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Prior Prior Year: How Fi­nan­cial Aid Change Im­pacts You

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Pres­i­dent Obama signed a pres­i­den­tial or­der in Sep­tem­ber 2015 which al­lowed for ad­di­tional time to file for fi­nan­cial aid, go­ing into ef­fect Oct. 1, 2016. For the first time in his­tory, stu­dents will use the same tax in­for­ma­tion for two years of fi­nan­cial aid. This means the 2015 tax in­for­ma­tion will be used for fall 2016 through sum­mer 2018.

Maryville FAFSA release
Maryville’s FAFSA release. Photo courtesy of Maryville University.

“In the long run, this is a good thing,” Martha Har­baugh, di­rec­tor of fi­nan­cial aid, said. “The in­tent is to give peo­ple more time to re­view the in­for­ma­tion and make an in­formed de­ci­sion and to have ac­cu­rate data.”

While change is some­times scary, Har­baugh and fed­eral fi­nan­cial aid be­lieve that this will make life eas­ier. “The good news about this is that you are not go­ing to have to worry about es­ti­mat­ing num­bers. You have al­ready filed it and can use the data re­trieval op­tion in the FAFSA [web­site] to pull in the data and pop­u­late the ap­pro­pri­ate field and do all the work for you,” Har­baugh said. “You will have to change some in­for­ma­tion, such as fam­ily size, num­ber in col­lege, as­set in­for­ma­tion could po­ten­tially have changed. But of the 102 that FAFSA asks, this will take all of the tricky ones out of the equa­tion.”

Har­baugh sug­gests that any fam­ily that saw a de­crease in their ad­justed fam­ily in­come should come to Maryville’s fi­nan­cial aid of­fice and see how they can help.

 

Maryville Financial Aid Sign
The Maryville Financial Aid Office is located in Gander Hall.

When asked what this means to the Maryville stu­dents, Har­baugh said, “From a sense of time­line, some pro­grams this will not af­fect at all. For ex­am­ple, if you are us­ing the Fed­eral Stu­dent Loan Pro­gram, it is not go­ing to make that much dif­fer­ence. What you would have been el­i­gi­ble for next Au­gust is what you are go­ing to be el­i­gi­ble for in Oc­to­ber.”

Ac­cord­ing to Har­baugh, fi­nan­cial aid will be­gin pack­ag­ing fi­nan­cial aid for cur­rent stu­dents in Jan­u­ary 2017 so they can have up­dated GPA and credit hours. Mis­souri res­i­dents that are cur­rently en­rolled at Maryville should file their FAFSA no later than Jan. 15, 2017. “What the state of Mis­souri is say­ing is that if you file by Jan. 15, then they guar­an­tee [you] fund­ing for next year,” Har­baugh said. Those who file later than Jan. 15 will be wait­listed.

If you or a par­ent is con­cerned with this prior prior year change, please con­tact fi­nan­cial aid and sched­ule an ap­point­ment to re­view your fi­nan­cial aid plan. For more in­for­ma­tion please re­fer to Maryville Uni­ver­si­ty’s page of FAQs re­gard­ing prior prior year.

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