office at your school. If it is out of town, find a job in that town for the summer and stay with a friend, distant relative or net-friend. But go there in person. Here is what begging accomplished for me:
A change in my EFC. This is by far the longest shot, but it was done for me. The school, in extraordinary circumstances, can re-evaluate your EFC on their own and report that change to the Fed. They did this for me by basing that current year’s income on next year’s projected income. I don’t know how often this is done (It didn’t happen to any of my friends) but after a half a semester of (polite) begging, the head of the department helped me out. My circumstance for that year was quite out of the ordinary, so I don’t want to get your hopes up. But it can be done.
Secondly, and there is a better chance of this, the financial aid department can override the loan guidelines and increase the amount you are eligible to borrow. First of all, there is the Perkins loan, an extra three thousand that is pretty easy to make available. As for Sub- and Unsub- Stafford loans, I was able to get up to ten thousand per year between the two. So, without lying you can boost your loans up to around thirteen thousand. (This is for an ‘independent’ student. I don’t know if you qualify for that or not, or if the f/a office can do anything about it).
There is also more scholarship money that the school has that they can give you. I assume that there is some in your package already, but you still need more. Though the school may have already given out everything they say they have to give, there are two categories of monies they have in reserve. A bit for ‘emergency’ students. The son / daughter of a Nobel Prize winner, for example. Money will also become available because some students will not attend. They go somewhere else, they take a year off, etc… That money goes back into the pool of resources, and if you are tenacious enough you might get your hands on it. If you’ve gone the loan angle first, and they realize that you will either have to attend a different school or drop out, they do have resources with which to help you out. Whether or not they do… well, good luck.
I said to go to the town / city where the school is, because begging in person is a lot easier and more productive than doing it over the phone. It is a lot easier to say ‘no, I can’t do that’ to someone on the phone than it is to their face. Getting to the city early in the summer will also let you scout around for the best job you can get. It puts you in the area of local civic organizations who you can write to / call / stop in at and beg for money. (And do the same with national organizations. It can not hurt to get rejected, but each $100 brings you that much closer to tuition and food. Also, in the event that all else fails and you can’t raise the money for this year, it should help you qualify (if needed) for in-state tuition or state run financial aid programs. (New York had the Tuition Assistance Program, an added three grand).
So, don’t lie. It won’t get you that much, but can get you a gargantuan headache. What you would get with a lie you have a chance of getting anyway. Polite persistence at the school and motivated diligence in the community will get you surprisingly far. That is all I can say for now without knowing what school you are going to, if this is your first year, and why the f/a package was so skimpy. Let me know and I’ll see if anything else rings a bell. In the meantime, good luck. I know all too well what you are going though.
Rhythmdvl
