| PublicationDate: 3/19/96 Summary: 1996-97 FAFSA Processing - Announcement #13 Author: ODAS - Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary - SFA Announcement # 13 -- March 19, 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 thirteen in the series. A. Processing Statistics To date, the Central Processing System (CPS) has processed over 954,000 applications. B. Changes to the 1996-97 EDE Technical Reference Customer Support has made available for downloading on the SFA BBS a WordPerfect 5.1 file listing the changes that have been made to the 1996-97 EDE Technical Reference between its draft release in November 1995 and its final copy released in March 1996. If you are not currently an SFA BBS user, please contact Customer Support at 1-800-433-7327 to obtain instructions about how to register as a new user. C. 1996-97 History Correction Processing Processing of 1996-97 history corrections began on Friday, March 15. The Department understands that there is concern about why institutions have not yet received output from correction processing. Please note that it takes a few days to process a correction record once the CPS receives it and a few days for ISIRs to reach the institution once processing is actually completed. Institutions will begin receiving ISIRs from correction processing in the next few days. D. GEN-96-5 and GEN-96-7 The Department has received several requests for these Dear Colleague letters after posting announcement #11 that mentioned them. These letters have only recently begun to be distributed and your school may therefore not have received them to date. Customer Support has made copies of these letters available on the SFA BBS for viewing/downloading. Customer Support is also working to make the SSCR User Guide available for downloading in the near future. The text of GEN-96-5 and GEN-96-7 follows. February 1996 GEN-96-5 Dear President: Attached is a copy of the Student Status Confirmation Report (SSCR) User's Guide in preparation for the all-electronic process which will begin shortly. This User's Guide contains information concerning the file layout of the SSCR file and details about updating the SSCR report that you will receive from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS). Please ensure that the responsible party at your school receives a copy of this document. It is important that your school begin preparations which will enable it to take part in the NSLDS SSCR process. In April, NSLDS will send your school a file which contains SSCR information on Federal Family Education Loan borrowers. This is a practice file that will give your school an indication of the size of file to be expected once the complete SSCR process electronic, [sic] beginning in September 1996. Your school should update this file and return it to NSLDS through the Title IV Wide Area Network as soon as possible. Your school has until July 15, 1996 to return the complete update SSCR to NSLDS. If your school intends to use a third party to process SSCR information, please be sure to designate that party as your school's servicer in the pertinent NSLDS screen. (The User's Guide contains detailed information about how to access NSLDS and where to find the screen used to designate a servicer for SSCR.) If your school elects to use a servicer, your school will not receive any files from NSLDS regarding SSCR information. If you have any questions about getting started or about how the entire SSCR process will work with NSLDS, please telephone the NSLDS Customer Service Center at 1-800-999-8219. Thank you for taking the necessary action to prepare for this new exciting process of using electronic means to submit the Student Status Confirmation Report. Sincerely, F. Lynn Alexander, Director NSLDS Division ------------------------- March 1996 GEN-96-7 Dear President: In 1994, the US Department of Education (Department) began using the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) to track and monitor all student loan borrowers and grant overpayments. The Department has incorporated the Student Status Confirmation Report (SSCR) into the NSLDS to centralize and fully automate the enrollment verification process. The new SSCR process will benefit the entire student loan community: students, schools, lenders, guaranty agencies, and the Department. Current Schedule for the New SSCR In April 1996, all schools will receive an electronic SSCR file from NSLDS via the Title IV Wide Area Network (TIV WAN).*1* It is critical that your school sign up for the TIV WAN in order to receive your file; NSLDS will not generate any paper SSCRs. (A magnetic tape option is available to those who need it.) This file will contain enrollment information on Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) borrowers and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) borrowers that the Department believes are currently attending your school, or who have recently left your school. Please refer to the Student Status Confirmation Report User's Guide that will be distributed to all schools for detailed information about how to read the file and the exact data elements contained in it. You will have until JULY 15, 1996, to update the SSCR and return it to NSLDS through the TIV WAN (or via magnetic tape if that is the option you chose). This first issuance of SSCRs by NSLDS will be the same in all respects as future ones except that for this first time, a much longer period is being allotted for schools to respond. This process is mandatory for all schools. During this process, guaranty agencies will continue sending SSCRs to schools as before, requesting enrollment verification for FFEL borrowers; and schools will be expected to respond. However, once NSLDS takes over the SSCR process, guaranty agencies will no longer send SSCRs to schools, as the agencies will receive enrollment verification directly from NSLDS. (The effective date for this change, now expected to be September, 1996, will be announced in a forthcoming Dear Colleague letter.) Clarification of an NSLDS Data Element Appearing on the New SSCR The date that corresponds to the Enrollment Status Code "F" (full-time) is defined as the date on which the student most recently began uninterrupted enrollment on a full-time basis. The date that corresponds to the Enrollment Status Code "H" (half-time or more, but less than full-time) is the date the student dropped below full-time, or if half-time is the original status, the date on which the student most recently began uninterrupted enrollment on that basis. The date that corresponds to the Enrollment Status Code "L" (less than half-time) is the date the student dropped below half-time, or if less than half-time is the original status, the date on which the student most recently began uninterrupted enrollment on that basis. For example, if a borrower is a third-year full-time student and has maintained uninterrupted full-time enrollment since the beginning of his first year, the date that would correspond to the Enrollment Status Code of "F" would be the beginning of the borrower's first year in school. This is a change from the current definition of "Enrollment Status Effective Date." The change is needed in order to improve the servicing of student loans. Because the Department is sensitive to the fact that finding the necessary data to satisfy this new definition may, for the present, be difficult for you, we are recommending the following: - If a student's current enrollment status is the same as the status reported to you on the SSCR and the status effective date shown on the SSCR is a date in the past, do not change the status effective date unless you KNOW it is wrong. In that case, please provide the correct date. - If no enrollment date is shown on the SSCR and you cannot provide the actual date that status began (as defined above), please supply the date the current enrollment period began. Note Regarding the Error Notification File When NSLDS receives your updated SSCR file, we will process it and return an Error Notification File to your school. The Error Notification File will not contain entries documenting successful updates; only errors will be reported. (This may change in the future.) The trailer record in the file will, however, show COUNTS for both successes and errors. The Error Notification File will serve as proof that your school returned your SSCR to NSLDS. If you have any questions regarding the SSCR process, please call the NSLDS Customer Service Center at 1-800-999-8219. Sincerely, F. Lynn Alexander, Director NSLDS Division *1* The cover letter to the SSCR User's Guide that was recently distributed to Direct Loan schools indicated that they would receive an SSCR at the end of February, with an updated SSCR due back to NSLDS buy the end of March. Based on advice from the NSLDS School Advisory Group, this will not occur, the first SSCR any school receives will be in April, as described in this letter. |