| AwardYear: 1996-1997 Edition: PostSecondary Part: 2 - - The application process for financial aid SectionNumber: SectionTitle: Using professional judgment PageNumbers: 43-44 You may use your professional judgment either to increase or decrease one or more of the data elements used to calculate the EFC. The reason must be documented in the student's file and it must relate to that student's special circumstances. Special circumstances are conditions that DIFFERENTIATE an individual student, not conditions that exist for a whole class of students. Thus, adjustments may only be made on a case-by-case basis. The FAFSA does not collect information on special circumstances, but a notice on the first page of the instructions tells applicants to notify the financial aid administrator if they have special circumstances. The FAFSA gives examples of elementary or secondary school tuition, unusual medical or dental expenses, a family member who recently became unemployed, or other unusual circumstances. Professional judgment is not limited to the situations mentioned and could include those circumstances that were considered to be special conditions in previous school years, such as divorce, separation, or the death of a parent or spouse after the application was filed. Note that professional judgment can only be performed on the SAR or through EDE once the EFC has been calculated. In exercising professional judgment, you may not make a direct change to the EFC figure, assessment rates, or allowances; you may only adjust an actual data item. The data item that is changed should reflect the student's special circumstances. For example, if a family member is ill, you might adjust the adjusted gross income to allow for lower earnings in the coming year, or you might adjust assets to indicate that family savings will be expended on medical expenses. Because items like medical expenses and tuition do not appear on the application or the SAR or ISIR, you need to be familiar with the elements in the formula so your professional judgment changes are made and documented properly. If you make an adjustment for a student who may be eligible for a Federal Pell Grant, the SAR must be used to send the adjusted information back to the FAFSA processor. (If you are using EDE services, you may use the corrections function to make the change electronically--in this case, you will receive the resulting ISIR at the school, and the student will receive the one-page SAR Information Acknowledgement.) An adjustment to a line item is made just like a correction--the financial aid administrator reports the adjusted amount on Part 2 of the SAR or ISIR in the column labeled "The correct answer is:". For instance, if the adjusted gross income is $20,000, but the financial aid administrator decides to adjust that figure to $17,000 to take into account unusual medical expenses, the financial aid administrator would note that change on the SAR. The financial aid administrator must also indicate that an adjustment is being made in the "School Use Only" box. (See the discussion of the "School Use Only" box later in this part.) If a financial aid administrator uses professional judgment to adjust a SAR line item, the resulting EFC must be used consistently for all federal student aid that the school awards to that student. For example, if the financial aid administrator adjusts the EFC for purposes of awarding the student's Federal Pell Grant, that adjusted EFC must also be used to award aid from the campus-based or FFEL programs. OTHER USES OF PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT The financial aid administrator can use professional judgment to adjust the student's cost of attendance to take into account special circumstances. The law also authorizes financial aid administrators to use professional judgment to override the student's reported dependency status to make the student independent. The procedures for doing so are provided in the "Dependency Overrides" subsection of the section of Part 2 titled "Making Changes." |