If you were unable to attend the in-person workshop on January 16th, click the link below for a FAFSA Overview Webinar presented by Wendy Dunlap of PHEAA.
As the new calendar year begins, your student’s high school career is only months from ending. The last four years have surely been challenging and rewarding as your student has progressed academically and personally toward graduation day. Hopefully your student’s higher education plans will provide exciting new experiences and opportunities.
With the stresses of the college application process behind you, you and your student are most likely in the midst of playing the waiting game. You’re waiting to hear back from schools, waiting to hear back from scholarships or recruiters and possibly trying to figure out how to afford it all.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the most important form to complete in order to qualify for almost all types of financial aid. Federal, state, local and private entities use the FAFSA information to determine eligibility for grants and scholarships.
Please visit fafsa.gov to access the online application and for many helpful tips on financing your student’s choice of higher education.
PHEAA Update
2/22/2024
The U.S. Department of Education announced that it won’t process 24-25 FAFSAs until the first half of March. Post-secondary schools and PHEAA will not receive FAFSA data until after they begin processing FAFSAs. They indicated this delay is because they must update the tables used for calculation of the student aid index, to account for inflation. This delay means some students may receive their financial aid offers from their schools later than expected. This delay will also impact PA State Grant processing since PHEAA needs the student’s FAFSA to generate the PA State Grant application to students. PHEAA will notify students to complete the application once we receive their FAFSA file from the department. Students can refer to pheaa.org/StudentAid for more information on PA State Grant processing. Post-secondary schools will be able to guide students regarding how this delay may impact the timing of their financial aid offers.
If a student doesn’t have the financial offer information that they need to commit to attending a college or career school by the school’s deadline, they should be able to ask for an extension on their admission offer. Many colleges and career schools are extending deadlines or offering extensions based on student requests. Students need to reach out to college and career school staff with their questions and concerns.
Students who filed the FAFSA and now need to add other colleges and or career schools will be able to do that in March after their initial FAFSA is processed. Corrections can be made online at studentaid.gov by selecting the FAFSA submission from the My Activity section of the account Dashboard. Students can learn about how to correct and review their FAFSA submission on StudentAid.gov.