Checking your lån på minuttet is important to ensure that you would not go beyond your budget. While you can get financial aid, you must know that you are responsible for your spending and how to prolong it. And among college students, getting approval for financial aid is extremely important. In fact, according to National Center for Education Statistics, there are about 85 percent of first-time undergraduate students who are seeking a certificate or degree was awarded financial aid throughout the school year 2016-2017.
The question is, how much of the financial aid you are qualified? Basically, this largely depends on the financial state of your family. If your situation drastically changed as a result of the financial crises because of Covid-19, then you might wonder how that is going to impact your ability to become qualified for grants, student loans, work-study and scholarships.
It doesn’t matter whether you have filed for Free Application for Federal Student Aid or College Scholarship Service profile or not, here are few pieces of advice that you may want to consider to get higher approval rate in securing financial aid for school year 2020-2021.
What if You’ve Filled Out for a Financial Aid?
FAFSA helps financial aid office of different schools in determining how much federal aid is needed in form of:
· Grants
· Work-study and;
· Student loans
If you are looking forward for non-federal financial aid, then the CSS is the ideal option. This is used by over 400 scholarship programs and colleges to extend its reach and help.
How much financial aid you are qualified for depends on your EFC or the Expected Family Contribution, which is again, calculated by FAFSA. If that has dramatically changed since you filled out the application because of Covid-19, then you might ask how you can increase your financial aid for the next school year?
The good thing is that, there are several options you have in informing your school regarding big shift that happened into your life like losing wages because of illness or death, your parent or you personally was laid off or furloughed.
Requesting to Increase Financial Aid for Current School Year
In the event that you need additional assistance, you could take some options like the following:
Request for an emergency federal aid – the CARES Act or Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security is providing over 6 billion dollars to universities and colleges which empowers them to give emergency cash grants to students whose finances and lives were disrupted by the pandemic.
Inquire to keep work-study income – if you are a recipient of work-study program, then you might not be able to work during your scheduled hours due to the interruptions brought by Covid-19. On the other hand, your school may still have the option of finding alternatives to let you work on your scheduled hours or just pay you for the hours you would normally work.
