Welcome to our virtual financial aid session financing your education. My name is Jeff Pietrangeli, I work in the Office of Financial Aid here at the University of New Haven. And I'd like to welcome all of our perspective charger students and families. I hope that you find this session informative and helpful. And I do encourage you to contact us with any questions and concerns that you have along the way. At the end of the slide presentation, you'll see our contact information so that you can email us call us or even make an appointment to come visit us in person. What is financial aid? Financial aid is scholarships, grants, loans, student employment work study. Financial Aid comes in two types merit based aid and need based aid. merit based aid. Examples include academic scholarships, athletic scholarships, band scholarships, need based aid is a that is determined using your FAFSA data using your EFC. Examples of need based aid or the Federal Pell Grant, federal work study, the Federal subsidized loan, University Grants and state grants. What are the sources of financial aid, the federal government, university private sources or outside sources, and potentially your state higher education department. This is based on the state in which you live and I do encourage you to do a search of your state's higher education department to see if they do offer educational scholarships and grants for college students. together all these sources of aid can help you finance your education at the University of New Haven. First and foremost, to get the ball going and applying for financial aid you need to complete a FAFSA. Keep in mind that you must be a US citizen or permanent resident in order to complete a valid FAFSA. The FAFSA is available every October 1 and must be completed and submitted online at student aid.gov. Make sure you list the University of New Haven on your FAFSA, our school code is 001397. As the student you must create a student FSA ID and your parent must have a parent's FSA ID. The FSA ID will act as your electronic signature so that you can sign your FAFSA when it's completed. But it will also act as your username and password for other federal websites and other federal applications that you may need to use along the way. Keep in mind that the University of New Haven's priority filing date for the FAFSA each year is March 1. If you are late in filing your FAFSA, still file the FAFSA universe after March 1, because we will still receive it and we will still complete your financial aid award. Do keep in mind however, that the availability of funding does diminish over time. So getting your FAFSA in by our deadline assures that we'll be able to get your financial aid package on time. Also, keep in mind that you will have to renew your FAFSA every year, and the renewal can take place as early as October first. When you are completing your FAFSA, you're going to have to report your financial information in particular, your federal tax return information, we strongly encourage that you use the IRS Data retrieval tool or a DRC on the FAFSA when you use the DRT the FAFSA will transfer you to the IRS website. allow you then to transfer back to your FAFSA, your federal tax return information. This is the most accurate and efficient way to report that tax information to the FAFSA. Keep in mind that if you don't use it and you make errors on your FAFSA, with that tax and income information, it can delay your financial aid file from being completed. And ultimately, it can delay your financial aid package from being completed and sent to you. You may need to submit additional documents to our office as well, we will reach out to you if any additional documents are required. Please monitor your email as we do communicate via email for this type of information, also, we rely on the email address that you're reporting on your FAFSA to contact you to make sure the email address that you're putting in the FAFSA is accurate and it is the one that you are using. Also, continuously check your spam and your junk email files are emails to you are time sensitive. So if it goes into a junk file, or if it's if you don't read it right away, that will delay the entire process for you. I want to talk briefly about award information and how we send your award letter. We send first of all, we send award letters out starting in January, and we send them out through regular mail in a business size envelope. In the envelope, you'll find a copy of your financial aid award offer instructions on logging into your financial aid account. With the University of New Haven and a cost worksheet. We ask that you review everything on the cost worksheet, you'll find important information in particular, it'll help you determine an estimate of how much it'll cost you to attend the University of New Haven. It'll tell you different financing options that are available. It'll also explain to you how your financial aid award might change. If you have a change in housing status from on campus to off campus, for example, and they'll also help you to understand the academic requirements to keep your financial aid from one year to the next. It will also give you a checklist of the next steps that you have to complete. Our financial aid award system is called my financial aid. In just a moment, you'll see a screenshot of the login page, I want you to understand that when it's your first time logging in to your financial aid account, you're going to click on first time user, you're going to create a password, set up your challenge questions and then be able to log in fully to the system. You can also choose to give your parent your login information as well for this particular system. This system is only your financial aid account at the University of New Haven, it doesn't give access to any other information. This is not part of the billing system. It doesn't show your your your grades and your transcripts. It's solely your financial aid information. Again, here's a screenshot of my financial aid. You'll see on the right hand side in the login box. Under the yellow submit button, you'll see first time user that is the that's where you have to click when it's your absolute first time using the system, you have to do that to set up your account. You may when you're in the system, you may accept or decline your entire award package or you may accept or decline individual awards, you may reduce the amount of a federal student loan that's been offered to you or decline that loan or accept it in full. We ask that if you decide not to attend the University of New Haven that you do decline all of the awards that are offered and that you do reach out either through a phone call or email. Reach out to your admissions counselor to let them know that you are not going to be attending. When you are logged into your UNH financial aid account in the menu, you'll have these options of viewing your awards, accepting your awards, Viewing Documents, and downloading and printing forms. We've already talked about accepting awards. The documents tab is important because it's going to show you which documents we have received from you. So for example, we have your FAFSA, it'll show your FAFSA was received. But it's also going to show you any documents that are still outstanding or that we need to collect from you. It'll also show any documents that you've may have submitted to us that have been received, or potentially they're incomplete or you didn't sign them, it'll tell you that. So it's important to keep abreast of your financial aid account to see what the status is and make sure that everything is complete so that we can finalize your financial aid award. You'll also be able to download and print forms that might be required from your financial aid
account. I want to talk briefly about the verification process. The verification process is a process that originates with filing your FAFSA with the Department of Education. Your FAFSA is then sent to the university. And we are instructed to verify your account your your FAFSA, what we have to do is verify the information that you reported on that FAFSA, in particular your household, your household size, members of the household, and your financial data. You will have to submit additional documents to us in order for us to complete that process, and we will let you know what those documents are. You could also again, go to your documents screen in your financial aid account to view those documents that are required. And again, you may be able to print out other documents that are required from your financial aid account. I'll talk briefly about our special circumstances appeal process. Students and Families may submit an appeal to the financial aid offices for special circumstances due to financial changes in your household, such as an involuntary loss of employment, divorce or separation or death of a parent. You would essentially email us explain the special circumstance that has occurred or is occurring and we would reply to you with further instructions. If we determine that you have a special circumstance, we will send you our special circumstances form that will guide you through the remainder of that process. Let's talk about costs and billings for a bit. It's important to use the cost worksheet that I talked about earlier to see the estimated costs of the university for that year. You may also refer to our website for the costs and costs of attendance for the university as well. Your UNH tuition bill is prepared by the Versailles office and it will include your tuition and general fame, any lab fees or differential fees that are applicable towards specific classes. It will include your room and meal plan if you're a resident student. Please note that your cost may vary for your room based on your residence. Also books and supplies are not included in your bill. You have to purchase books and supplies separately. Bill bills for the fall semester are available in June in June and July. bills for the spring semester are available in November, and due in December. Your bills will reflect a credit for your anticipated financial aid provided that your financial aid account is complete. There are no documents missing or incomplete. You've accepted all of your financial aid awards. So in order to have a accurate and complete bill, your financial aid account must be completed in full. We'll talk about the Federal Direct Student Loan. The Federal Direct Student Loan is a government loan offered to the student who has completed valid FAFSA, it will be part of your financial aid package from the beginning. As a first year student, the maximum amount that you can borrow on a federal student loan is $5,500 for the year. The interest rate on this loan is fixed. And the rate is determined every July 1 by the Department of Education. Since the amount that you the student can borrow to the government is limited to 5500 for your freshman year. You and your family may need to consider other options to pay the remaining tuition that's due on your account. Let's talk about those options. There is a monthly installment plan that we offer. There is a Federal Direct Parent PLUS loan that is offered through the government. And there are private alternative loans in which the student can borrow with cosigner the monthly installment plan is offered through rod versus office. There will be more information about the plan as we approach the June billing for the fall semester. The payment plan spans 10 months, it's five months per semester. The five months for the fall semester begin in July, and November, so this five payments from July to November. The payments for the spring semester begin in December, and in April will typically have to sign up for the two payment plans the five payments for the fall and then you'll sign up again for the five payments in the spring. The Parent PLUS loan the Parent Plus Loan is a federal loan for the parents of the dependent of the dependent undergraduate student and is a credit based loan. The parent is the borrower. If the parent is approved, they can borrow as much as they need to cover the remaining tuition balance. The parent may opt to defer their payments on the loan until six months after the student graduates or the pyramid off to begin repayment. on that loan. 60 days after the loan is fully dispersed while the student is still in school. The parent must apply for this loan using their parent FSA ID at student aid.gov. And we do make a note that if you're going to apply for a parent loan, that you wait until April 15. To apply for that loan, and to be sure that you're selecting the correct academic year when you're applying private alternative loans. Private alternative loans are non federal student loans. The student is the borrower on these loans, but they will need a credit worthy cosigner. The rates in terms of these loans vary from one bank or one lender to the next. If you're approved for an alternative loan, you can borrow as much as you need to cover the remaining tuition balance. In a few slides we'll get are actually the next slide we're going to get to how you can calculate how much you need to borrow. The repayment on these loans also vary from one lender to the next, you may have options to repay these loans right away, and options to defer the loans until the student is done with school. Some loans may offer only one option, and that's why we start repayment immediately. You'll have to choose the loan that best fits your needs and discuss that as a family. Now, some states offer higher education loans as well. You can check with your own state's office of higher education to see if they offer a college loan. But as examples, we have Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, which all offer state college education loans. So how can you determine how much you'll need to borrow on a parent loan or a private student loan, you would take the cost of attendance and we said the cost of attendance can be found on the cost of attendance worksheet or on our website. You can also contact us directly when we can give you that detailed information and help you do the calculation as well. But you would take the cost of attendance and subtract out your financial aid award from the total cost of attendance. That will give you the approximate amount that you can borrow on a Parent PLUS loan or a private student loan. Then you can apply for that loan and you'll have an idea of how much to ask for if you get confused with this process. Please don't hesitate to contact us for some guidance with the process.
We do encourage students to conduct a scholarship scholarship search either with their high school guidance counselor's office or through local clubs and organizations in which they're involved or which their parents may be involved to local businesses, banks or churches. You can also search online create your own account with for example fastweb.com fin nade.org new haven.edu/financial literacy and those are search engines that will help you find outside scholarships. Keep in mind that the university makes every effort to fit your outside scholarships into your financial aid package. However, receiving this outside assistance may impact your award. So what we'd like to remind you is if you are receiving outside scholarships, please contact us. Anytime you receive notification that you're getting an outside scholarship, let us know who is giving you the scholarship and how much you're receiving. And we can we have to account for that scholarship and your financial aid package. But we can also tell you if it's going to affect your financial aid package. Also, tuition benefits are not considered outside scholarships. If you are receiving tuition benefits, for example, from one of your parents who may work for another institution where they have some type of tuition benefit, please let us know. Contact us and let us know that you're receiving that benefit in the dollar amount that you're receiving. Here's our contact information at the financial aid office, our phone number and our email address. We are located in Bergamini hall on campus. And our final slide. Also as other email addresses that you can use to submit your questions depending on the nature of your question, whether their financial aid or billing questions or admissions questions. I hope that you found this presentation helpful. Thank you for joining me, and I hope to see you on campus at the University of New Haven and I wish you all the best in your search for your university. Wishing you all the best. Thank you