Why FAFSA Why?!

You can do it online now?  I feel old.  At least you don't have to enter both parents' info anymore. 

I had a lot of trouble with FAFSA in the past, turns out for a while they had my first name last and last name first, so when I would log in it wouldn't recognize me.  And it got more complicated when school considered me dependent even though I was married, that was a weird year for financial aid. 

I'm trying fin aid for part-time graduate school, we will see how that goes over with FAFSA and my school.....

I'm pretty sure you do need to put your info in somewhere, it's odd that it just seems to skip your info.  But, if they think you dont earn anything maybe they will give you more money!! :)

Good luck, hopefully you get it worked out!

NicoleS, I'll look on BF's computer, I'm pretty sure I have a bunch of financial aid websites bookmarked. You can get scholarships for being just about anything, LOL.

I think I'm just going to give it some time to process and try it again tomorrow. Or maybe I already put my info in? I think I was just waiting on my mom's income and her social security number. Maybe I'm just having a brain fart.

FAFSA is such a pain.  I can never remember my pin for my applications or my son's.  But hey, the money's nice, so can't really complain too much!  The amount of financial information some college's want in addition to FAFSA is a real pain!   

If you are still a dependent I'm not sure how much of your financial info they need.  Unfortunately, they don't care who is actually paying for the tuition, they just care about your federal tax status.  I always had my dad do mine b/c he was never around to give me his info when I tried to do it for myself.  If your parent(s) still claims you, then you also have to be a dependent for FAFSA.  It's such a pain that way though and I hated it, since my parents did not pay for my education and it was 26K per year.  For DH's, we enter my financial info and it's so much easier b/c we skip like 3 pages and just do the last one. 

Actually federal tax status doesn't even really matter, since I was married and claimed myself but was still a dependent for financial aid status.  Go figure.  It did have something to do with the school, though, and not *just* the FAFSA as to why it had to be that way, I  just dont remember what it is.  It is nice to only have your own income for FAFSA, that does make it easier.  Though they still take a huge chunk of your income and expect you to live on only about $20k year and the rest they think you should spend on school.  we only have my income, and that's tough enough to survive on let alone giving a huge chunk back for DHs school tuition!!

And, since we're both in school, though DH is full-time and I'm part time, they expect us to spend about 1/3 of our income for him AND another 1/3 for me!!  Sometimes I really wonder what goes through their heads when they leave you with, oh, about $10/week to live on, lol.

I do have some scholarship sites, but I'm not all that motivated since I get employee benefits that pay for a reasonable amount of my tuition.  I *should* be more motivated to get some free money to pay for the rest... but... yeah.  I did get several smaller scholarships, $500 or $1000 or so for my undergrad but I just never bothered to look into scholarships since then.  Are most scholarships open for graduate studies as well as  undergrad or are there special ones?  Now you have me interested.....

I think for FAFSA you HAVE to file under your parents until you are 25 unless you are married.  I can't remember the reasoning behind it and it really sucks for people who truly ARE financially independent.  I considered myself financially independent once I was paying my own health insurance, but I let my dad claim me for one more year b/c I knew he couldn't afford the tax hit.  Luckily since I am married, we file FAFSA ourselves and not under our parents.  We skipped to the last few pages and had to fill in a bunch of info from our tax forms.  I do not understand the FAFSA rules and I think it often hurts the people they are trying to help (kids that NEED aid b/c their parents ARENT paying/helping).

Nicole, most people I know doing grad work applied to programs that either pay them (like to teach or TA as part of their program) or pay stipends that cover part of the cost.  I think I have one friend doing grad work not in such a program and she regrets it.  No one I know can afford to do it on their own or with the little scholarships you mentioned. 

Yes I think there is a few things to qualify you independent -- being 25, being married, having dependents (I think), being a ward of the state, and maybe military?  But if you are in school as dependent, then try to change to independent, then good luck.  I fought my school tooth and nail but they don't change it.   I, too, was glad to not have to file under my parents any more. 

The other thing that hurt us was DH worked full-time for a year before going back to school... so it made it look like we had a lot more income so then they wanted us to spend money on school that we would no longer be earning! 

Liesje

Nicole, most people I know doing grad work applied to programs that either pay them (like to teach or TA as part of their program) or pay stipends that cover part of the cost.  I think I have one friend doing grad work not in such a program and she regrets it.  No one I know can afford to do it on their own or with the little scholarships you mentioned. 

Yeah that is the usual for grad school but when you are part-time you can't get anything like that.  I'm only working towards a Master's and taking 1 or maybe 2 classes a semester.  Granted, as I mentioned, my work does pick up a decent amount of the tab, but even with the amount I cover it still sucks to pay out of pocket for it.  Unfortunately, DH is still in school full-time so I can't give up my income to go back full-time since the stipend is less than my income.  And he still wants to do a PhD so I'll probably just stay part-time until I'm done.

Basically, I was told as an undergrad that any grad program that DIDN'T provide either a stipend or TA-ship or something like that wasn't worth going in to.  If you do full-time you should NOT be paying for it, at least they should cover tuition and most provide stipends.  If DH wasn't in school yet I might consider it just to get done quicker.  It'll take me a pretty long time to finish up part-time, but at least I'm not paying full price.

I managed to enter the rest of my missing info, but now my mother doesn't exist She did yesterday!