Important Financial Aid & College Application Updates - Class of 2024

 

Dear Students and Families of the Class of 2024 -

 

Please read this message in its entirety - there are a lot of updates regarding the financial aid and college application process at HHS.

 

You may have heard that there will be a significant overhaul of the processes and systems used to award federal student aid starting with the 2024–25 award year, which includes streamlining the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form. Here are the highlights:

• The FAFSA form previously opened on October 1st for the following academic year; in 2023, the FAFSA is currently projected to open in December to file for the 2024–25 award year.
• New term: Contributor – Someone who is required to provide information on the FAFSA form.
• The new FAFSA is role-based, meaning that each contributor accessing the form will only see their section.
• The Direct Data Exchange (DDX) replaces the Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) to access tax information from the IRS.
• All contributors must consent to tax access or the FAFSA is incomplete.
• The Student Aid Index (SAI) replaces the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) – from Federal Student Aid: “students and families will see a different measure of their ability to pay for college, and they’ll experience a change in the methodology used to determine aid. The new need analysis formula removes the number of family members in college from the calculation, allows a minimum SAI of -1500, and implements separate eligibility determination criteria for Federal Pell Grants.”
• Up to 20 colleges and/or scholarship programs may be added to the FAFSA (an increase from 10).

What can you do now?

• Educate yourself on the new FAFSA form – several organizations are offering webinars, including the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority (MEFA), the National College Attainment Network (NCAN), and the College Guidance Network (CGN).
• Set up your Federal Student Aid (FSA) ID now so you are ready to go when the FAFSA form opens in December – if you are a contributor who used an FSA ID for your own student loans, you will use the same FSA ID; students will likely need to create a new account to receive an FSA ID. The email address and phone number must be unique to each FSA ID user. (**Parents/guardians, do NOT use your email address and phone number for your student’s FSA ID!**) FSA accounts require multi-factor authentication.
• Calculate estimate of aid for the 2024–25 award year using the Federal Student Aid Estimator. This early view precedes the launch of the 2024–25 FAFSA form in December and will allow students and families to plan ahead for college, career school, or trade school.

Things to keep in mind:

• The FAFSA is based on tax filing for the “prior-prior” year, meaning that a FAFSA form for the 2024–25 award year will require information from your 2022 taxes.
• The FAFSA collects information about one household:
  • If parents/guardians live in the same household and filed married-jointly, only one parent/guardian needs an FSA ID and complete the contributor section.
  • If parents/guardians live in the same household and filed married-separately, both must have FSA IDs and complete separate contributor sections.
  • If parents/guardians are divorced and not remarried, only the parent/guardian in the household where the student resides 51%+ of the time in a year must have an FSA ID and complete the contributor section.
  • If parents/guardians are divorced and remarried, follow the instructions for the appropriate situation (married- jointly or married-separately; must include step-parent’s tax information) in the household where the student resides 51%+ of the time.
• Gather your FAFSA documents: Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers or state IDs, alien registration number (for non-U.S. citizens), tax information, records of untaxed income, current bank statements and investments, and the list of schools your student is interested in attending.
• Every college and university is required by federal law to have a Net Price Calculator on its website to estimate the out-of-pocket cost for that particular institution. It is not a guarantee of aid, but a fairly accurate benchmark for what you will pay for each college, if your student is admitted.
• MEFA (Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority) is offering a handful of live webinars scheduled for the fall/winter about the financial aid process. Please consider registering for and attending a session here. The slidedeck for the presentation is also available here - even if you are unable to attend, the slides are very informative and will hopefully be helpful to you as you begin this process. 

A few other notes about the college application process: 

• Earlier this fall, the school counselors held the Nuts & Bolts of the Application Process both virtually and in-person for senior families - please see here for a recording of this presentation. 
• Please remember that HHS policy requires that students notify their counselors at least 15 school days in advance of their first deadline of their intent to apply (this can be done by moving the college to the Applying column in Scoir). 15 school days do not include holidays or weekends. Today (November 6th) is the deadline for notifying counselors of a December 1st deadline; November 22nd is the deadline for December 15th deadlines; December 4th is the deadline for January 1st deadlines. A list of common deadlines and internal deadlines is included here.
• If students need assistance with Scoir, please reference this document.
• This document will help you as you are filling out the Education section of the Common App. 
• Please note that colleges are receiving thousands of documents daily; if your deadline has passed and a college has sent you a notification that a document has not been received, please do not panic! It is very likely that the document has been received by the college, but it has just not been downloaded yet. Please be patient - it can take up to two weeks for this to be reflected in your portals. 
• First term grades will be sent for all students who have already applied to schools next week. You do not need to do anything additional to request that these grades be sent. If you do not want your first term grades sent, please contact your counselor so you can discuss your options. Please note: most colleges require senior grades.
• Once you have applied to a school, please move it from the Applying column to the Applied column. Once you have received a final decision (admit, deny, or waitlist), please update your outcome in Scoir. This helps inform the scattergrams that our future graduates will be using through the college application process.
• If you have not done so already, please fill out the Parent/Guardian Brag Sheet or the Counselor Questionnaire (whichever is applicable); this helps your counselor as she is preparing your letter of recommendation - we can’t thank you enough for your assistance with this! Click on Parent & Student Questionnaires on the Forms/Resources page of the SCO website. 
• As always, your counselors are available for individual meetings (we are always happy to include parents/guardians as a part of this conversation). You can schedule an appointment by clicking on Contact Us on the SCO website.

Please let your counselor know if you have any questions!

Thanks, 

HHS School Counseling