| PublicationDate: 3/18/96 Summary: 1996-97 FAFSA Processing - Announcement #12 Author: ODAS - Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary - SFA Announcement # 12 -- March 18, 1996 1996-97 FAFSA Processing Status Report In keeping with our commitment to keep you informed about the status of application processing for the 1996-97 award year, we are providing this daily announcement. This announcement is number twelve in the series. A. 1996-97 Technical Reference, et. al. National Computer Systems (NCS) began a mass distribution today, Monday, March 18, of the following items: 1. 1995-96 EDExpress User Guide Update 2. 1995-96 PELL Payment software ver. 4.2.0 3. 1996-97 Title IV WAN User Guide update 4. 1996-97 IAM software ver. 1.1.0 5. 1996-97 DOS version 4.2.0 of EDExpress 6. 1996-97 Windows Version 2.1.0 of EDExpress 7. 1996-97 EDExpress User Guide update 8. 1996-97 EDExpress Windows ver. 2.1.0 - Installation Instructions 9. 1996-97 EDE Technical Reference This mailing will be in two segments. Number 1 will be to all Direct Loan Destination points (estimated 875) and will be completed on Monday and Tuesday Mar 18 - 19. The second will be to the remaining destinations (estimated 2900) and will begin when the first one is done. NCS has estimated this portion to be done by Tuesday, March 26. B. Citizenship and INS Matches The Department had identified that there is a need for additional clarity regarding the Social Security Administration (SSA) citizenship match and the Immigration and Naturalization Service match. The Central Processing System (CPS) sends every application record to the SSA to verify students' social security numbers as well as their citizenship status. The purpose of instituting the citizenship match with SSA is to identify students who erroneously or purposely indicate that they are citizens when they are not. Students indicating they are eligible non-citizens and who provide their alien registration numbers also have their application records sent to the INS to determine whether their alien status allows them to be eligible for Title IV aid. The records of those students who receive match results from INS are not edited for their SSA citizenship status because the INS match takes precedence for those students. Thus, those students whose eligibility status is reported by the INS will not have a comment or SAR C flag when SSA reports that they do not have citizenship. We hope this information is useful to you. Thank you for continued support and understanding. |