Students wanting to better understand financial aid for college can do so by looking at the big picture.
To make the financial aid process more manageable, Mapping Your Future has developed a list of the five major steps a student must take to receive financial aid.
Granted, each one of the steps involves some work on the part of the student and their contributors (parent or spouse). However, by knowing these steps, a student can be assured they are doing what is necessary to complete the process of obtaining financial aid.
The major steps to receiving financial aid include the following:
Step One: The student and anyone else contributing information to the student’s FAFSA (parents or spouse) create a StudentAid.gov account.
Step Two: The student and other contributors each complete their portions of the student’s FAFSA.
Step Three: The student receives a FAFSA Submission Summary at StudentAid.gov. The Summary provides an estimate of the student’s federal financial aid eligibility. The student should review the information and make sure everything is accurate.
Step Four: The student receives a financial aid offer from the schools or colleges they listed on the FAFSA.
Step Five: The student and perhaps their parents should review the financial aid offer and decide what aid to accept. The student should then return it to the school or college. The student may receive an email, letting them know they have a financial aid offer to review and they may need to review the offer online at the school portal. Some colleges may send out a paper financial aid offer via regular mail, which the student will need to return to the school.
In some cases, students may have an extra step before receiving a financial aid offer from the college and that step is verification. Students who are selected for verification may need to provide additional information and/or documentation to the college.
