College Admission Help

FAFSA Changes Don't Help College Admission Process

Allan Acevedo, Staff Columnist
Published: Wednesday, February 18, 2009: The Daily Aztec

With the start of the New Year one of the least exciting things is coming up: tax season. This is an exciting time to get some money back, but it’s also a frustrating time for many self-sufficient students, who file taxes as independents and then hit barriers when they go online to apply for yet another year of financial aid under FAFSA.

The FAFSA is the standard form used to determine your eligibility for grants, loans, and other forms of financial aid that help you go to school. But the fact that you pay for school yourself, live by yourself, and support yourself financially doesn’t mean that you’re an independent student, a designation that qualifies you for more grants and higher loan limits. With few exceptions, you’re only considered self-supporting if you are 25 years old, married, have a baby, or both your parents are dead. If none of these apply to you, your parents’ income is taken into consideration when you’re applying for help to pay for school…whether their income is actually an option for you or not.

This is a particular problem for students who don’t have access to their parents’ income information — you need to see your parents’ tax returns to complete your FAFSA, so if you don’t have it, you can’t complete the form - which prevents you from even qualifying for the loans in the first place, even as a dependant student.

But for self-sufficient students in this situation, 2009 brings a change in the way students can fill out FAFSA. Starting with the 2009-2010 year, students will be able to complete and save the FAFSA application without their parents’ information. You will still need to go back later and add your parent's information if you want to apply for loans and grants, but for students in estrangement situations, this opens a crack in the door. You can work it out with your school to provide a statement and an affidavit from your parents that they are not providing any financial aid.

While this seems to indicate that proactive steps are being taken to help students who are estranged from their parents, it's not good enough.

I am currently working with the scholarship office to petition my status to be changed from dependent to independent so that I can qualify for the loans that reflect my status, but it's an uphill battle. Few people have the answers I need and there is a lot of red tape. It’s difficult to prove that you’ve had extended separation from your parents and not just an episodic one, especially when you are under 25 working more than one job and trying to get to grades in college. I have been lucky enough to find a lawyer who is willing to supplement my own personal statement that I am submitting, but not everyone has access to those kinds of resources.

I have never been able to fill out FAFSA because I haven't had my parents’ tax information, so this will be my first year going through the process — but even if they accept my application, it's only half the battle. Now I need to go through the bureaucracy of the school in order to attempt to have my student status changed. Even if I do not qualify for any grants, I should still have the opportunity to take out student loans to finance my education, because now I can't even do that, and neither can any other student in situations like mine.

Many students aren't able to get their parents tax information for a variety of estrangement issues. So what makes those who created this system think that if a parent is not willing to give tax information, they would be willing to draft a letter stating their estrangement? It doesn’t make practical sense.

There is still a piece of the puzzle missing right now: many students who do not meet the traditional requirements to be considered independent, are in fact supporting themselves without any outside assistance. The over-dependence on the FAFSA that requires parental input prevents a group of students from being able to apply for financial aid, and even worse, not even be able to apply for loans. I myself have gone to several banks to inquire about students loans and they have all told me the same thing: go online and fill out FAFSA first.

By establishing this normative assumption that students will have parents who can support them during school, or if not at the very least will be willing to help those students do every they can do succeed, there a significant number of students left with few recourses. This small change to the FAFSA, while a step in the right direction, is not anywhere near as far as we need financial aid reform to go.

—Allan Acevedo is a political science and ISCOR sophomore.



FAFSA Changes Don't Help College Admission Process