Free Application For Student Aid

Financial aid experts are holding free Cash for College workshops at local schools and community colleges this month to help incoming college students meet the March 2 deadline to apply for assistance.
Their one-on-one guidance eases completion of the daunting Free Application For Student Aid (FAFSA) form. The paperwork is vital to determining how much college will ultimately costs families: financial aid from the federal and state governments, as well as scholarships from many private colleges, is based on the form.
"It was very helpful. It helped me realize that no college is impossible," said Jazmine Lashmett, 18, a senior at Woodside High School who attended a recent workshop at Foothill Community College. She hopes to attend Culinary Institute in San Francisco to become a chef.
One major source of help is a federal Pell grant, which will provide up to $5,350; another is a state-based Cal Grant, which offers up to $9,700 annually. Some private scholarships are also available.
The notoriously complicated FAFSA form has been shortened and simplified. About 28 percent of the questions have been eliminated. The form is simplest for low-income students, who can skip questions about assets.
But it is still intimidating. The four-page document requires data from multiple forms, including tax forms and family

Financial Aid Guidance for Homeless and Foster Youths Faulted

An organization of financial aid administrators has released a new tip sheet to help homeless youths and youths who’ve been in foster care to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, also known as the FAFSA.

But an advocate for homeless youths said that while the tip sheet is generally useful, some of its advice is faulty and “unhelpful.”

“We’ve been pretty frustrated overall,” said Barbara Duffield, policy director for the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth.

She was referring to her organization’s efforts to counter advice such as that given in the tip sheet released Friday by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA). The tip sheet was designed to help “special populations,” such as foster children, former foster children and homeless youths, fill out a dozen or so specific questions on the FAFSA that apply to these populations. It also offers a variety of hypothetical scenarios and how to respond to the questions based on individual youths’ circumstances.

Duffield found fault with how NASFAA handled the answer to a scenario related to FAFSA Question No. 56, which asks: At any time on or after July 1, 2009, did your high school or school district homeless liaison determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless?

The scenario involves a youth who became homeless during his or her senior year in high school and wants to know if he or she is considered an independent student for the purposes of the FAFSA for student aid.

The financial aid administrators group says if such a youth does not have an official determination – but believes he or she is an unaccompanied youth who is homeless or an unaccompanied youth providing his or her own living expenses and at risk of being homeless – the youth should answer “no” and contact the college’s financial aid office for assistance.

But Duffield said that instead of directing youths to a college’s student aid office, youths should be directed to the homeless liaison in the school district where they attended high school.

“Contact the liaison to get the verification, not the financial aid office, which is just going to give them the runaround,” Duffield said. “That’s extremely unhelpful, and it’s one more step that the youth has to do,” she said of sending youths to the Student aid office first.

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