| PublicationDate: 3/8/96 Summary: 1996-97 FAFSA Processing - Announcement #6 Author: ODAS - Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary - SFA Announcement #6, March 8, 1996 1996-97 FEDERAL STUDENT AID APPLICATION PROCESSING The Department has processed approximately 500,000 FAFSAs to date. Issue: Determining Award Eligibility for Students 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 six in the series. Because of the delay that the U.S. Department of Education has been experiencing with processing paper Free Applications for Federal Student Aid (FAFSAs) and Renewal FAFSAs, the Department has encouraged institutions and states that use an application's processing date to prioritize students' eligibility for aid to reconsider how to make these decisions this year. In the Department's March 4 announcement, the Department encouraged institutions and agencies to adopt a "first come-first served" method for determining students eligibility for aid. In other words, we have suggested that institutions and agencies use the date they receive the SAR or ISIR or use the date the application was received (i.e., application receipt date) by the Multiple Data Entry agency. We have also suggested that institutions encourage their students to use electronic means of applying for student aid. While FAFSA Express and EDExpress are still the fastest and cheapest way for students to complete FAFSA processing, we want institutions to be aware that this method is not recommended for students who have already sent in a paper application but have yet to receive their processing results. Students who complete an electronic FAFSA before their original paper application gets processed may face some difficulty if their institution or agency uses application receipt date to determine their eligibility for student aid. The problem they may run into is that the Central Processing System (CPS) does not update the application receipt date for subsequent transactions. When a second, or subsequent, original application is received by the CPS, the data from the last non-adjusted transaction on file for the student is duplicated (with the exception of the student's address and institution choices). In other words, even though the student's paper application may have been actually received by the Multiple Data Entry (MDE) processor first, students who send in an electronic FAFSA instead of waiting for their paper application to be processed would have their electronic application record actually processed by the CPS first. Then, when their paper application (which actually had the earlier application receipt date) was processed by the CPS, the student's application receipt date from the processing of their electronic FAFSA would remain on the record. For example: February 12 - Student sends paper FAFSA to MDE. February 16 - MDE receives paper FAFSA (application receipt date = 2/16/96) March 4 - Student sends electronic application to CPS (application receipt date = 3/4/96) March 6 - CPS processes electronic application (application receipt date = 3/4/96, process date = 3/6/96) March 8 - CPS processes paper application (process date = 3/8/96, application receipt date will not be updated and will remain 3/4/96) Institutions should make their students aware that this may be the consequence of filing an electronic application in lieu of waiting for their paper applications to be processed. Institutions should also note that ACT applications that were received between January 2 and January 5 will contain an application receipt date of January 5. Applications received by ACT after that date are dated with the actual date received. I-NET applications received from January 2 through 29 will contain an application receipt date of January 29. All other applications will be dated with the actual receipt date. |