It’s a New Year and college-bound students already have their first
homework assignment: Apply for financial aid. Sallie Mae, the nation’s
No. 1 financial services company specializing in education, encourages
students and their parents to start by completing the Free Application
for Federal Student Aid.
Known as the FAFSA, the form requires information about income, assets
and family size. That information is used to calculate a family’s
expected contribution and to determine their eligibility for federal
student aid as well as for many state, institutional and private aid
programs.
Students won’t need to sharpen their pencils to get the work done. The
2014-2015 FAFSA, which became available on January 1, can be completed
online at www.fafsa.gov.
New this year, the form collects financial information from dependent
students’ legal parents regardless of marital status or gender, if those
parents live together. For the first time, the form provides an option
for dependent students to describe their parents’ marital status as
“unmarried and both parents living together.”
Students may still need to study the financial aid rules to determine
who is considered a parent. Here are three questions students should
consider to determine whose financial information to include:
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Do your parents live together? If so, you should answer the questions
about both of them.
-
If not, where do you live? The FAFSA requires you to answer the
questions about the parent you lived with most during the past 12
months.
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Is that parent remarried? You also must report your stepparent’s
income and assets on the FAFSA.
Dependent students must complete financial information for their
parents, even if they will not help pay for college. Students have to
meet certain criteria to be declared independent. For example, they must
be older than 24, a graduate student, a veteran, an orphan, homeless, or
have a child to support, to be considered for independent status.
At CollegeAnswer.com/FAFSA,
Sallie Mae offers free resources to help make the process easier.
Join the conversation on how to save, plan and pay for college at Facebook.com/SallieMae.
Sallie Mae (NASDAQ: SLM) is the nation’s No. 1 financial services
company specializing in education. Whether college is a long way off or
just around the corner, Sallie Mae turns education dreams into reality
for American families, today serving 25 million customers. With products
and services that include Upromise rewards, scholarship search and
planning tools, education loans, insurance, and online banking, Sallie
Mae offers solutions that help families save, plan, and pay for college.
Sallie Mae also provides financial services to hundreds of college
campuses as well as to federal and state governments. Learn more at SallieMae.com.
Commonly known as Sallie Mae, SLM Corporation and its subsidiaries are
not sponsored by or agencies of the United States of America.
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