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(General) Subject: Implementation Update on the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet

Posted Date:September 11, 2012

Author: David A. Bergeron, Acting Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education

Subject: Implementation Update on the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet

This Electronic Announcement provides additional information about the implementation of the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet (Shopping Sheet) for the 2013-14 award year.

As described in GEN-12-12 and GEN 12-17, all institutions are encouraged to use the Shopping Sheet as a model format for financial aid award letters beginning with the 2013-14 award year. The Shopping Sheet will help those institutions that receive Federal funds under the military and veterans educational benefits programs to meet a disclosure responsibility that will arise as a consequence of Executive Order 13607.

Through the Department's quarterly Software Developers Conference (http://www.fsaconferences.ed.gov/softwaredevelopers.html), we are engaged in discussions with financial aid software providers about how they can help institutions produce the Shopping Sheet. The current version of the Shopping Sheet is in PDF format. We are developing specifications and expect to have HTML format available for institutions and software providers in mid to late September 2012.

We've received questions about how institutions will receive the data to populate the institutional descriptors, specifically, graduation rate, loan default rate, and median debt figures. We will post a comprehensive file on the Department's Web site from which either an institution may pull its data or software providers may pull data on the institution's behalf.

Background information on the Shopping Sheet is included on our Model Financial Aid Offer Form Web page at: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/guid/aid-offer/index.html. This Web page also includes an annotated Shopping Sheet at: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/guid/aid-offer/annotatedshoppingsheet.pdf. The annotated document clarifies the data elements on the Shopping Sheet and is updated as needed.

We appreciate your continued efforts to provide clear information to inform students' educational choices. Please direct any questions about the Shopping Sheet to ShoppingSheet@ed.gov .