| PublicationDate: 4/3/96 Summary: 1996-97 FAFSA Processing - Announcement #25 Author: ODAS - Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary - SFA Announcement # 25-- April 3, 1996 This is announcement number 25 in our series of daily FAFSA updates for financial aid administrators. For information on individual applications, parents and students should contact 319-337-5665. 1996-97 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Processing Status Report A. Status of Applications as of April 2, 1996 No./Percent. Expected FAFSA No. of Paper of Paper Apps. Date to Receipt Date Apps. Rec'd. Processed Complete =============================================== Jan 1 - Jan 31 438,509 438,509 (100%) Completed Feb 1 - Feb 15 696,858 684,560 (98%) Apr 5 Feb 16 - Feb 29 882,554 720,537 (82%) Apr 5 SUBTOTAL: 2,017,921 1,843,606 (91%) Mar 1 - Mar 15 974,976 436,503 (45%) Apr 15 Mar 16 - Mar 31 591,965 69,130 (12%) Apr 15 TOTAL 3,584,862 2,349,239 (66%) Note: Expected Date to Complete reflects the date that the Department expects all paper applications with these receipt dates to have been entered and processed by the Central Processing System. B. Keying Procedures for Institution choices on FAFSA After posting Announcement 23 that addressed problems the Department is seeing with students not getting their institution choices coded on their FAFSAs, the Department received several inquiries regarding the procedures that our MDEs use to code students' institution choices on their FAFSAs. On original and Correction applications, the following procedures are followed: 1. If a Title IV Institution Code is provided and the code appears to be valid, MDEs will key that code and ignore any additional information (school name, city, state) the student provides. What determines whether a school code appears to be valid is that it contains six digits and begins with either a zero, G, B, or E. 2. If a code is provided but the code does not appear to be valid, MDEs will ignore the code and attempt to determine the student's intent by looking at the school name, city, and state (either handwritten or stamped). The Department has seen several instances where students will use codes other than the Title IV Institution Code (e.g., Profile codes) to indicate their school choices. 3. If the student's intent cannot be determined by the school name, city, and/or state, the MDE will code the school choice as all zeros. Examples of problems that our MDEs have encountered in trying to determine the student's intent are-- the response includes only the school's initials, the city and state are incomplete or illegible, or the city listed by the student is different from the city listed on the Department's file. Procedures for Renewal Applications are slightly different in that students' school choices for the previous year are already listed and students can choose to have the same institutions receive their information. Students are instructed to indicate this by checking a "Yes" box for each institution they choose to receive information again this year. Otherwise, students are instructed to provide new or different institution choices. 1. If the "Yes" box is checked for an institution, the same institution code will be keyed. If anything other than a clear mark (e.g., the box is underlined or circled) is used by the student, the MDEs are instructed to ignore the response since the student's intent is not clear. 2. If a change to institution choices is indicated, the same procedures will be followed by the MDEs as for original and Correction Applications. Institutions should note that even if what appears to be a valid Title IV institution code is given by the student and keyed by the MDE, once the student's record is received by the Central Processing System, the CPS performs a validity check on the codes provided. If the code is found to be invalid, the CPS automatically sets the code to all zeros. C. Scheduled down time for the SFA BBS on Friday, April 5 The SFA BBS will be down from 8a.m. to 5p.m. on Friday, April 5 for server relocation. As a result, there will be no announcement posted on Friday, April 5th. Announcements will resume on Monday, April 8. Please excuse any inconvenience that this might cause. We hope this answers your questions. Thank you for your continued patience and understanding. |